Resources for Nuclear Education In High Schools

Back to High School

So far, in blogging and nuclear advocacy talks, I generally speak to adult audiences. That seems to be changing.

A few weeks ago, a high school assistant principal found me on the web. This has turned into an opportunity for one of the Energy Education Project supporters (a nuclear engineer who lives near that high school) to give a talk at the high school. Then another high school teacher contacted me. That contact has become an opportunity for Howard Shaffer and me. We be talking to social studies and chemistry classes at that school.

Two days ago, a high school student from one of the Vermont Academy high schools contacted me. He wanted some help in putting together a senior project about nuclear energy. The project will be presented to the entire school.

At that point, I cried "Help!" to my American Nuclear Society Listserve, asking for information about high school curriculum materials for nuclear energy. As I expected, some very knowledgeable people led me to good resources. I am using this blog post to share the information.

Nuclear Energy Resources for High Schools

Department of Energy

A prime resource on the web is at the Department of Energy site for teachers:

http://www.ne.doe.gov/students/Track_teachers.html

This has activities, fact sheets, and brochures on nuclear power plant safety.

My evaluation: Great stuff, but you are going to have to hunt through it. Lots of good material, but uneven.

National Nuclear Science Week

Nuclear Science Week is January 23 through 27. and has a terrific website:

http://www.nuclearscienceweek.org/

This includes activities and downloads:

http://www.nuclearscienceweek.org/for-teachers-students-parents/topics-and-downloads-for-curriculum/

One of my favorite parts of the website is the day by day set of resources with links and video clips:

Getting To Know Nuclear (Monday)

Nuclear Careers (Tuesday)

My evaluation: This site is rich, up-to-date, and easy to navigate. It can be used even if your school is not participating in Nuclear Science Week.

Energy Solutions and Power Path

Energy Solutions Foundation pioneered a curriculum for nuclear energy. This material is part of the Power Path curriculum developed by Entergy, Areva and others.

http://energysolutionsfoundation.org/

http://nuclearcleanairenergy.com/resources/education/power-path/

The Power Path site includes games, information, fact sheets, activities, and debate points for high school debaters. Power Path is truly a curriculum. Much is downloadable, other parts of the curriculum can be attained by emailing abecker@entergy.com.

The Power Path Curriculum is available and approved for use in several states.

My Evaluation: Power Path is excellent. It seems to be the most complete and organized of nuclear energy resources for high schools. I recommend it highly,

No, I am not just saying this because Entergy owns Vermont Yankee and is also a sponsor of Power Path! I am saying it because people on my ANS Listserve have used Power Path materials in their children's schools, and they said the materials were great. Of all the resources I have listed in this post, this is the only one for which I have user-feedback.

Facts on File Books

Facts on File (a publisher) is coming out with a series of six books about nuclear energy.

http://www.infobasepublishing.com/Series.aspx?SeriesISBN=084944

The book titles include:

• Radiation
• History of Nuclear Power
• Nuclear Accidents and Disaster

The books are meant for high school and college libraries. Some books available now; some will be available early next year.

My Evaluation: I haven't read these books, and they are pretty pricey at $45 each. However, all the books are written by James Mahaffey, a Ph.D. who wrote the excellent book Atomic Awakening. That book is on my Kindle, and it is clear, authoritative, and amusing. I expect these books are also excellent.

Conclusion

There are many resources available for talking and teaching about nuclear energy in high schools. I hope my readers will add even more, in the comment section.

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Afterword: Academies in Vermont. In the mind-1800s in Vermont, many Academies were founded as private secondary schools. Later, when the Vermont townships decided to provide secondary education for everyone, the Academies were already in place. The townships chose to provide tuition vouchers for the Academies rather than set up rival and redundant schools. Nowadays, the Academies take tuition vouchers from local school districts, and they also take private paying students. They are usually still private schools (sort of). The Academies have long traditions and high standards, and are very Vermont. I decided to illustrate this post with graphics of two of the Academies.

Thetford Academy Woodcut from Wikipedia

Colby Hall at St. Johnsbury Academy from Wikipedia.

82nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs at Nuclear Clean Air Energy

The 82nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs is up at Nuclear Clean Air Energy. It's the first time this website has hosted the Carnival. In this Carnival, you can see the bloggers: Margie Jepsonincluded all of our pictures when she put the post together. It's such a good idea---why didn't I think of that when I hosted the Carnival?

In the Carnival, Gail Marcus of Nuke Power Talk describes the nuclear anniversaries of December. December isn't just Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa any more--it's also Nuclear Firsts month.

Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes reports on an interview with Jaczko. Budget woes at NRC may slow things down. Who knew things could get slower at the agency?

Will Davis of Atomic Power Review describes his reading list for the winter days that are coming. He plans to curl up with some good nuclear books. Davis describes the books, and we can read them vicariously. This sounds easier than reading them directly.

I look at that fish again. Actually, it's not worth looking at a fish with background levels of Sr90. Instead, I look at what Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists says about the fish. I suggest Lochbaum begin to write science, not propaganda.

Rod Adams at ANS Nuclear Cafe reports on a key study of the future of Small Modular Reactors. The study was done by University of Chicago: this university is is my alma mater and my husband's alma mater and my mother's alma mater and my father's alma mater and...Well, you might say I have some ties to the place! I am glad to see University of Chicago exploring and supporting SMR development.

Finally, Cool Hand Nuke has the world-wide news of the new builds in China, Brazil and Russia. And the crocodiles are doing well in their protected habitat near Turkey Point. Good news about nuclear.

It's the Carnival! Come for a visit!

Vermont Notes: Films, Fukushima, Statehouse Flaps

Blog posts, podcasts, and letters about Vermont and Vermont Yankee.

An Anti-Nuclear Film, and a Pro-Nuclear Person on the Panel Discussion

Howard Shaffer and I work closely together on Vermont Yankee advocacy. He is head of the Vermont Pilot Project of the American Nuclear Institute.

A film about nuclear power was developed at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics of the University of Vermont. As we expected, this film was anti-nuclear. You can see a trailer for it here. Last week, at University of Vermont, Howard Shaffer and Arnie Gundersen were on a panel discussing the film. Today Shaffer has a blog post at ANS Nuclear Cafe: Transparent Radiation--A Film.

In his post, Howard Shaffer describes the film, the audience questions, and the panel members answers. This film and panel was a Vermont event, but the film will be entered in many film festivals. How it is received will be relevant beyond Vermont.

Fukushima Podcast

People who lived near the Fukushima Power Plants want to go home. What should be the criteria for ending the evacuation? Rod Adams has a podcast: Let Fukushima Residents Go Home. Participants are Rod Adams, me, and Cal Abel. Adams is the blogger at Atomic Insights (and an ex-submarine officer). Abel is an ex-submarine officer and current grad student at George Tech. The conversation includes

• Why are the local Fukushima cattle dying? (because nobody is feeding them),
• Is the Linear Non Threshold Theory reasonable?
• How come people drive cars, smoke, and have dental fillings? Driving, smoking and mercury can be considered "Linear Non-Threshold" activities or substances.

Warning. There are sound quality issues with the podcast. I talk too softly and Rod breathes too loudly.

High Jinks and High Rollers in the Vermont State House

High Jinks: John McClaughry posts in Vermont Tiger: It Takes One to Know One. Tony Klein is chairman of the Vermont Natural Resources Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives. Klein is upset about proposed anti-wind legislation. Klein is a fierce opponent of Vermont Yankee. I was in a committee room when Klein said that the existence of Vermont Yankee on Vermont soil could ruin the Vermont Brand.

Klein is also a proponent of wind turbines, and he is very upset that the proposed legislation could "pocket veto" wind without a vote. McClaughry points out that the Vermont House illegally "pocket vetoed" Vermont Yankee by not voting. (The famous vote was only in the Vermont Senate.) As McClaughry says: It Takes One to Know One.

Full Disclosure: The Energy Education Project that I direct is part of the Ethan Allen Institute that was founded by John McClaughry.

