 Fy enw, ddiwedd yn rŵn i'r ysgolwyddoedd nhw'n gwybod. Y prifysg y dyma'r ymgyrch yn ymddiadol sy'n credu'r ysgrifennu. Mae'r cyd-dyn nhw'n cyd-dyn nhw. Mae'n cael y bransio'r llaw o'r cyfnod o'r hyfrifysg. Mae'r cyfnod yn ymgyrch, ac mae oedd yn gwybod yn gweithio, yn cyd-dyn nhw, ac yn gwybod yn y cyfnod. Mae'n gwybod i ei wneud i gael ymddiadol. Oedda ni'n rhan oedd i'r modderau. I'm Dr Tim Gregory from the UK's National Nuclear Laboratory. I work in the lab mostly, so it's kind of nice to be out of the lab, but they do let me out occasionally to come and mingle and talk to our fantastic panellists. We have Dr Charlene Smith, who is an engineer senior nuclear energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute in Washington DC. We've got Christine Madden, who is the president of the International Youth Nuclear Congress. And over on the far side, we've got Mira Alblushi, who is a senior programme engineer at the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, and they're going to bust some myths for us this afternoon. So, I guess we'll start with maybe the elephant in the room and the thing that, at least when you talk to the public about nuclear power, nuclear energy, it's rolling net zero. One of the things that comes up very early on in the conversation is the safety record of nuclear. It's perhaps one of the biggest myths is that nuclear energy is unsafe. So, what do we think about that? Do we want to address that? Should we start with you? Sure. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here today. So, let's bust some myths, bust some myths. So, from the perspective of safety, when you talk about safety, safety is the condition of being unlikely to cause harm, danger or death, right? So, when we think about safety in a larger context, most people, if you ask them, you know, is flying a plane safe or taking a flight safe, they will tell you yes. And so, when you talk about safety, we're really looking at probabilities. And so, with respect to energy production and different energy sources that we use, nuclear energy ranks among the lowest as regards to the amount of deaths that are incurred as a result of accidents, as a result of air pollution per a terawatt hour. So, there is a specific graphic that's published by Orworld and Data. And that graphic is essentially showing the deaths per accidents and per air pollution, per energy source, per a terawatt hour. Follow me. And nuclear energy, if you look at that graphic, it ranks on the low side. It's very close to solar and wind. So, if you look at that graphic, you're going from the safest to least safe energy source. And that rank starts with solar in first place. Nuclear is actually number two. Wind is number three. Gas is number four. Hydro is number four. Gas is number five. Biomass, oil and then coal. And that is considering all the accidents as well that came as a part of, well, the nuclear energy industry's past transgressions. And so, yes, we do have a history of, or, you know, major accidents. And, I mean, so does other energy sources, but when we take a stock of the seriosity and the impact that those accidents have had compared to all other energy sources, nuclear energy actually ranks among the safest. So, that's a very scientific answer, putting numbers to the question of how safe is nuclear. I think a lot of it often comes from a kind of an emotional response. I don't know if that's something that you've come across in your work and going out on the nuclear advocacy. Yeah, and I think, you know, having worked in nuclear power plants at the beginning of my career, one of the things that I always thought was really interesting is there's such a high focus on safety in the workplace. Even things like making sure the door is closed, properly closed in order to the fire doors. And so, I would find myself actually doing this in my house because it became so ingrained in my day-to-day behavior. And I think that, you know, that's just one example of how, of the importance that we put on nuclear safety. And one of the things that I really appreciate about working in the nuclear industry is that we have this really high renaissance for the fact that you have to come to work with a questioning attitude. It doesn't matter what your rank is in the facility, how many years of experience you have, et cetera. If you see something that you don't think is okay, it's your responsibility to bring that forward, and there's not going to be repercussions for that. And I think that's amazing from the perspective that it really creates this culture where people can feel comfortable and confident raising issues, whether it's, you know, related to the way that a procedure is written, whether it's related to the fact that you maybe have a barrier in the field that you weren't anticipating in your pre-job brief. But I think these sorts of things are so important in terms of building a culture where everyone feels heard and respected. That, I think, is the culture kind of gets to the heart of it completely. It's kind of like a self-correction, almost, that just kind of gets better with time, you kind of hone the edges. Is that something that you kind of experienced as a program engineer, that kind of culture of self-correction, been able to speak out, make suggestions for around safety and the culture? Absolutely. So my experience is very similar to Christa's experience. So the power plants that we have in the UAE are, you know, the first in the region. And I think when people hear the word nuclear, they immediately think, ooh, is it safe to work over there? And when I started working, like when you look at the processes, the procedures and how the focus, like safety is the overriding priority all the time. And as Kristen said as well, yes, you always, you have that safety culture. You can always suggest, and again, safety is the overriding priority. Have you seen a shift in the public perception of nuclear since the power plant started recently? I would say that, like in the UAE, there are, there might be misconceptions about nuclear