Hopp til innhold

Kategori: Uncategorized

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Happy new year!

Happy new year everyone, this is my song for 2015...<3

This year will hopefully be a good year - stable, and not too much of a roller coaster ride... 😉 I don´t really have new year´s resolutions, but my plans for 2015 are to write more (I will try really hard to do it two hours everyday), give at least the same amount of talks as in 2014, get pictures on my walls, wear more white shirts and black bras (spend less time on figuring out #whattowear),  get less hurt and try not to hurt others, realize I can´t do everything and spend less time on doing stuff I´m not really that good at - if others can do it better, be happy alone, say more yes, say more no, and less maybe. I think that´s about it 😀
--------------------------------------------------

"We think Stian was the only one that was funny"

This Snapchat photo of Steffen and me is btw the only photo I have from new year´s eve - it was a very fun night, and I was (obviously) more concerned about enjoying it than taking pictures 🙂

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til 12 moments
2014 is over in a couple of hours, and I´m looking back at a year filled with ups and downs (that´s life, isn´t it?)
Here are 12 moments from 2014 (I may make some bigger blogposts about this year, but for now I´m looking at one "big" moment from each month) - a sort of insta-sum up of 2014 😉
So...enjoy!
The seventh of January I turned 30, and I celebrated with one of my best friends - Charlotte <3


I was on the front cover of the newspaper Morgenbladet; in an article about women and science

Charlotte defended her thesis in medicine, and got her PhD degree 😀


I gave the talk "OMG NUKULAR ATOMZ RADIATION MELTDOWN!!!1" at The Gathering


A lot happened in May - the biggest "ups"; like going to Japan to make Sushi and Nuclear...


...and the biggest "downs"; like when I was reported to the National Commission for the Investigation of Research Misconduct


In June I managed to buy my very own apartment (just me!) - "Rose Castle" ;)

July was so hot, and Oslo was a perfect place to be - we went on the ferry to the islands almost every day


Then, in August, finally the day came when I moved into my apartment - I still think I have the nicest view, like, ever 😀


September was a mess (still with several ups, like meeting the fabulous Vibeke Fængsrud) - I got sick


I was in one of my first debates about nuclear power at Oslo Bokfestival - it went ok, and I met some great people, like Bård Michalsen, who has written a book about the comma (that I still haven´t read :/ )


I held my second TEDx talk, this time in Geneva - about "Why science should be more pink"


Then I went to Berkeley again; and after a tough fall semester I was proud that I managed to get results (yes, it´s still the uranium) and give a talk!


Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Instamoments
Even though I didn´t manage to "complete" the advent calendar, there´s been quite a lot of (nuclear) physics related blogposts lately - and very little personal stuff. This is, of course, in one way is great, since nuclear physics is awesome, but it´s also important to talk about one self and everyday life, and not just physics - it´s hard to understand, but after all, life is more than physics and the lab 😛 
It´s been too long since I shared some instamoments with you, so today is a good day to do so 🙂 
(If you want to, you can follow me here)
I´m learning to be Parisian - love <3 this book // halloween // morning selfie with my morning coffee
reading Einstein #oldschool // Paris with my mother // Alexandra swiimming

"whu science should be more pink" - my TEDx talk in Geneva // little sister Carina and her Magnus 🙂 // ready for the christmas party with the wonderful people in Bulldozer Film
Andrea has spent the night at Rose castle // my fantastic colleague Ann-Cecilie and me on our way to Berkeley // morning swim selfie

flying Widerøe on my "tour" in the north of Norway // kiss me <3 coffee // fall
fun night with Henrik and Anders // the dress! // ready (almost) for "God morgen Norge"

--------------------------------------
Now it´s time to go and get my make up on, fix my hair, put on a dress (haven´t decided which one yet), and fix Alexandras hair (she has been wearing her new christmas dress for hours already 😉 ), and then I think it will be time for dinner and presents...
Merry christmas everyone!


Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til I f****d up…
...or maybe not that bad - but I admit that I didn´t manage to see the advent calendar through :/ I blame christmas, though 😉
And, I guess, the fact that the last month probably has been the busiest one in a while - and in addition to rest of the christmas present wrapping that has to be done, there´s also the travel bill from the trip to Berkeley and a backlog of about 100 e-mails (that I should do today). Next year I´ll be more prepared for the advent calendar, so hopefully it will be even better than this year 😛
Anyway, here are some snaps from my livingroom in Rose-slottet (Rose castle <3) last night and now - in ten minutes, or so, Alexandra will come, and we will fix the rest of the presents together, and suddenly my dad will be here, and then we´re driving home for christmas 😀

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Number 18
So, in the calendar today there are gammas (gamma radiation) - I´m giving you an ALFNA matrix 😀 xD <3
The ALFNA matrix/plot is a sort of 3 dimensional plot where there is the excitation energy of some nucleus (we don´t know which one - and this is what we/I try to figure out) on the y-axis, and on the x-axis is the energy of the gamma(s) the nucleus sends out. The thing is that when a nucleus is hit by a particle, the nucleus is excited, or sort of heated - it gets some extra energy, and to get rid of that extra energy it sends out  gamma radiation. 
From earlier experiments that have been done (the bible is here) we know quite a lot about what kind of gammas (which energies) the different nuclei will emit when they are excited to this and that energy. In this particular ALFNA matrix we believe that we have oxygen-17 (there is always some oxygen 🙂 ) and beryllium-10 (the backing of the uranium foil/target is made from beryllium). The oxygen-17 peak for example, is supposed to emit a gamma ray with an energy of 870 kilo electron volts (keV), and here it is at around 1300 keV - which means that we are quite off, and everything needs to be calibrated (which is exactly what I´m working on now 😉 ).
So this is the plot I´ve been staring at today (together with my supervisor, Sunniva <3). 
...and I´m staring even more now (pretending to have a really huge brain) - looking like this 😛

2

Publisert 2 kommentarer til Number 16&17…
Again I didn´t manage to make the calendar blogpost yesterday - and again I´m very sorry :/ Again I give you two for the price of one - to make it up 😉

Again there are cross-section graphs in the calendar - cross-sections are really important <3 (Later, maybe I should do a blogpost about these nuclear cross-sections;  what they really mean...)
Today there are two different cross-sections, for two different uranium isotopes (different "versions" of uranium). Both pictures show the cross-section/probability that the nucleus will fission (in blue) or capture (in red), when hit by a neutron.
Both graphs show the cross-section on the y-axis, and the energy of the neutron hitting the nucleus on the x-axis.

Uranium-238 is not a fissile nucleus; the probability that it will a capture a neutron is much bigger than the probability (cross-section) that it will fission...:(
Luckily the situation is different for the uranium-235 nucleus; the probability that this nucleus will fission when hit by a neutron is bigger than the probability that it will capture (and "eat") the neutron <3 *smiling*

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Number 15
Only 8ish days ´til Christmas now...and in todays calendar is another cross-section graph - this time it´s the cross-section/probability of neutron capture on uranium-233:

On the y-axis is the value of the cross-section (the higher the number, the higher the probability of a neutron being captured by the nucleus when hitting it), and on the x-axis is the energy of the neutron.
But there are several graphs here...and they all show different values for this cross-section - the truth is that we don´t exactly know what it is (my research is into this...) :/ The blue, turqoise and red lines are the "official numbers" (evaluated nuclear data), the different dots are actual measurements (some with HUGE error bars), and the green line is calculated with the default input parameters about the nucleus.
It´s quite an important cross-section for the thorium fuel cycle, since it tells us about the probability of a neutron being captured by uranium-233 instead of making it fission (which is what we want it to do) - so it would be nice to know it better 😉

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til 13 + 14
So, yesterday I didn´t get the chance to share a graph, so today you´ll get a double dose 😀
Also, I got a complaint that the last graphs didnt´have any christmas decorations on them - so I´ve tried to do better this time...;)
Today you get two versions of ALPHA! 
ALPHA is the "capture to fission ratio" - it tells us how often a neutron is captured/absorbed, rather than causing a nucleus to fission. We want ALPHA to be as low as possible - since a low ALPHA means that little waste is produced 😀
First there is ALPHA for neutrons with low energy:
The red line is for uranium-233, and the blue is for plutonium-239. For low-energy neutrons, ALPHA is lower for uranium-233 than plutonium-239, and this means that there is a smaller waste production from thorium-fuels than uranium...IF the neutrons have a low energy/are thermal (this can´t be said often enough 😉 )!
Then there is ALPHA for neutrons with high energy - and here it changes (as it also did with ETA):
For neutrons with high energy the waste production is smaller for uranium-fuels than with thorium...

2

Publisert 2 kommentarer til The 12th of December
Today is December the 12th, and in the calendar is the rest of what I gave you yesterday - it´s ETA again, but this time it´s ETA for neutrons with high energy (fast neutrons). The graph is very important for the neutron economy of a nuclear reactor...
ETA tells us about how many neutrons you get out for each neutron going in (to a nucleus) on average ("neutrons emitted/neutrons absorbed"). As you can see you get, on average, more neutrons from fission of plutonium-239 (blue line) than you get from uranium-233 (red line) - if the neutron going in has high energy/is a fast neutron. In other words: it´s exact opposite of what was in the calendar yesterday...!
So, since plutonium-239 is a better fissile material than uranium-233 (when hit by high-energy neutrons), you can produce more new fissile material from uranium, than you can from thorium 😀 Or, to sort of conclude: for thermal neutrons, thorium seems to be the way to do it, bur for fast neutrons, uranium/plutonium seems to be the way to do it <3<3<3