Next up its nuclear engineering, now when anyone mentions the word nuclear it's as
if it already has a name for itself and not a good one.
Uranium, Plutonium, Weapons of Mass Destruction, you've probably heard of these.
But in actual fact nuclear engineering is much bigger than this.
If engineers and scientists play their cards right we could be producing energy
in a far more sustainable way.
Okay let's start big nuclear weapons, I know what
you're thinking. Why would anyone want to be involved in this? And we understand
let's put aside the politics for the sake of Science and Engineering and just
say countries mainly use them as a deterrent. Yes a deterrent! A little naive
but let's go with it for now besides most countries have signed a
non-proliferation treaty basically they're not allowed to test their weapons
what about deep underground?
Surely they can test it there, well no.
They have monitors everywhere you'll be detected by other countries in minutes if not seconds.
So if we can't test the weapon in the desert like they used to
or deep underground how do you know if what you have even works. Well you have
to test individual parts of the weapon or even simulate what it would be like.
Like using lasers that can heat objects to temperatures hotter than the centre
of the Sun why well when the weapon goes off you can expect temperatures to
exceed tens of millions degrees now that's far hotter than the centre of the Sun.
And this type of research is also being used to better technology, helping
mankind move into the future. But how exactly, how would this help anyone well
through something called fusion but we'll get into that a little later for
now let's talk about fission and how it produces energy for nuclear power.
So how does it work, well by splitting uranium atoms you can produce a tremendous
amount of heat, now when this is contained correctly you can circulate
water around it which of course turns to steam, with enough heat. Now with this
steam you channel it through a turbine and voila you guessed it... electricity.
Now this sounds simple but the complexity begins when making this
process safe, we've had two pretty bad accidents in the past Fukushima and
Chernobyl these both caused thousands of casualties and affected millions of people
There are some good videos on YouTube that explain what went wrong on
those days what nuclear engineers have learnt from it and ultimately how we can
ensure nothing on this scale happens again
Nuclear energy is favoured today
because it doesn't release any greenhouse gasses but instead produces
radioactive waste now this is deadly stuff and needs to be stored deep
underground for some years before it's considered safe so this takes us back to
our earlier question how can we take mankind into the future
Instead of splitting atoms what if we fused them together? Well our Sun does exactly this
remember when we briefly mentioned fusion well this is it, a new type of
nuclear power with very little waste and almost free energy for everyone the
possibilities for this is unreal. What we learn from simulating nuclear
explosions can bring us closer to understanding fusion and put this power
on the grid making these possibilities real.
Aside from trying to bring free
energy to everyone nuclear engineers can also be found in the medical industry.
I know what you're thinking weapons of mass destruction, Fukushima and Chernobyl
how could he possibly operate in the medical industry
well they continue to look into how small controlled amounts of radioactive
material can help patients, like making cancer show up better on scans or even
treating it all together.
So yeah if you were to stare at a block of uranium-235
you're definitely going to run into a few problems. But this whole stereotype
of nuclear engineering being bad just isn't the case. When engineers safety
channel it correctly it can do a lot of good. In fact very soon we'll be pretty
reliant on it and this is really what engineers do they take these incredible
principles and make them work safely. You know, we can't anything go wrong, you
remember when Otto Octavius messed up his calculations yeah you really don't
want to end up like we hope you would have subscribed by now
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