energy, but the most of the people do have a lot of trust in the government. So we don't really have like anti-nukes or people who are anti-nuclear, but I'm sure that some people really do not have the right conceptions about nuclear energy, but they do still support it. Okay, that's encouraging. All right, so we've got the power plant, it's running, it's all safe, it's great. The other elephant in the room, the second elephant, it perhaps glows in the dark in people's minds. When they imagine it in the public, this is of course nuclear waste, an unavoidable byproduct of generating any form of electricity or extracting energy from natural resources. You get waste as a byproduct, nuclear waste. Sounds awful, people are scared of it, people are worried about it. Is it the showstopper that people think it is? Should it stop us reaching net zero by 2050? Is it worth it? What are your thoughts? So from my perspective, I actually think that this is one of the things that sets nuclear apart. The fact that in the cost per megawatt hour, we include the cost of waste and waste management and we ensure that the waste is stored and maintained in a safe configuration. And to my knowledge, we're the only industry that does that. So this wasn't just because I was thirsty, but it's a prop. So this soda can is the equivalent of all the nuclear waste that would be generated if all of your electricity during your entire lifetime came from nuclear energy. So this would be, it would fit into one essentially can of soda. But the cool thing about nuclear technology, nuclear fuel, is that actually about 90% of it is recyclable. So if we were to recycle it as they do in some countries like France, for instance, this would actually be the waste of 10 people, not just one. And so in the nuclear industry, we put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that the nuclear fuel is maintained in safe configurations when they're in these large swimming pools adjacent to the nuclear reactor. And then later on we put them in dry storage. So these are really large concrete containers where we've safely and robustly stored them for generations, following which some countries do decide to recycle. And the idea of these concrete containers is also they're meant for us to be able to go back in and recycle at a later date should that country choose to make that decision. In the nuclear field, or I would say in the broader energy context, nuclear energy is one of the few energies that we really put in emphasis on ensuring that the nuclear material is maintained in a safe and robust configuration. So, and we haven't had any issues to date, and we're always innovating. And I think that's also the really exciting thing is that we have these new reactors, advanced breeder reactors potentially coming online in the next decade or two, which will really even further reduce the amount of waste that there is. And I think that's really important from a generational justice perspective and that we want to leave the future generations with the least amount of waste as possible. But we also want to ensure that when there is waste that it is maintained in a safe configuration and that it's manageable. So, with the mind environmental stewardship and sustainability and recycling of nuclear waste, do you anticipate that that will become more and more prevalent as we go forward in the coming decades? Will more and more countries do you think take, as you say, a French style approach to recycling nuclear waste and increasing the capacity for that? I think from a sustainability perspective that is something that we could see become more popular as we go forward, like Kristen mentioned, more than 90% of that material can be reused. I think when we talk about especially the waste, just to add on to what she was saying earlier, it's really only about 4% of spent fuel that really has extremely long-lived isotopes, the ones that stay radioactive for thousands of years. But with new technologies like the sodium cooled faster reactors or the breeder reactors, you can take that material that has a long radio toxicity lifetime and reduce the radioactivity of that material through reuse and reprocessing down to being radioactive for thousands of years to hundreds of years. And that really targets exactly what we are trying to push forward from not only a sustainability perspective, where we can continually reuse the waste, which is energy resource, but also from the point of view of reducing the radio toxicity of the byproducts that we produce from energy source. Sure, and I think something that's often lost in the conversation about net zero and sustainability is that there's a cost to everything. There's no perfect solution, only trade-offs. But you've just demonstrated that the trade-off of nuclear waste is actually quite small about the size of a soda can. Yeah, and I think on the cost of that as well, I think countries like the US, some of the reasons that I've heard at least that we're not reprocessing is that there is a proliferation risk or the notion that it's cheaper to mine for fresh uranium than to reprocess, spent fuel. We're talking about more than two times the cost of that. So it's not a matter of a technology issue where we can't reprocess it. We have countries that have demonstrated that and I think we need to start thinking from, you know, we need to get out of the thinking of short-sightedness and try to think long-term about how we can create a sustainable energy mix. But for the proliferation side, and at least Kristin can speak a bit more to why that could be a road, a blockade, if you will, for us to stay away or try to diverge from reprocessing as much as we can. I think that short-term thinking that you just touched on that is something that I think about a lot and I know speaking to the people think about a lot as the youth, the younger generation think about net zero and climate change. What comes after net zero is something that we need to be thinking about as well, making better use of our resources, spinning them out further. So if recycling