Skip to main content

Middle-School Students Win C-SPAN’s 2010 StudentCam Prize for Documentary on Nuclear

By

Three young ladies from McKinley Middle Charter School in Racine, Wisconsin took the grand prize this year for C-SPAN’s annual documentary competition. Over 1,000 students submitted a video on either a topic about one of the US’ greatest strengths or a challenge the country is facing.

The challenge the three ladies chose was how the US should meet its future energy consumption. The solution that they came to, of course, was nuclear.

For part of the documentary, they interviewed Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott, former NRC commissioner Dale Klein, and Tom Meston from Westinghouse. Plus, they added a few hilarious clips from The Simpsons and others to show the misperceptions about nuclear. Not only that, the excellent choice of music brought it all together.

Congrats to a well done video and the rewards!

(For the interview on the making of the video, click here.)

Labels:

Comments

Phil said…
Wow, those kids did a great job! Thanks for posting this on the nei nuclear notes blog!
April 21, 2010 at 9:38 AM
Finrod said…
Excellent job. Maybe they'll go into journalism!
April 22, 2010 at 2:53 AM
Jason Ribeiro said…
Those kids did a great job! I especially loved the crowd of kids acting out the splitting atom on the basketball court.
April 22, 2010 at 3:47 AM
Anonymous said…
The young people did a great job indeed... However, do they realize that the nuclear power is an immoral source of energy, leaving a terrible legacy of deadly radioactive wastes for thousands of years? Do we want to destroy or preserve life on Earth?... Let's understand that each nuclear power plant is a potential nuclear weapon factory and we should say: "NO TO NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS !" Let's conserve energy and buid real green sources of energy such as solar and wind...etc. I invite all who read the comments to learn more at the following websides: www.beyondnuclear.org or www. nukefree.org or www.ieer.org
May 12, 2010 at 6:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

By
The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
1 comment
Read more

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

By
A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.


What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nuclear Plant Closures Are a Crisis for Small Town USA

By
Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot.

Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed, because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo.


From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example:

Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had to cut its municipal budget in half. The town closed its police department and let the county take over; the youth sports teams lost their volunteer coaches, and Vernon Elementary School lost th…
Post a Comment
Read more