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Katie Mummah Profile picture
Katie Mummah
@nuclearkatie
Nuclear engineer, PhD student @UWMadisonNEEP. nuclear: energy, history, waste, nonproliferation. 'Tells uranium's life story'. Views mine alone she/her
Jan 26, 2024 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
Turning waste material into power! Let's talk about a good news story in the nuclear industry! Today @zeno_power announced they are going to re-use material from the largest Strontium-90 heat source ever built, which has been sitting in storage for DECADES Sketch of the BUP-500 strontium-90 heat source in storage container. Image credit Teledyne Energy Systems (1987) First, we have to talk about radioisotope power systems, sometimes called radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). This technology is a little different than a nuclear reactor, but they both harness the energy stored in unstable atoms.
Apr 9, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The words "Cobalt-60" alone doesn't inherently mean extremely highly radioactive. I've held Co-60 sources dozens of times. I've used them in public outreach events! The activity level is key. You need to know the activity to know how dangerous it is In addition to some info about activity level, you also have to know the amount of time a source was handled, along with any shielding, to know what the risk is
Dec 16, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Canada did not supply plutonium during the war. Their first reactor didn't go critical until after the war ended. They did however contribute research, and polonium.

Good paper summary (one author is current lab director of Los Alamos)
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… This tweet is also confusing facts. CP-1 was the first nuclear reactor, in Chicago. ZEEP was Canada's first reactor, in Chalk River. It was not the 2nd reactor in the world, the US created multiple reactors during the war, before CA (X-10, B reactor, etc)
Jun 22, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Something is not misogyny just because it involves a man's actions towards a woman. When you tweet that female academics must ~dress modesty for their own good~ and get called out by older male academics, that's not misogyny, and they shouldn't have to "defend you on principle" Just cuz you're a woman doesn't mean any criticism of your beliefs or actions is misogyny. Nor can your feelings about being criticized for an opinion on how women should dress be reasonably generalized to "this is why women can't thrive in science"
Jun 14, 2021 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
This is a lot of words with very little explanation of the actual situation...

@CherylRofer, you're cited in this, do you have any more detail? The article just says that "fission gas" was detected, which isn't really that much info
cnn.com/2021/06/14/pol… The detection of fission products (gases) in the primary loop is indicative of failed fuel, which means that at least one fuel rod has a hole in it. But that alone is not enough to raise concern levels, as many reactors in the US have failed fuel before
Feb 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
5.3 KILOMETERS PER SECOND
#CountdownToMars Down to 1 km per second! Bonkers deceleration!
Feb 18, 2021 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
As we near closer to the touchdown of the #Mars2020 rover Perseverance, I want to note the key role that nuclear science plays here: Perseverance is powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 The power source of Perseverance is not a nuclear reactor, and in fact Pu-238 isn't be a good choice for nuclear reactors because it doesn't readily fission. But its rate of radioactive decay is great for space exploration: it takes 87.7 yrs for half of the material to decay
Feb 17, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Maybe it's just me, but I think many nuclear plants should do more to handle crisis comms on social media. This STP-1 trip is not a nuclear safety crisis, but misinformation is spreading that makes like it seems like it is. Plus the loss of power is especially poorly-timed I've only seen a handful of quotes from STP comms, most notably the one shared in full by @Atomicrod
atomicinsights.com/south-texas-pr… Image
Feb 16, 2021 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
I toured South Texas Project nuclear plant years ago and remember being shocked that their turbine deck was open-air. "We don't really get inclement weather here", I was told. Unfortunately, unit 1 is down bc a feedwater pressure sensing line failed due to cold. Unit 2 at 100% Image They gave me a nice hat though, which is by far the best swag I've gotten for just going on a plant tour Image
Dec 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
This story is like falling into a dark hole. Every time you think you've hit the bottom, you take a step and fall further down

Literally everyone this story failed to protect workers. Cleanup of all kinds of hazardous waste is so, so fucked
grist.org/justice/tva-ki… Here's just a sampling of how fucked this story is
Dec 17, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Laughing but... considering Not really, but maybe someday when throwing around $250 isn't such a big deal
Jul 1, 2020 • 19 tweets • 12 min read
🚨🚨Time for another @ANS_org webinar hosted by @ans_ymg🚨🚨