isn't economical now, will it be in the future? I don't know what sort of aspirations you have for the future of nuclear in UAE and spinning out those resources further, making better use of the waste that comes out of reactors through French-style recycling. I'm not quite sure what are the long-term plans for the waste that we have right now, but for short-term we do store them on sites. Cool. I think it's interesting what's going on in Finland as well with the geological repository. I strongly suspect more countries will be making similar pieces of infrastructure certainly before 2050 as net zero becomes more prevalent. So we've touched on the safety, we've touched on the nuclear waste. I guess the third big pillar that a lot of the myths around nuclear rest upon is the cost associated with nuclear energy. It's got a terrible reputation for being expensive. So let's say we've sorted the safety problem, nuclear waste, no problem, but are we going to bankrupt ourselves by investing heavily in nuclear? I think at least from a cost perspective, there are multiple contributors that drive the cost of old nuclear and even new nuclear. A big part of that is the regulatory uncertainty and regulatory burdens. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is that, yes, of course, compared to other energy sources, nuclear energy requires a larger upfront cost. But again, thinking about that longevity of what nuclear energy can offer compared to other energy sources as complements is something that is a missing piece of the equation. We require nuclear energy is very energy dense and our reactors can stay powered for 100 years. So that becomes part of the conversation that gets lost because when you extrapolate the timeline and the energy that a nuclear power plant is able to offer compared to other energy sources, it becomes very economically viable. The main concern, at least here, is upfront cost. But we have ways that we can try to address this. I think the UAE is an extremely good example. I think they spent $24 billion on their four units, 1.4 gigawatts each, which would turn out to be about $6 billion per unit. But even with advanced reactors, you can generally extrapolate that down to say if you wanted to build the largest small modular reactor, if we were using those numbers, we can extrapolate, we can look back down and say that the 300 mW SMR at most would cost $1 billion. But that's the largest SMR you could possibly have in that energy range. And so I think there are things that we can do, especially at least in the US, I think the regulatory barrier is a huge one that is currently driving the cost of nuclear and dissuading investors from investing in nuclear. But at the same time, we do have examples of leadership to look at that we can learn from, but also we have advanced small modular reactors that promise to be more cost effective than or larger conventional reactors. So there are things that we can do to eliminate or to significantly reduce the cost because, as I've said, UAE has done an extremely admirable and inspiring job with Baraka. So what can we learn from UAE? You did it on budget and how do we replicate that? Because I know that in the UK we've got a couple of new reactors in the pipeline and they generally run over cost. How do we keep that down? So I think what makes the UAE a bit different is that it's funded by the government while in other countries nuclear industry is a private sector. So and I think the UAE is really not only focusing on spending on nuclear power plants but really having that energy mix. We have the solar panels, we have wind turbines and also the power plants and I'm sure that there are going to be more plants in the future to meet the net zero for 2015. Do you have anything more to add? Yeah, so I would just add that there's also been a recent study done by the US Department of Energy that looked at this coal to nuclear transition and so what this found was that 85% of retired and operating coal facilities in the US can actually easily be transitioned to nuclear facilities and in doing so you're actually recycling a lot of that infrastructure at that coal facility and on average what they found was that would save about a billion dollars in cost from the perspective of being able to use the grid, the steam generators, the existing infrastructure as well as allow for 90% reduction and then I think like one of the things we also have to remember is we're starting to build new nuclear power plants, they're first of a kind technologies for many of us. So we haven't really built nuclear power plants consistently in decades. So there's a learning curve in terms of the project management, in terms of being resource ready, having the suppliers. So with any project that's new to the market, the first few are always going to cost a lot more. But once we have that infrastructure in place, so we have the people, we have the suppliers, we have the regulatory framework, you're going to also see the cost dramatically decrease. And I think that's also what's so interesting about the small modular reactor concept because essentially it's the same nuclear power plant being output from the same facility, so it's the assembly line. And what we've seen with assembly lines for instance in the car manufacturing industry, cars used to be extremely expensive when they were one of a kind and then when you built this assembly line approach, the cost of those cars over time decreased dramatically such that the accessibility to more and more people became a viability. Do you think the small modular reactors kind of add an element of market competition? Because it's one of the exciting things I think you're seeing all the, they're almost like start-ups with their own ideas about what a small modular reactor looks like and that kind of competition inevitably does two things. Drives innovation, overused word, overused phrase of course, but I think in this sense is very fitting but brings cost down as well. Do you think that will play a big part in the future? I actually think it already