High Rollers: In the Bennington Banner (unfortunately behind a paywall) L.A. Leonard of Rutland wrote a letter to the editor. An excerpt is below:

Vermont recently lost a federal lawsuit trying to prevent companies from selling patient information to pharmaceutical companies. The Supreme Court rejected the law saying it violated free speech of companies and the law lacked coherence. We now learn taxpayers will be responsible for $1. 8 million not counting $600,000 for fighting the court case. This could be just the tip of the iceberg as experts believe there are still more plaintiffs to come.

Leonard then compares this case to the Vermont Yankee case. He predicts similar losses to the taxpayers from that lawsuit, and ends his letter as follows:

The legal fights could go on for years. May one suggest the governor, Attorney General Bill Sorrell and other state officials start picking up the tab rather than continue to burden taxpayers with no end in sight.

An excellent suggestion, which will be ignored. When it comes to Vermont Yankee, our legislators are addicted to Other People's Money.

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I decided to illustrate the Leopold letter with a picture of the Vermont Statehouse Dome, captured from Wikipedia. Note that that the dome is covered in gold.

The Strontium Fish and Lochbaum and Markey

In a recent post, The Strontium Fish and the Associated Press, I described how AP wrote stories about Vermont Yankee releasing strontium 90 without mentioning the quantities of these releases. As I pointed out in the post, the releases were on the order of 10 to the minus 7 or minus 8 curies a year. The AP described releases, but did not describe the quantity of strontium released. The amounts were in the ten-billionths of a curie range.

Markey and Lochbaum

Representative Markey of Massachusetts, a long-time nuclear foe, saw this plant-released strontium-90 theme and decided to run with it. (Maybe Markey saw it in the AP articles.) Markey wrote a letter to the NRC, accusing the NRC of letting Vermont Yankee get away with lying to the press. Here's a link to Chairman's Jaczko's answer to that accusation. Jaczko said: The quoted licensee statements in your question are not without foundation based on the above information. (Vermont Yankee is the licensee).

Aside: For more information on Markey, Vermont Yankee, and the NRC, I recommend Victoria Barq's posts at NEI Nuclear Notes.

Markey's letter to Jaczko includes a copy of a letter from David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, written to the Entergy spokesman Larry Smith. (You can read the entire Lochbaum letter in the link.)

In his letter, Lochbaum says:

I was forwarded a copy of the statement you (Larry Smith) released on August 2, 2011, which contained the following statement. "There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium-90...."

'Absolutely no evidence'?

Really? Come on.

How about the report that Entergy submitted to the NRC on May 11, 2011...(that) stated that 3.17 E-08 curies were released in gaseous form...during the 1st quarter of 2010...Past reports (show other releases)....

So what you said in the statement about not detecting strontium-90 in the monitoring wells may be true, but it is not the whole truth is it Mr. Smith? In fact, it is so short of the whole truth as to be very misleading bordering on deceitful.

Mr. Lochbaum includes the numbers 31 billionths of a curie, but he uses a shorthand that not everyone will follow. Then Lochbaum calls Larry Smith's statement "misleading bordering on deceitful" for claiming Vermont Yankee releases do not affect the amount of strontium in the local fish. In my opinion, Lochbaum is assuming that nobody reading his letter will have any idea of what 3.17E-08 means. It means 31 billionths of a curie.

However, in the next paragraph of his letter, Lochbaum has to backtrack. After all, he is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Lochbaum just called Smith's statement "misleading," but if he ends there, Lochbaum is in trouble. If he ends there, somebody is going to notice that Lochbaum is saying that a plant release of a few billionths of a curie ...ended up in this fish. Not a scientific conclusion! So Lochbaum continues, trying to get on firmer ground:

The whole truth is that Vermont Yankee routinely releases strontium-90 to the environment. This fact does not mean that Vermont Yankee is the primary or sole source of the strontium found in the fish. But this fact also means that Vermont Yankee cannot be excluded as a potential source, as your very misleading statement sought to establish.

Whew. With a statement that is more propaganda than science "Vermont Yankee cannot be excluded as a potential source," Lochbaum attempts to step back into scientific credibility.

