Spanish Young Generation (JJNN) Activities

Transcription

1 Spanish Young Generation (JJNN) Activities Miguel Millán (INITEC NUCLEAR/WESTINGHOUSE) INITEC Nuclear- Westinghouse Padilla 17, MADRID. Tel.: Fax: ( Spanish Young Generation has been very active during JJNN have mainly focused on communication activities, as conferences at universities, schools and nuclear companies. Lately, becoming in referent of the young politics, journalist and the young people in Nuclear Subjects is the new and most challenging target of the Spanish Young Generation. In order to accomplish with their objects and commitments with their members, JJNN are developing all kinds of activities focused in the young people and the JJNN members. 1. Lectures in Secondary Schools and Universities Spreading the Nuclear acknowledges is one of the most important JJNN s objectives. For this reason members of JJNN every year go to the Secondary School and Universities to make lectures related to the Nuclear Fields. JJNN has developed presentations and videos focused to people between years. JJNN thinks this age is the best age to can assimilate this kind of concepts. These lectures aim to achieve the following objectives: 1. Informing in these educational facilities every aspect of the Nuclear Energy and Health Physics. 2. Fighting by the disappearance of the unjustified prejudices that affect this energy source and the radiation prejudices. 3. Provoking, as possible, the interest of the young people in Nuclear Science and Nuclear technology. 4. Answering from the proximity the questions of the young people relative to the nuclear energy and radiation. 5. Improving the perception of the risk associated to the exposure to the ionizing radiations. 6. Improving the perception of the risk associated to the Nuclear and Radioactive Facilities.

2 Picture 1: JJNN members during a lecture in a secondary school. For this aim, the JJNN secondary school presentations contain the following aspects: the structure of the matter, fission, radiation: natural and no natural, how works a nuclear power plants, the nuclear safety, nature of the radioactive waste, the different types of radioactive waste and the different final solutions, energy, advantages and disadvantages of the different energy sources, and the rest of applications of the radiation. Picture 2: Student with a spare fuel pellet.

3 For JJNN members are a great experience and a challenge, because we are asked all kind of questions, from Chernobyl through cancer, and we must show an understandable answer to this kind of age. Every year, at least 500 students attend at this kind the lectures. 2. The Simpsons and the Nuclear Energy The JJNN president has made a documentary about The Simpsons TV show with the title The Simpsons and the Nuclear Energy. This documentary tells from the beginnings to the nowadays how this TV show has became in the most watched TV Show in Spain. The author stored in form of data base all the nuclear events, phrases or references that appear in the first 17 seasons of this series of animation, the older and successful of television history. In this way, he began to realize of there is no prejudice against the nuclear energy, and the use of this power plant is a scene, and than the truly important thing it is the exaggeration of the features of the main characters. The documentary has been show five times, in different places and dates, Valencia, ICAI, Madrid, Segovia and Tarragona. More than 2000 people have had the opportunity of watch it. Picture 3: The Simpsons documentary newspaper article.

4 3. JJNN Visits The last two years JJNN has carry out three visits to nuclear facilities or institutions. Almaraz Nuclear Power Plant The JJNN members who attended this visit could see the enormous work that supposes the outage, not only by the introduction of new fuel assemblies in the vessel, but because the facility takes advantage of the decoupling to make maintenance and conservation works in most of the power plant systems. Thus, we could see one of the turbines of the secondary completely disassembled, the remodeling of whole control system of Unit I and the incorporation new diesel generator for the auxiliary systems. In addition, we were inside the containment building and were witnesses of as they transferred the spent fuel from the vessel to the fuel pool. Spanish Parliament This visit was a standard guided visit by the most representative rooms of this special building and we were in the chamber where take seats the most outstanding political leaders like the President of the Government and ministers, as well as those of the main leaders of the opposition and rest of political parties represented there. In addition, some evidences of the most important events of recent Spanish history could be verified as they could see a Spanish Constitution facsimile edition with the company/signature of the D. Juan Carlos I, and in the most tragic plane the tracks of the firings made in the attempt of coup of 1981, that voluntarily have stayed like memory of a situation that would not have to return to repeat itself.