is. We recently saw a few countries sign an agreement yesterday where they're actually going to collaborate on infrastructure development, specifically around advanced reactors and SMRs. So they're already laying the framework for when we start building these nuclear power plants in the next five to ten years. So I definitely think that that plays a huge role and as you said innovation is always going to push us in a positive direction. Sure. So it's kind of related to cost but another one of the myths surrounding nuclear it's just something for rich countries to do. The amount of money that you need to build and operate a nuclear power station are so astronomical that it's really only something that the developed world, that wealthy countries can indulge in. What do you have to say about that? Is it just technology for the developed world or can it also help the developing world industrialise whilst promoting environmental stewardship? I would love to see developing countries be able to afford to build but of course they are not developed and may not have as much capital at their disposal to be able to do that. In my case Jamaica is the only Caribbean island that has expressed interest in introducing nuclear energy as a part of our energy mix. But the question comes of who is going to pay for it. I think using the model that the United States has especially in the Inflation Reduction Act where you are incentivising investors globally to invest in that industry in a particular country. Although the Inflation Reduction Act is something that is great for the US for smaller developing countries like Jamaica who may say they want to build SMRs. I think the framework of the IRA has an unintended consequence of maybe taking investors or investing money from building out energy technologies in developing countries to the US because the IRA makes investing in nuclear and clean energy technology so attractive. I think for developing countries the United States should try to replicate a model that is similar for them and specifically coming from the government to try to incentivise those investments within the region so it's not just a thing where Jamaica's government can't afford SMRs to react by themselves and so trying to foster an environment where the public and private partnerships come together in the Caribbean region government perspective to be able to do that is a pathway that I think developing countries could explore. I think going back to the cost structure if you have good projects such that you have designs that we know work you have the people to operate the facilities and you have the supply chain I think that that's also going to drive investment because a lot of these projects as we touched on in the earlier question the issue with them running over costs is that one of these elements is missing and so as more and more reactors come online we're going to have more and more suppliers our project management is going to be refined within the nuclear industry we're extremely collaborative so there is of course the marketing element but at the same time there's also the element that we're going to share our best practices with you and also our failures so that we can all succeed so I think that as we get the supply chain in place we build the pilot plans so we can show that the designs work we have the people in place then when these governments at the front end invest in the feasibility studies I think that then they have the viability of going to external investors, private capital firms banks and saying listen I have this great project I have the supply chain in place I have the technology works I have the people to operate it and to construct it and that's a really good sell once you get there so I think that it's also about working with partners like the IAEA who's pavilion we're in today they have this phased approach that helps countries get there so I think it's about building upon this collaborative environment that we have in the operating realm and that has been further transposed into the new build realm that collaborative spirit is definitely something that I feel for sure being part of the nuclear community is that something that you would say is felt strongly here as a sort of nuclear newcomer on the global scene that kind of collaborative spirit so we always say that the nuclear world is very small and because the nuclear power plants are new to our region so we did really need that support from the other nuclear organisations we do attend a lot of meetings in the US and with different organisations that can help support us getting the training that we need getting the knowledge that we need and then as Kristin said in the future it makes it easier to add on to the nuclear power plants that you have because you already have the knowledge you already have the experience because it's a start-up we have a lot of people who were there during the construction and during the operation of the plant so if the UAE decides to have more power plants in the future we have those individuals who have been there through the whole process of building the reactors and operating them I also read a statistic that the UAE actually had over 50 nationalities involved in the construction in the commissioning so you're not just training a local workforce anymore you're training a global workforce I would say it's very diverse and that comes with its challenges of course but you also have experienced people from all around the globe and since we're talking about diversity I think it's also worth of mentioning that we have 20% of the people who work in our project are actually females which is one of the highest numbers worldwide which I also think is a great thing for the UAE and it shows support for females as well since the three of us are females here today Nice Shift intact ever so slightly I feel like we've done the big three we've done the safety the expense and we've talked about nuclear waste we're at COP there are delegates organisations from literally every single country on the planet all with their