Science and Propaganda

Really, Mr. Lochbaum? We cannot exclude the potential of a meteor hitting Radio City Music Hall tomorrow. In the exact same sense, we cannot exclude the potential that some of that billionth part of a curie of Sr 90 wandered nine miles up the river and got into that fish.

We also must include the fact that Lochbaum chooses to use the least-accessible method of expressing scientific notation. Then he doesn't explain the notation. Lochbaum uses tortured sentence construction, such as "cannot exclude."

In my view, everything in this letter is constructed as propaganda, not science. Lochbaum lards his letter with "oh shucks" verbiage and then accuses Entergy of lying. He makes no attempt to explain anything, or put anything in context. He seems to be just hoping that nobody notices the weakness of his statements.

Really, Mr. Lochbaum? Come ON! For Pete's sake, man! Write science, not propaganda!

My conclusion: Entergy told the truth. I leave it to my readers to judge Mr. Lochbaum's words. Perhaps he has expressed himself in a way that is so short of the whole truth as to be very misleading bordering on deceitful.

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Update: Victoria Barq at NEI Nuclear Notes has an excellent post published yesterday: NRC’s Jaczko Responds to Rep. Markey on the Sr-90 Issue at Vermont Yankee

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Geeky addendum

To see the effluent reports for Vermont Yankee for yourself, you can see radioactive effluent reports from 2005 to 2010 at this page on the NRC website. For earlier years, you have to go to this NRC page and do a search by clicking on Begin Web-based ADAMS search.

Some example results:

2002

Strontium 89 and strontium 90 releases, by quarter.

All as particulate, all from the stack, 2002, all in curies:

• First quarter. Sr 89 --5.5 times 10 exp -5
• Second quarter. Sr 89-- 1.3 times 10 exp -4
• Third quarter:Sr 89--3.5 times 10 exp -5
• Fourth quarter: Sr 89--5.78 times 10 exp -5
• In the second quarter, there was also a release of Sr 90-- 1.75 times 10 exp -7 curies.

Total release of Sr 90 for the year 2002 was 1.75 times 10 exp -7 curies, or approximately 2 millionths of a curie. Total release of all types of radioactive Sr for the year was 2 ten-thousandths of a curie.

2005

The equivalent release numbers for 2005 were: no strontium 90 detected, but Sr 89 release of 6.3 times 10 exp -6 one quarter, and 6.5 time 10 exp -6 another quarter. These were all high-level releases (from the stack) as in 2002. However, in 2005, there were also ground-level releases of Sr 89 and Sr 90 in the first half of the year, at the level of 1 times ten -8 curies. Total releases here are in the neighborhood of 1 ten-thousandth of a curie, mostly Sr 89, not Sr 90. Sr 90 was at 10 exp -8 curie level.

2010

As Lochbaum said, 31 billionths of a curie of Sr 90. But he made it sound pretty scary. Entergy tries to mislead! Deceitful! Sr 90 released! Etc etc etc.

81st Carnival of Nuclear Energy posted at Idaho Samizdat

The 81st Carnival of Nuclear Energy is now up at Idaho Samizdat. Dan Yurman has put together a great Carnival with terrific bloggers! How do I know? The first post featured in the Carnival is my blog post about AP's biased reporting.

More seriously...thank you, Dan, for featuring my post in such a prominent position. All the posts are terrific, and cover a lot of topics, from history to politics and economics. It's a world-wide Carnival!

At Atomic Power Review, Will Davis describes the Nuclear Firsts of the month of December. The Chicago pile, for example, went critical in December. As usual, Will has great graphics.

The Chicago pile was part of a weapons program. In the next Carnival entry, Cheryl Rofer of Nuclear Diner describes the cost of nuclear weapons. Expensive little things! Expensive in many ways! We all agree it is better to build nuclear power plants.

Brian Wang at Next Big Future has a world-wide reach, describing the ambiguous war against the Iranian nuclear program, the costs of power generation in China, and a molten salt reactor project gathering speed in Australia and the Czech Republic.

Gail Marcus, of Nuke Power Talk, covers Japan in her post. As I have mentioned before, Marcus lived and worked in Japan. Regulatory changes need to happen in Japan, but these changes don't seem to be happening.

