Attendees at the Discovery Place's Energy Summit. (Photo: Steve Rea)
Imagine a place where children and adults can learn together about nuclear science as a carbon-free energy source that can be an answer to climate change. Guests can experience a cloud chamber, remotely inspect equipment with a drone, and hold a simulated low-enriched uranium fuel pellet. On Saturday, July 6, such a place actually existed for three hours. That place was the Discovery Place Science Museum in Charlotte, N.C. Ryan Leung, a Discovery Place experience specialist, led a team of local nuclear energy industry volunteers and representatives from the American Nuclear Society and Women in Nuclear to organize and execute an Energy Summit.
Discovery Place has been helping young learners build curiosity about science, technology, and nature for more than 75 years. This organization’s mission is to “bring science, nature, and design together to create transformative experiences that enable our community to understand, enjoy, and apply science to their lives.”
Good practice: The format used for Discovery Place’s Energy Summit might be considered good practice for the U.S. nuclear industry’s outreach to K-12 learners. It consisted of a quiz workshop, hands-on interaction with manipulatives, and nuclear career information sharing, followed by giveaways.
ANS provided the cloud chamber, simulated LEU fuel pellets, and a variety of information pieces and giveaways for use. Uchenna Ezibe, ANS’s senior manager of STEM programs, provided suggestions and other sources of valuable information, such as the Society’s Navigating Nuclear program.
Career info: WIN was represented by Mandi Brigman, corporate engineering general manager at Duke Energy. Brigman, who also holds a senior reactor operator license, brought a number of helpful items with her. Of particular interest was career information, which was particularly useful to guardians hoping to help their charges with formulating rewarding lifetime careers.
The volunteer effort was led by Kristie Soliman, a nuclear core design engineer with Charlotte-based BWX Technologies, which designs, manufactures, and tests microreactors for a variety of electricity and steam generation needs.
As the lead content specialist for the three Energy Summit sessions, Soliman contributed the nuclear science quiz framework for visitors.
Youthful interest: ANS past president Steve Nesbit (2021–22) and his wife, Shelley, were in attendance at the first session. Nesbit said he “watched Kristi Soliman of BWXT and Mandi Brigman of Duke Energy reaching out to children and adults about clean nuclear energy. It was great to see the interest shown by the young people.”
I was also pleased to be engaged with this project from its inception. On behalf of the North Carolina Nuclear Energy Advisory Council, I helped provide ideas and connections with ANS, Duke Energy, and WIN to the Energy Summit team and was very pleased to be associated with such a wonderfully successful teaching organization as Discovery Place Science Museum.
Steve Rea is chair emeritus of the North Carolina Nuclear Energy Industry Advisory Council.