own ideas about how we reach net zero the conversation about sustainability particularly when it comes to electricity and energy is dominated by renewables namely wind and solar people tend not to talk very much about the biggest source of renewable energy on the planet which is hydro people are very very focused on wind and solar do we need nuclear at all given that wind and solar are becoming more prevalent they're set to become far more prevalent over the coming decades they're falling in price people are investing in them like crazy do we even need nuclear do we even need to go there we'll start with you so the question is why do we need nuclear if we have other renewable sources of energy my question is why not so if we compare nuclear energy with the other renewable energy resources you know it's available 24-7 regardless of the external factors which makes the grid stable for nuclear power plants also have one of the highest capacity factors on average it's 90% which is higher than the other renewable energy sources and if we're looking to meet our energy demands in the future we need a dense source of energy that is also clean and only nuclear can provide us with that and I think people generally underestimate the value of nuclear power or how much electricity we get from nuclear energy so the amount of energy you can get from five nuclear reactors is equivalent to 3.7 million solar panel rooftops which is quite a lot so the question should be why wouldn't nuclear be part of our energy mix in fact I think it should be a vital part of our energy mix do you think it's possible without nuclear? it's just my personal opinion looking at the energy demands in the future and how the energy demands have increased in the past decades I don't think it would be possible without nuclear we need that dense source of energy I agree, I think globally nuclear energy has to be a part of the solution we're not saying that nuclear energy is appropriate for every country there are different countries that have their own energy mixes that are appropriate for them to the point where they don't need we talked about Saint Lucia and Saint Kitts and Nieves who have immense geothermal capability and geothermal has very high capacity factor there was a study that was done by the University of the West Indies that said that at least Saint Kitts and Nieves had 90% geothermal capacity that's their firm clean base load power so we need to try to introduce nuclear to Saint Kitts and Nieves for the case of Jamaica we're in the Caribbean we have sunlight for most of the year we have solar, we have wind but more than 85% of our energy comes from imported oil so in the case of Jamaica we do have hydro capacity it's very low what value do you have or what can a region do for itself in Jamaica we have very low hydro capability we don't have any geothermal we have solar and wind and oil what we're trying to do here is to displace the oil because what we want is firm energy and so happens to that we also want it to be clean in some cases when I talk to people in the Caribbean pavilion they're saying that the Caribbean is among the countries that have the least emissions we are not the drivers of climate change which is true but on the other hand you can think of it as you want to be able to achieve your global net zero commitments but I think nuclear energy has a lot to offer small and developing nations like Jamaica for advancing the socio-economic infrastructure of the country, Jamaica exports bauxite we could use a small model reactor for example to drive that industry we would create new industries to desalinate water, hydrogen production and build out a very prosperous socio-economic structure in Jamaica electricity is extremely expensive where I was looking at the cost of electricity in Canada versus the cost of electricity in Jamaica in Ontario specifically where their energy mix is mostly nuclear energy and renewables and a little bit of gas in Jamaica it's mostly oil and a little bit of renewables on average the average Jamaican is spending 11% of their income on their electricity bill alone that is without air conditioning compared to the average Canadian living in Ontario or let's say in the US it's only 4% of their income and Americans are very wasteful about energy have air conditioning, have hot water and so there is a huge disparity that can directly be linked to the source of energy that is being used in these regions so I think beyond even nuclear energy being a part of the net zero solution it's definitely something that can boost economies all around the world yeah I like that as a means to grow economies and develop nations and adding to that the international energy agency in their 2023 update to the net zero roadmap found that a low case for nuclear use and decreasing it to 3% would actually increase electricity bills by $20 billion globally and require an additional $500 billion in investment costs if we were to go to 3% nuclear from the 9% that they're projecting the more than doubling so as you said this really illustrates the fact that this can have a significant impact on access to things like education clean water etc so there's so many other applications the non-electric applications of nuclear that I think also make it a really exciting technology when we look at the broader framework of the UNSCGs so with 25 minutes to go are there any audience questions or any myths in the audience that people would like to put to our expert panel we talk about the energy density of nuclear we've got expert density on this panel so pick their brains while they're in front of you I can talk about a question I got so I was in the Caribbean pavilion I think I was in the Bahamas pavilion here and I posed a question about nuclear energy and there were many concerns that primarily stemmed from the fact that oh the Caribbean is comprised of very small islands and the response was that nuclear energy isn't safe because these small islands are vulnerable to natural disasters but the thing is that nuclear power plants nuclear