Let's learn about @PNNLab for the fifth "Spotlight on the National Labs" webinar!! You can register to attend here (starts at 13:00 EDT) or follow my thread below for the tl;dr 🧵👇us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist… We're hearing from EIGHT different @PNNLab employees, including lab director Steven Ashby! Ever wondered what kind of nuclear science and engineering work is going on at Pacific Northwest National Lab? Recording will be available to those who register us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…
May 2, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I have some legit questions for people who hate renewables and think they're a waste of time/money/resources/hope. Not looking to start arguments here, I'm looking to understand views Are you arguing we should put all the money currently spent on renewables (including research, govt subsidies, etc) into research for advanced nuclear? Worth it to put the amount of clean energy in the US on hold for, at minimum, years until we have designs certified AND built?
Apr 14, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Note: I'm not a health physicist and these were all back of the envelope calculations. There are decent uncertainty values associated with the entire calculation. But the point is this same: this image is T E R R I F Y I N G But tl;dr if you ever stumble upon a radioactive source that's in Curies (not like μCi or some smaller fraction) you should probably back away. If you see a source in hundreds or thousands of Curies you should run away like your life depends on it--- because it absolutely might
Jan 12, 2020 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
Message was sent in error, official statement followed up confirming no release of radioactivity.

But also it sucks this happened, sending erroneous emergency alerts is the kind of error that makes nuclear look bad and *worth* fearing
Jul 2, 2019 • 34 tweets • 12 min read
Iran is blowing past their stockpile limit, making them out of compliance with the Iran nuclear deal aka JCPOA. Have you ever wondered what that *actually* means from a scientific standpoint? Thread 1/ This thread is for everyone so lets start with the very basic chemistry and nuclear physics. You all remember the periodic table right? All the elements we’ve ever discovered or created, organized by their number of protons 2/
Apr 7, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
I don't have the energy to really dig deeply into this but here are a few quick thoughts. (thread) First, electrification of other carbon-emitting energy industries like transportation means that nuclear, like renewables, has the ability to provide power as we move to electric vehicles. Nuclear on cargo ships (HUGE source of emissions today) is another such possibility
Mar 27, 2019 • 36 tweets • 12 min read
A thread of decommissioned commercial nuclear reactors in the US as Avenge the Fallen posters
#VintageNuclear Some quick terminology first. I'm referring to nuclear plants who have been officially designated as decommissioned or decommissioning. Once a reactor has been permanently shut down, it takes years or decades to fully dismantle it and return the land
Jan 30, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm literally a nuclear engineer with a degree in nuclear engineering and I go to wikipedia often to remember, recall, and yes even sometimes LEARN some nuclear engineering on wikipedia.

It's not perfect but wikipedia is actually a lot more reliable than a lot of online sources For many people and an almost infinite list of topics, wikipedia presents the easiest way to grab introductory info. Will reading wikipedia make you an expert? No, but it's probably THE fastest way to grasp the basics of a topic easily
Jan 22, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This graphic highlights the use of element scarcity relative to electronics and also reminds us that there's plenty of uranium and thorium in the ground-- but not infinite. There are 100s of years of uranium as is, BUT eventually, we'll have to recycle & extract from seawater 1/ In fact, a majority of the uranium we've mine is still around, only a bit has been "burned" aka fissioned in a reactor. With recycling of used nuclear fuel and certain reactor types (advanced reactors like fast breeder or molten salt reactors), we can be way more efficient 2/
Jan 19, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Women who earn A's in introductory physics courses feel as competent as men who earned C's.

This agrees with the anecdotes I've felt personally and discussed with other female engineers. It's also present long past intro classes, in my experience
perbites.org/2019/01/16/who… A short story- once a male classmate told me he could always get the hw done [for a class we were both in] starting at 10 pm the night before and still do well. I felt bad for a while, as I'd always put in SO much work. Far later I learned "do well" meant Cs when I'd figured As