Monday, 2 July 2012

Public Engagement - Nuclear Outreach


This is a very quick blog to mention what a lot of our members do as part of their course and in their spare time. Public engagement is very important to us as we find a lot of people hold misleading views and are genuinely interested in what we have to say. Why they're interested I have no idea,  maybe because we're young and fresh faced; not ageing academic or industry types with vested interests.


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We've done a lot of different outreach activities involving certain demo's;
Uranium Glass
  • How radioactive are different foods?
  • Build your own repository
  • Green uranium glass
    • How it fluoresces under UV light
    • Geiger counter and how lead shields it
  • ...and lots more.
Mainly we do these in schools or set up stands at museums and science festivals as part of the STEM ambassador program. Although at museums we spend a lot more of our time talking to parents about issues they've seen in the news. 

No matter where we do our outreach it's always received well and people seem very accepting that it's an important part of the UK's energy mix.

If you have any ideas for outreach activities, let us know!

Some of us dressed as Alpha man, Beta boy and Gamma girl: the radioactive superheroes!
(Sadly this outreach idea has been scrapped)

We're always surprised by how busy our stand is!
Gunth with his "build your own repository"
Setting up at MOSI