reactors are designed specifically to withstand natural disasters anything from tornadoes the floods, the hurricanes, the earthquakes all of it is specifically designed within the technology to withstand these events and so my example and I can share a spreadsheet of some data that I've collected is that I've looked back 50 years, 40 to 50 years of hurricanes, tornadoes floods, earthquakes that have hit close to or even been where the earthquake epicenter was at a nuclear power plant and we've never heard of that accident the only one that we can pinpoint is Fukushima and we can pinpoint it for very specific reasons but throughout the course of history since the beginning of us building nuclear power plants there have been natural disasters Fukushima isn't the first tsunami that we've seen affect nuclear power plants but the thing is that for all the other cases that we have never heard of the plant did exactly what it was designed to do in the case of Fukushima, yes we had the earthquake and in response to the earthquake the reactor did exactly what it was designed to do it shut itself down so what that means is that you're no longer producing fission isn't occurring to produce heat what's happening then once the reactor is shut down is that you have radioactive decay and you produce heat through radioactive decay if you're not imagining anything you're still producing heat the procedure then is to have an emergency cooling system kick in, right? the problem with Fukushima was not the design of the reactor it was the design of the plant the emergency cooling system was located in the basement naturally you have an earthquake the reactor is shut down here comes a tsunami, your emergency cooling system is in the basement, the tsunami floods that cooling system now you no longer have a method or a way to cool your reactor so your reactor keeps on getting hotter and hotter and hotter to the point where it's boiling off and you have the fuel element that's being exposed and chemical interactions cause the production of hydrogen and through that you essentially get a hydrogen explosion and that's exactly what happened so it wasn't a nuclear explosion? it was a hydrogen explosion, right? but of course you have radioactive material in the core and so that released radioactive material into the atmosphere but the thing is that there were other plants that were even closer to the epicenter of the earthquake but because of their plant design there were much more elevated than Fukushima those systems, those plants weren't affected and so I think as we approach building out SMRs in small island developing nations that are prone to natural disasters like Jamaica we should really robustly put into the plans of the technology and in the area that we've selected to be extreme in the way that in what we plan for because climate change of course we don't expect to slow down anytime soon so we're going to be expecting more extreme events and so in the planning of building a small metal reactor, a nuclear power plant in these small island developing nations we do what we typically do anyway design it to be resistant to natural disasters but then make or design even more robust that we are predicting the craziest event that could happen that would be potentially dangerous to a small island developing nation particularly your tsunami or your hurricanes or your earthquakes as well but that's one of the things that gets lost in the conversation of nuclear energy isn't safe because four small island developing nations or four developing countries because of these extreme weather events 20 to 50 extreme weather events that have been in areas where there are nuclear power plants and there is no damage, there is no release of radioactive material Fukushima is the outlier I bet no one has ever heard of the other 49 on this spreadsheet because there's nothing to say about them and that's the point but I'd also like to add to that that radiation is naturally occurring so this week at our booth upstairs we're giving away bananas because if you eat one banana you get the same amount of radiation as if you live next to a nuclear power plant for an entire year so the United Nations Radiation Safety Board has done a significant study on what happened at Fukushima and the impact of the radiation on persons and the environment that they came to in this very dense report is that the impact on the environment in persons is null because in science we're not going to say zero because we have to quantify it somehow but what they came to was that the impact was null because even though there was some release of nuclear material and radiation it's also naturally occurring in our environment and so the higher you are from an elevation perspective the more radiation that you're going to be exposed to you know just flying here it's a significant more radiation than you would get living or working at a nuclear power plant for an entire year so I think it's also important that we kind of normalize what radiation is and what it is not I think it's really funny talking about radiation because if you look at where we get most of our radiation from or artificial radiation it's all in the medical field 0.1% is coming from nuclear energy and then being close to nuclear power plants but people are comfortable going to the doctor getting an x-ray, getting a CAT scan, getting an MRI but when you look at the spread of where we're receiving radiation from most of it is natural, radiation, right? and just under half of it of all the radiation that we receive is coming directly from the medical industry but we don't protest against cancer treatments which we need but it's also something that we need to consider to put into perspective everything around us is radioactive the ocean is radioactive so I think putting all of that into perspective when we do talk about radiation as this bogeyman cloud that is covering our industry it's important to have that perspective and what's your experience of working in the industry and what's your experience of working in the industry