5 Picture 4: JJNN members in The Spanish Parliament. 4. Basic Training of Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Science JJNN has developed a course focus in the people who are interested in know the pillars of the Nuclear Science Acknowledge. The course lasts 4 hours and they are shown the following subjects: 1 Basics Physics 2 Nuclear Power Plant 3 Nuclear Safety 4 Nuclear Fuel 5 Waste management 6 Decommissioning and Dismantling 7 Future Plants and Fusion 8 Others application 9 Nuclear energy and sustainability

6 Every subject is presented as a lecture and all the speakers are JJNN members. This course has been carried out two times. The first one was during the Spanish Nuclear Society Annual Meeting, and 65 persons attended this event, most of this people had no relation with the nuclear field, they just wanted learn about these subjects. The second edition of this course was during The First Meeting Spanish Young Generation and young politics of Spanish Conservative Party (PP). In this last case, 25 young politics attended this course. Picture 5: JJNN member in the Basic Training. Picture 6: Training audience.

7 5. Radio and newspapers interviews Regarding the media presence, after 2006 first appearance in media, the JJNN has been continuously present in it. Newspapers articles, radio interviews and TV have been issued in 2007 at local and national level. March 2008 was a JJNN milestone, this date was the first time that a JJNN president has been interviewed by national-wide radio station in prime-time. Letters to journalists: Picture 7: JJNN article in press. The JJNN write letters and s to journalists and people in charge of web sites when a technical mistake has been detected by a JJNN member In this period, the JJNN have written 6 letters to journalists.

8 6. Meetings with young policy makers Another activity of JJNN was devoted to organize meetings with young policy makers of all parties in order to exchange knowledge and experiences. We had an informal meeting with the Young Socialists of Salamanca, overlapping the activities of TopFuel 2006 international conference and during Spanish Nuclear Society (SNE) Annual Meeting 2007 in Segovia. The SNE Annual Meeting is a great opportunity to open the Nuclear Sector to the young politics. In this way, JJNN had another meeting with the other great party, conservatory party (Partido Popular). As a result of this last meeting, in December 2007 Spanish Young Generation and young policy makers of PP had the first conference of Nuclear Energy and Sustainability. The First Conference of Nuclear Energy and Sustainability had three parts, the first one was a technical visit to a fuel factory on Friday evening. The second one on Saturday morning was the Basic Training of Technology and Science Nuclear, and the last one on Saturday afternoon was a debate between JJNN president and young politic president. The purpose of these days was double. On the one hand, trying one approach science and the nuclear technology of political young people, with an energy resources perspective, and asking doubts in the nuclear field. On the other hand, was an opportunity for the Spanish young generation to share time and expertise with young politics. For JJNN is important understand the way of thinking and learning how to deal with politics, even more important, with this young politics, because in ten years this people will be able to manage our country. Picture 7: Debate with young politics.

9 7. Merchandising JJNN has design logos, T-shirts, and a set of merchandising; all these logos related with the importance that nuclear energy has in this world, as a tool for maintain our life standards, independence and Sustainability. Badges T-Shirt

10 Books 8. Conference videos. JJNN has developed the last two promotional videos of young generation conference, European Young Generation Forum and International Young Generation Congress:

11 9. JJNN Web-side. In 2006, Spanish Young Generation programmed a web page to share knowledge and news with people all over the world. Times are changing and evolving quite fast and, nowadays, the web-based technologies are unavoidable key points for "staying" alive in the XXI century. Our web page was programmed in php language and implemented within the frame of the WordPress 2.0 platform. The web is blog-style and new post is arranged by date. To host our web page we made a contract with a hosting enterprise located in Canada which offered to us 400 GB per month of bandwidth and 15 GB of disk space. This huge amount of available bandwidth makes it possible to publish all the videos we have developed, as the largely downloaded video of The Simpsons made by José Luis Pérez. Additionally we also have 100 mail accounts for Spanish young generation members and our own domain name: The evolution in the number of visits in the web has increased quite fast. In 2006 we got 8000 visitors, in 2007 we got visitors and, in 2008, we expect more than visitors. We have received the visit of people all over the world but, as our page is mainly written in Spanish, we specially have visits from Spain and South America. The Spanish Young Generation web page is intended to be an open space for all the Spanish (and also foreign) members. It is not only a platform for publishing news, but also for expressing personal opinions and held discussions. In addition to the public we page we also developed a web-based discussion forum for internal purposes. The access to this forum is restricted to the members of our society and is intended to be the frame of all the internal discussions for taking decisions and reducing the number of mails interchanged between the members of the Spanish Young Generation. Nowadays almost everyone has a digital camera. This fact directly translates in a large number of pictures taken in any event where our members participate. We have also developed and web-based photo gallery to upload all the pictures taken in those events with the purpose of being available at any moment from anywhere in the world. The address of our photo gallery is: