Hopp til innhold

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til by TiMo

Last week, when I was out with girls, Anita told me you have to wear something Norwegian for your thesis defence...what about byTiMo, it's just perfect for you! I hadn't really heard about it before, but she showed me their Instagram account, and I could see why she thought I needed something (or more) from them 😉
On Saturday, when Anders and I were out, being a couple, drinking wine, and shopping for the 17th of May, we stumbled across by TiMO on Byporten (I had no idea they had a shop there), and of course I had to go in. Anita was so right, and I ended up with two dresses (Anders got me one of them, since I had trouble deciding, and he thought I looked good in both <3). The one on the pictures here was perfect for 17th of May, and luckily we had the most fantastic weather yesterday, and the other one is a dress that may actually be suitable for my thesis defence (the day will come...). I won't show you the other one yet, since if I'll use for my thesis defence, then I sort of want it to be a little bit of a surprise.

Here are some snapshots from yesterday - needless to say, I think; I love my new, beautiful, pink, flowery dress <3 

me an my dad
Today I've had a good chat with Sunniva (supervisor), about the layout I've made so far for my PhD thesis, and about some plans I have about writing another article - which will be more of a "popular" type of article. She was all for it, and she was also very enthusiastic about the work I've done with my thesis (which is not at all much, but at least I've started)!

2

Publisert 2 kommentarer til 10 facts about nuclear physcis
A normal misconception about nuclear physics is that it's all about nuclear power and/or atomic bombs, and that that's it. This is far from the truth, and therefore I think 10 facts about nuclear physics is a good idea today 🙂
  1. nuclear physics is  all about the atomic nucleus - discovered by accident by Ernest Rutherford a century ago, when he was bombarding a thin gold foil with alpha particles
  2. there's so much we don't know about the heart of the atom - the nucleus; and that's why we are a lot of people around the world still spending all of our lives to study it, and try to understand the nucleus and the nuclear force that holds it all together (how does it really work, and why, and how big can a nucleus actually get?)
  3. all atoms have a nucleus - nuclear physics is as much about the non-radioactive nuclei (stable gold, stable oxygen, stable iron), as the radioactive ones (thorium, uranium, plutonium) 
  4. the "applied part" of my phd thesis is about nuclear power, which is of course also one part of nuclear physics - how to produce energy from big nuclei that splits in two (you get heat and you can boil water and you get steam and then you can generate electricity)
  5. I don't want to lie; atomic bombs is also something that some people (not in Norway) study - knowledge about nuclear physics can be used in such a destructive way. As can most knowledge if I think of it...
  6. knowledge about nuclear physics tells us about the creation of the elements - what happens in the sun and similar stars; how do they get their energy, and what happens there? In stars like our sun, elements all the way up to iron are produced
  7. no elements that are heavier than iron can be produced in stars/the sun, but we know they exist  so they must have been created somehow (we know gold exist, we know thorium exist, we know there is lead - to give some examples), but not where they came from. Creation of these heavy elements is actually one of the great mysteries, and we think they are made in explosions or collisions in space. We use nuclear physics to try to figure out how and where all these elements are created.
  8. one of the really nice applications of nuclear physics is radiation therapy. Atomic radiation may cause cancer, but it may also cure cancer <3
  9. if you've ever had a CT scan, you've experienced applied nuclear physics. Think about it: it's kind of awesome that we can actually look inside the body, and get really great images of the inside, without even cutting it open...!
  10. PET, which is short for positron electron tomography is another imaging technique in the nuclear medicine, where you actually detect gamma radiation from an electron that meets its anti particle, the positron (awesome, seriously!). And from this you can create beautiful three dimensional images of for example a tumour inside the body

Nuclear physics is seriously awesome <3<3<3

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Sunniva recommends: Pandora's Promise

I'll make this short and sweet: I finally watched the documentary Pandora's Promise, where filmmaker Robert Stone profile energy experts and environmentalists who once were strongly against nuclear energy, but now embrace it. 
You should watch it too, that's all I can say.

Watch it.
And Robert Stone, you get three hearts: <3<3<3

The entire thing is on Netflix.

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Thursday blues

- bad conscience (I spend too little time on my degree, and too much time procrastinating)
- procrastinating
- writing for an hour as I feel bad (my conscience bugging me since I procrastinated when I got to the University, instead of writing)
- searching the University's web pages for a template for my thesis - turns out it doesn't seem to exist (help?!), but I found myself as poster-girl on the frontpage of the phd education. Lol.

- going to the MNKOM lunch talk, to listen to all the science communication students (as I was also making some notes from an article  #multitasking)
- finding a template for master's thesises - works for now
- starting cleaning up and putting stuff I've written before into the template - looking kind of good
- writing a short introduction to my articles (that the thesis will be based on)
- thinking I know which order to put things in my thesis (which is supposed to sew the different articles together)...I've changed my mind several times, tough, so who knows what I'll end up with

And now I'm finally at home, drinking a glass of white wine and snacking on some kale chips I made (soooo good <3 ), waiting for Anders to get home again. He's currently in the air, and doesn't land at Gardermoen before midnight - so I might go to sleep before he gets here, since I'm quite sure I'll wake up the moment he opens the door here anyway 🙂
Hope you have great Thursday evening everyone! See you tomorrow.

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Too fun!
Today hasn't been the best day, and it's totally my fault:
Or, the headache (which is finally gone) was just my own fault, but Anders left for a conference at half past four this morning, and therefore I didn't get any coffee to wake me up (he makes me coffee in bed every day <3), and it was really hard to get out of bed, and also I miss him (no, it's not the end of the world - he's coming back tomorrow night again), so those reasons are not something I'm in charge of.
But yesterday was a fun day; so fun, that I woke up with a headache this morning...:P
First part of the day was of course at the office, and I had a nice chat with Jon about the gamma radiation from fission of uranium-233, and we are quite certain that our results will turn into a nice article. He's coming here in the end of May, so I'm super motivated to do as much as I can on that analysis before he gets here! When he's here, we can also hopefully finally finish the article I've been working on for too long now - and after that I will award myself with a new bag 🙂

I left the office one hour earlier than normal, to go and get Alexandra in kindergarden; 'cause I had promised her to go and get her nails done: meaning we went to a salon (Star Nails at Grønland Bazar :)), and she got to choose nail polish. She LOVED it, and was so proud - I think she felt like she was a really big girl <3
Alex getting her nails done (pink nail polish and a gold diamond - her choice) at Star Nails, Grønland Basar. Just 50,- for kids, which I think is a nice prize 🙂
After the nail session, we met Anders who went home with Alexandra, and I went to meet some friends (Toril, Beathe, Anita, and Camilla, who I hadn't met before).
We went to place I sort of shouldn't tell you about, since it was so awesome in the sun, but I'll do it anyway; It was the Q Lounge Rooftop Bar at Grims Grenka, in Kongens gate. Fantastic location!
I had a Caesar salad that I enjoyed, and both the Prosecco and the Champagne tasted great 😉 It was such a fun night, and so tasty bubbles, that I woke up with the stupid headache this morning - like I said, totally my own fault, and also totally worth it.
Btw: I just found out it's Richard Feynman's birthday today, so happy birthday to him! He would have become 98 years if he'd been alive today. A suitable way to celebrate is to read the fantastic book Surely you're joking mister Feynman - which I got as a going away from Paris present from Jon, when I left Paris and the Insititut Physique Nucléaire eight years ago.

2

Publisert 2 kommentarer til When can we say that a nuclear power plant is safe?

Today is a beautiful Tuesday here in Oslo, and I just have to say a little bit about the safety of a nuclear power plant! I want to share an excerpt of a text written by someone that knows more about this particular theme than I do - Gianni Petrangeli, who has written the textbook Nuclear Safety (I have highlighted some of the points):

"Is it possible to conclude that a nuclear power plant is safe and, if it is, what are the conditions which make this conclusion possible?
The answer to the first question is: 'Yes, it is possible'. 

The conditions for such a conclusion to be valid are:

  1. the plant has been built within a legal framework that provides for the regulation of nuclear activities and for the clear assignment of safety responsibilities
  2. the plant site has been chosen by a competent organization, following the stringent safety and radiation protection criteria internationally available
  3. the plant has been conceived, designed and built following the best internationally available criteria and standards important for safety and for radiation protection (with all financial means necessary to obtain an excellent result)
  4. the  whole process has been submitted to the surveillance of an independent control body, capable (as far as possible) of foreseeing the possible technical licensing problems before it's too late to solve them
  5. everyone involved in the construction, the control and the operation of the plant are permeated by a genuine safety culture
  6. everyone involved have been trained to the best professional standards with continuing professional development schemes
  7. operation is performed in connection with national and international organizations which have the aim of collecting and disseminating operating experience thoroughly and quickly
  8. the plant is operated within an industrial system with a sufficient reserve of electric power 
  9. working conditions for plant operators are conducive to solving problems, and the psychological atmosphere in the plant is marked by alacrity and by serenity at the same time"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

When all of these nine criteria are met (I shortened some of them, so in the original text they are more comprehensive), then you can claim that a nuclear power plant is safe.

Was Chernobyl "safe"? NO, NOT AT ALL! I know for sure that Chernobyl broke the conditions, and definitely could not be concluded to be a "safe" plant.

Was Fukushima "safe"? To be honest, I'm actually not 100% sure of how well Fukushima met these 9 criteria...
The thing about the Fukushima accident was that it was caused by a "freak event" - a natural disaster that magnitude is very hard to foresee, since you can't foresee everything. If you could, none would have died from the earth quake and tsunami that hit Japan on the 11th of March 2011, but yet they did - but if you argue that since this natural disaster did happen, and therefore nuclear power isn't safe, you're really also arguing that Japan is an unsafe country to live in...
It's not like they din't foresee tsunamis on the coast of Japan, but they didn't expect them to be as big. So what if they had foreseen a 14 meter tsunami, and they were protected against that, but then a 15 meter tsunami hit them instead? Nothing is ever (100%) safe, and at some point you have to say this is as safe as it gets. Remember: it's always a piece of cake to say after something's happened that they should have done it differently...! 
But was Fukushima as safe as it gets? Maybe not. Maybe the plant site (point 2) wasn't 100% ideal, maybe the plant didn't have sufficient reserve of electric power (point 8). Can we then conclude that nuclear power isn't safe at all? No.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Have a fabulous, sunny day everyone! I'm going to get Alexandra in kindergarden very soon, and then we're going to get our nails done #motherdaughtertime <3


Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Monday

meetings, yes - plural

started reading about, and writing about the so called generation 4 reactors (the next generation of nuclear reactors, that will use their fuel more efficiently, reduce waste production, be more economically, and have even higher standards of safety and proliferation resistance)
then realised that everything that should be written about these reactors in my thesis could (and should!) probably be summarized in one or two sentences... So even though I haven't actually deleted any of it yet, that'll be the first thing I'll do tomorrow. Well, maybe I can view it as one or two HIGH QUALITY sentences 😛
-------------------------------------------------------------
something that looks very much like SUMMER has finally come to Oslo, and here are some snaps from a beautiful weekend, with friends and my little family <3

2

Publisert 2 kommentarer til Today's office
When you're working on a PhD you never really have the day off - there's always something than needs to be done: an article you should read, an article you should comment, an abstract you should finish, an analysis you should work on, and of course, if you've done all the reading and the commenting and the analysis and everything, there's your scary thesis that you need to work on.
Today I've had a Skype meeting with Supervisor Jon, and then I went with Trine to Espresso House at Majorstuen to write.
The nice thing about a job like ours is that we can work in cozy places - like cafés.
The downside is that we don't have the day off, ever, since every day is just one day closer to the day you have to finish.


Here are two pictures of me thinking and drinking coffee and taking selfies instead of actually writing anything...:P (Love this maritime looking sweater from Pimkie, by the way <3)


Jon told me my article is starting to look quite ok now, so that's good! It means that I can continue working on these fission gamma rays. We're missing some of the gamma rays that we expect to see in our detectors, though, so we have to figure out if there's something wrong with the design of the experiment (very bad - can't be fixed), or the way we analyze the data from the experiment (more work, but can be fixed). I'm still positive that we have some very interesting results (which I of course can't tell you about yet) and that it will definitely be something we can publish in a nice journal... 

I ended up writing about one page on my thesis today. It may not sound like much, but it is much more than nothing 😛 
After I came back from Espresso House I had promised Alexandra to go swimming, but the swimming pool turned out to be closed today. Luckily we found out just before we left home, so we went just outside to pick flowers instead. Alexandra picked out her own outfit; tiara, wings, silver shoes, and a pink ballerina skirt - love the style <3

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Goal of the day
After yesterday's not feeling so great and mostly procrastinating-day, I think I'll try baby steps today: My goal is to find/produce the figures of these fission gamma rays (they will be far from "ready", but I'll make them as good as I can), and send them off to supervisor Jon.
Goal number two is to fix my abstract for PhD Day: I said I did it yesterday, but then there was some problem - probably that it was 100 words too long, so I need to shave it a bit, and retry. It will be done by the end of this day 🙂
Thanks so much to the best officemate ever, Gry, who's smiling and telling me that my thesis will actually be great, and that I've just buried my head down into some details that are not so fun, and very soon everything will feel better...<3