and what's your experience of working in a nuclear environment is radiation something that you think about ever on your day to day work is it something that you consider? Do you just forget about it? Is it a big deal? So I would say before starting to work so my background is mechanical engineering so I didn't really have an idea of how things work at the power plant and as I mentioned earlier when you look at the procedures that we have in the process and how everything is controlled and you have the radiation protection team and it really doesn't scare you anymore because everything is controlled and I think since we've touched on radiation, safety I think that the accidents that we've had has really led the industry to improve the safety protocols the designs of the reactors and this really shows the adaptability of the nuclear industry the best practices, the knowledge sharing and this is all very important for sustainability and even implementing new technologies is really part of how the power plants are maintained and licensed which really shows again that nuclear energy is sustainable and it proves that It's always funny to me that the people who work the most closely with radiation are the people who are least scared of it it's often people who have never ever interacted with anything beyond background radiation who are the most worried about it So when I was an intern at a nuclear power plant maybe naively, we used to have a competition around who could get the most radiation dose during your four month period because it's so controlled in terms of we have this saying Alara as low as reasonably achievable that we put shielding in place we put barriers in place to minimize the amount the most dose that I ever received I was actually working in outage and I was on top of the reactor core during shutdown uncoupling some of our control rods which we used to control the reaction and even in that case, the dose that I received was maybe one-fiftieth of what you would get in a normal year from the lights and so it's you know, as president of the International Youth Nuclear Congress one of the main projects we're focused on for next year is also bringing laboratory exercises into schools so our goal is to place these laboratory kits free of charge in regional locations globally and they'll focus on things like practical laboratory exercises around radiation, around heat transfer so you know, these core scientific principles that we're using really in any sort of industrial environment but also because you know, as we look towards the future and making it more sustainable we need to ensure that children are interested and have access to STEM so that that interest can or essentially we want these laboratory kits hopefully to be a catalyst for that interest in STEM especially for young girls because if we're only using 50% of our workforce we're never going to make it to net zero so like you guys said I think that in terms of the socialisation like what is radiation and putting it into perspective is so important So go grab a banana from upstairs after this session if you haven't already gone to the booth it's in the back corner of the room look for the giant gummy bear it makes sense when you go there perhaps to finish off in the last 10 minutes you mentioned the boogeyman of nuclear not being safe there's a question yes you've got a question sorry, she said eating a banana is like living next to nuclear nuclear science don't you think like if we already have like a radiation that we can't rid of like meds when we accumulate like other radiations from nuclear power it would be more massive like we can't get rid of meds but we can get rid of nuclear power that's my point but I don't know how I don't know if you did get my point so I think I understand what you're saying is essentially that we can't get rid of bananas but nuclear energy we can't get rid of medicine but is nuclear energy providing an unnecessary dose so coming out of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki the scientific community did a lot of studies around what is chronic low dose what is the impact to the body and what they found is that there is no quantifiable impact from chronic low dose and actually in some cultures even historically they've had radiation spas as a result because they think it has really positive impacts on the body so that's why in the power plants in quantifying it as related to a banana it's because that small small dose even if it's received over a long period of time the negative impact to the body in science terms is null so what you have to really be concerned about from a radiation perspective is like super high doses so that's why doctors when they do medical exams for instance like MRIs versus CAT scans they have to weigh the risk versus the benefit of doing such procedures because these are really high amounts of radiation that are being targeted on a specific part of your body it's the same with cancer treatments through radiation and so those high doses are really the concern from a scientific perspective especially on the basis of all of this information that we've collected in following people out of the disasters that happen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki I think to kind of address that as well is that yes we said that eating one banana is equivalent to getting the same radiation if you were to live within a mile of a nuclear power plant and that's a really powerful statistic because it goes to demonstrate the redundancies and safeguards that we do incorporate as a part of the nuclear power plants and your concern is that if we continue to build out more nuclear we're going to have more exposure to radiation so it goes back to the case of all the examples that we do have from all our power plants across the world we do have safeguards that we put in when you talk about radiation we're stopping radiation alpha particles can be stopped by a piece of paper beta, gamma, neutrons stopped by concrete, steel we know exactly how to shield ourselves from these types of