Getting back to the United States, Jim Hopf at ANS Nuclear Cafe discusses loan guarantees: solar, nuclear, Solyandra. Not all loan guarantees are the same. A very important post, and a fascinating and lengthy comment string about loan guarantees of all kinds.

Meanwhile, at Idaho Samizdat, Dan Yurman examines the NRDC contention against the severe accident mitigation guidelines at Limerick. Conclusion: if NRDC wins their contention, consulting firms will make a lot of money. However, since safety procedures are updated regularly, there is very little chance that the plant will need to make major changes.

Come to the Carnival. It's fun! It's new! It's international! Reading the Carnival is a great activity for a cold winter evening!

The Strontium Fish and the Associated Press

In August, the Vermont Department of Public Health analyzed some Connecticut River fish for radioactive strontium. To their surprise, they found strontium in the flesh of one fish (they usually find it in the bones). Amounts were background levels, and officials in the Department of Health said that they did not believe the strontium came from Vermont Yankee, there was no pathway from Vermont Yankee to the river for strontium, and the levels of strontium in the fish were very low. The fish would have been safe to eat. (For background on all this, I recommend Victoria Barq's posts at NEI Nuclear Notes and NRC Chairman Jaczko's letter to Representative Markey on the subject.)

Larry Smith, plant spokesman, said there was "absolutely no evidence that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium 90."

On the same day as the announcement, AP reporter Dave Gram wrote an article which said that Smith's statement did not mention the plant's announcement in May of 2010 that strontium-90 had been found not in groundwater, but in soil samples taken from the plant grounds.

Indeed, there had been some strontium found in soil near the tritium leak. All such soil was removed and appropriately disposed. No strontium was ever found in the groundwater, which means it did not migrate to the river. As I quoted in my August blog post, Irwin (of the Vermont Department of Health) says he doesn’t believe the Strontium-90 found in the fish was from Vermont Yankee. “We would need to see a pathway between the source and the fish,” he said.

You would think that would be the end of the story. It wasn't.

The Next AP Report

On August 6, Gram wrote another article about the fish. In this article, Gram reported that the Vermont Nuke Plant Had Past Radioactive Releases. Quoting his article: But in at least one of the quarters in each year from 2002 to 2005, Vermont Yankee told the NRC in its annual report on radioactive leaks that it had released some strontium-90, a radioactive substance linked to cancer and leukemia.

A question occurs. Did Gram look at the reports to the NRC, or did he just quote Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear about the reports without checking the reports? Basically, yearly releases of Sr 89 and 90, combined, were about two ten-thousandth of a curie. This information on quantity is in the NRC reports referenced above. I am preparing another blog post with links to NRC reports. (If you are impatient with my blogging, please go to the NRC website and search the Adams files for Vermont Yankee effluent reports.)

All put together, the reported releases are tiny. Strontium 90 releases from the plant are even smaller: I added strontium 89 and 90 to get ten-thousandths of a curie. Strontium 90 releases are on the order of ten to the minus 7 or 8 curies. This is in the level of ten to hundred billionths of a curie. In the biosphere, these releases cannot be distinguished from background strontium.

Why No Numbers?

Those numbers are not in the AP story, however.

So, question arises: why did the reporter write that there were releases and not quantify the releases? The numbers are in the same NRC reports that lead to the conclusion that "Vermont Yankee reported releases" to the NRC. Did the reporter not know the quantities (poor quality reporting)? Did he know, but decide not to admit the quantities were very low (biased reporting)? Obviously, I don't know the answer to these questions.

However, I do not want to just point a finger at a single reporter. This type of reporting looks like Business as Usual for AP about nuclear energy.

AP Reporting on Nuclear

The Pulitzer Prizes are awarded through Columbia University, and the Columbia School of Journalism is widely acknowledged as one of the premier schools of journalism in the country.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) is a prestigious watchdog for good journalism. In the past three months, CJR has criticized two AP series for disorganized and slanted reporting of nuclear matters. In the first review, September 28, CJR first blasted the Nuclear Energy Institute for a heavy-handed response to the AP articles.. Then CJR got around to looking at the AP articles themselves.