radiation and we have been doing it so when we look at yes we want to build one, two, three, four, hundreds of nuclear reactors they're going to be built at the same level of safety or even higher than what we already have now so we are going to eventually be limiting that radiation exposure because safety is a priority and you can even look in the medicine medical industry where we create radioisotopes for cancer treatment those radioisotopes are made in research reactors nuclear research reactors they have the same material, you have the same because I've worked at a nuclear research reactor you have the same worry about radiation dose you carry around your dosimeter at a research reactor the same research reactor that they're producing isotopes to treat cancer it's a similar structure we have nuclear reactors for medical isotope production and we have nuclear reactors for power production but we still have the same safeguards in place to limit the exposure to radiation in a way that it's safe for the workers it's safe for people who are living nearby no problem, good question do you think this worry about radioactivity in the environment from nuclear power stations will become more geographically prevalent small modular reactors, a larger number of smaller reactors people on average will inevitably be living closer to nuclear reactors, is this something that we need to address perhaps as an industry and with the education about nuclear power more generally in the technology design of small modular reactors because you have your conventional reactors and we have this thing called the EPZ protection zone, which is essentially the zone that you would need to to evacuate, because we are scaling down to much smaller technologies, the EPZ it doesn't need to be 10 miles, 20 miles that zone, and so I think based on the design of the technology and even regulatory infrastructure that's being developed right now, you're looking at being able to live near small modular reactors it can be as close as 5 miles away from them and that's again innately coming from the design because we're looking at smaller reactors it's going to have a lot of smaller impact in the event of an incident and so we don't need to have this overly conservative EPZ as a way to put in another redundancy in our safeguard and so that makes small modular reactors more accessible and even safer than our current fleets innately within the design and in the regulations that enforce strict standards and at the same time what we've seen through these studies that are now following people for 70 plus years is that low doses low exposure to radiation is not problematic from a health perspective what becomes problematic from a health perspective quantifiably is large doses one of large doses very very large doses which is why the safety requirements around MPPs are so significant so final question to the three of you what motivates you in your work because in addition to providing the world with the clean energy that it needs to a continuous long march towards being fully developed and achieving net zero one of the things about nuclear is that it's a credible antidote to the despair and the doom and gloom particularly amongst the younger generation to climate change so what motivates you in your work for me it's energy reliability I was born and raised in Jamaica and I came to the US to study energy and it just so happened that because Jamaica most of the year I immediately went into solar energy and I was doing research there for a very long time but my motivation for getting pursuing a technology that produces firm clean base load power comes from the fact that there are blackouts and there is during and in the aftermath of extreme weather events that I've had to live through growing up and that's the primary reason why I wanted to be energy not only in solar but as I continue to be updated on the technology and see what technologies could be the most impactful not only from a reliability perspective but from an economic perspective, from a social perspective and from a net zero perspective nuclear just ended up being the solution that I just jumped on there so when I was looking in high school what I wanted to do, I wanted to contribute to the climate change mitigation discussion so electricity generation is fundamental to life and for me nuclear engineering made sense because not only does it provide you access to clean electricity but it also then provides access to higher standards of living because it allows you to have sanitation it allows you to have hospitals it allows you to build infrastructure to create jobs and so for me that's really what drives me every single day is knowing that at the end of the day the work that I'm doing is making a positive difference in people's lives and I think that that's really really important I've traveled to 59 countries across the globe and you see what the impacts are you don't have access to clean affordable reliable electricity and it's not just that you can't turn on your lights at home you don't have access to wifi it's these basic human, fundamental human needs that electricity enables so for me and this is very personal I think the opportunities that I get as a young female Emirati really drives me to do what I do and it's the reason why it's the reason why I get up every day in the morning and when you work in an industry like that and you see the effect that it has not only in the UAE but also globally and socially and how it also simulates economies and provides jobs and etc everything that we have discussed today and it brings more fulfilment Thank you that's perhaps a nice place to stop if you've got any questions that you think of later this week or today or you would be too shy to ask do come upstairs into the back corner and come and talk to the people in the blue t-shirts or anybody on this panel, pick brains, ask questions there's no question too small or too big we're here to answer your questions and thank you for the question round of applause for the panel please, thank you Thanks everyone