But the AP series, while it tackles a critically important public policy issue, suffers from lapses in organization, narrative exposition, and basic material selection, what to leave in and what to leave out.....As a citizen reader with no particular background in nuclear power generation but residing less than 50 miles (the preferred safety margin, according to the AP report) from one of these old clunkers, I felt throughout like I was clinging to a pendulum, swinging wildly between “Uh oh” and “Phew, false alarm.”

Two months later, AP had an article about the consequences of Fukushima. On November 22, CJR reviewed the AP work on Fukushima.

Journalists often play up the dramatic and alarming aspects of the information they’ve found, and play down or leave out the ameliorative, neutral, or balancing aspects that might help do justice to the truth, but which could “weaken” the story. The AP’s article illustrates what this looks like.

Conclusion: when the CJR gives several negative reviews to a source for biased or confusing reporting on a particular issue, something is happening at that source. I think something is happening at AP. When I read an AP story about nuclear, I expect to see biased reporting.

Update: Canadian Energy Issues blog linked to this post and expanded on some of the themes. The title of their blog post is Why so much anti-nuclear sentiment at a time when the world urgently needs a major expansion of nuclear energy? It is being deliberately manufactured, by leading mainstream media vehicles like the Associated Press Thank you to Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues.

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Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, from Wikipedia.

In full disclosure: our son-in-law is a professor at Columbia, and several members of the family (including our daughter) hold degrees from that institution.

A State of Confusion: The Suit About the Water Quality Permit

In mid-November, the State of Vermont sued the NRC, claiming that the license extension granted to Vermont Yankee was not valid because the NRC did not have proof that Vermont Yankee was in compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Actually, the anti-nuclear group, New England Coalition (NEC), started this suit, and the state joined in. Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) is acting as the lawyer for NEC. The Vermont Department of Public Service is pursuing this suit, along with NEC/CLF.

Meanwhile, several other groups have joined the lawsuit: New York State, Riverkeeper, and Scenic Hudson have asked to be friends of the court. The Brattleboro Reformer has an excellent article on the lawsuit and the various parties to it.

If you can figure this one out, please tell me. If Vermont Yankee did not have an appropriate water quality permit, why didn't the state do something directly about it? As the Reformer article notes: Under the doctrine of "cooperative federalism," states are allowed by choice to enforce standards such as those set out in the Clean Water Act. In fact, states are allowed to impose even more stringent standards than required by federal law.

In other words, the state had the power to enforce permit requirements. A state can even enforce special permit requirements. For example, cars sold in California need to meet stronger pollution control standards than the national standards set by EPA.

For some reason, though, Vermont is suing the NRC, claiming it was the NRC's obligation to make sure that Vermont Yankee had an up-to-date permit. Apparently, the state didn't care about the permit, except that the state wanted to be sure that the NRC cared.

I don't understand it. Or maybe I do.

Scuttlebutt

Okay. I am not a lawyer, and I don't understand this one. However, the scuttlebutt I have heard is that the state extends water quality permits routinely, unless something is changed, because it costs everybody an arm and a leg to actually reapply and re-assess such a permit. Apparently, the state made the decision (sometime in the past) that nothing much had changed at Vermont Yankee, and the water quality permit could be extended. Then, just a few months ago, with the change of governor, the state suddenly had a change of heart. The state was shocked, shocked to discover Vermont Yankee was operating on an extended water quality permit! As a matter of fact, they sued the NRC about it.

As I said, I am not a lawyer, and I am in state of confusion about this one. I thought I might try calling lawyers about it, but decided that even the lawyer's answers would be beyond me. If Vermont Yankee didn't have an appropriate permit, why did the state let them operate? If Vermont Yankee did have an appropriate permit, why is the state suing the NRC?

It doesn't make any sense, but at this point, "not making sense" is what I expect from the current state administration in its dealings with Vermont Yankee.

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The Oxbow: The Connecticut River near Northampton, MA. Cole Thomas, 1836

The Casablanca graphic is free-floating around the web, shocking as that is.