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Aligning economic and regulatory frameworks for today’s nuclear reactor technology
New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/aligning-economic-and-regulatory-frameworks-for-todays-nuclear-reactor-technology/
Aligning economic and regulatory frameworks for today’s nuclear reactor technology
Liam Hines ’22 didn’t move to Sarasota, Florida, until high school, but he’s a Floridian through and through. He jokes that he’s even got a floral shirt, what he calls a “Florida formal,” for every occasion.
Which is why it broke his heart when toxic red algae used to devastate the Sunshine State’s coastline, including at his favorite beach, Caspersen. The outbreak made headline news during his high school years, with the blooms destroying marine wildlife and adversely impacting the state’s tourism-driven economy.
In Florida, Hines says, environmental awareness is pretty high because everyday citizens are being directly impacted by climate change. After all, it’s hard not to worry when beautiful white sand beaches are covered in dead fish. Ongoing concerns about the climate cemented Hines’ resolve to pick a career that would have a strong “positive environmental impact.” He chose nuclear, as he saw it as “a green, low-carbon-emissions energy source with a pretty straightforward path to implementation.”
Liam Hines: Ensuring that nuclear policy keeps up with nuclear technology.
Undergraduate studies at MIT
Knowing he wanted a career in the sciences, Hines applied and got accepted to MIT for undergraduate studies in fall 2018. An orientation program hosted by the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) sold him on the idea of pursuing the field. “The department is just a really tight-knit community, and that really appealed to me,” Hines says.
During his undergraduate years, Hines realized he needed a job to pay part of his bills. “Instead of answering calls at the dorm front desk or working in the dining halls, I decided I’m going to become a licensed nuclear operator onsite,” he says. “Reactor operations offer so much hands-on experience with real nuclear systems. It doesn’t hurt that it pays better.” Becoming a licensed nuclear reactor operator is hard work, however, involving a year-long training process studying maintenance, operations, and equipment oversight. A bonus: The job, supervising the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, taught him the fundamentals of nuclear physics and engineering.
Always interested in research, Hines got an early start by exploring the regulatory challenges of advanced fusion systems. There have been questions related to licensing requirements and the safety consequences of the onsite radionuclide inventory. Hines’ undergraduate research work involved studying precedent for such fusion facilities and comparing them to experimental facilities such as Princeton University’s Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor.
Doctoral focus on legal and regulatory frameworks
When scientists want to make technologies as safe as possible, they have to do two things in concert: First they evaluate the safety of the technology, and then make sure legal and regulatory structures take into account the evolution of these advanced technologies. Hines is taking such a two-pronged approach to his doctoral work on nuclear fission systems.
Under the guidance of Professor Koroush Shirvan, Hines is conducting systems modeling of various reactor cores that include graphite, and simulating operations under long time spans. He then studies radionuclide transport from low-level waste facilities — the consequences of offsite storage after 50 or 100 or even 10,000 years of storage. The work has to make sure to hit safety and engineering margins, but also tread a fine line. “You want to make sure you’re not over-engineering systems and adding undue cost, but also making sure to assess the unique hazards of these advanced technologies as accurately as possible,” Hines says.
On a parallel track, under Professor Haruko Wainwright’s advisement, Hines is applying the current science on radionuclide geochemistry to track radionuclide wastes and map their profile for hazards. One of the challenges fission reactors face is that existing low-level waste regulations were fine-tuned to old reactors. Regulations have not kept up: “Now that we have new technologies with new wastes, some of the hazards of the new waste are completely missed by existing standards,” Hines says. He is working to seal these gaps.
A philosophy-driven outlook
Hines is grateful for the dynamic learning environment at NSE. “A lot of the faculty have that go-getter attitude,” he points out, impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit on campus. “It’s made me confident to really tackle the things that I care about.”
An ethics class as an undergraduate made Hines realize there were discussions in class he could apply to the nuclear realm, especially when it came to teasing apart the implications of the technology — where the devices would be built and who they would serve. He eventually went on to double-major in NSE and philosophy.
The framework style of reading and reasoning involved in studying philosophy is particularly relevant in his current line of work, where he has to extract key points regarding nuclear regulatory issues. Much like philosophy discussions today that involve going over material that has been discussed for centuries and framing them through new perspectives, nuclear regulatory issues too need to take the long view.
“In philosophy, we have to insert ourselves into very large conversations. Similarly, in nuclear engineering, you have to understand how to take apart the discourse that’s most relevant to your research and frame it,” Hines says. This technique is especially necessary because most of the time the nuclear regulatory issues might seem like wading in the weeds of nitty-gritty technical matters, but they can have a huge impact on the public and public perception, Hines adds.
As for Florida, Hines visits every chance he can get. The red tide still surfaces but not as consistently as it once did. And since he started his job as a nuclear operator in his undergraduate days, Hines has progressed to senior reactor operator. This time around he gets to sign off on the checklists. “It’s much like when I was shift lead at Dunkin’ Donuts in high school,” Hines says, “everyone is kind of doing the same thing, but you get to be in charge for the afternoon.”
#000#algae#Alternative energy#approach#awareness#carbon#career#change#climate#climate change#Community#Computer modeling#devices#double#economic#economy#Emissions#energy#engineering#Engineering systems#Environment#Environmental#environmental awareness#environmental impact#equipment#Ethics#Evolution#experimental#Facilities#Faculty
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i’m literally shaking buy them brown contacts pls
#team fortress 2#tf2#tf2 demoman#tf2 scout#tf2 soldier#tf2 heavy#tf2 engineer#tf2 medic#tf2 sniper#tf2 spy#no pyro unfortunately :( we dont know what their eyes look like but they Better not be Blue.#why do they all have blue eyes they’re so scary#era.png#ok i’ll actually work on requests after this i just needed to get this image out of my system#ID IN ALT FORVEER#scopo#scopophobia#eye contact#id in alt text
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space sweepers but they're delivery people and are at no point on screen through the entire movie
#fantasy high#riz gukgak#kristen applebees#gorgug thistlespring#adaine abernant#fabian seacaster#figueroth faeth#the bad kids#half tempted to say these names are forum handles they use so much it pretty much became their professional names lol#I keep them teenagers bc its funnier that way#no real lore I just like drawing this. but I do think abt how theyre all weirdos too also bc thats funny to me#riz is a huge conspiracyhead who does everything by hands. he has a casio fx-570 in mint condition. nobody knows how he's maintaining it#he is nonetheless Really Good at his job. which somewhat tracks bc it's a job that requires keeping up with interstation conflicts#and new policies and an obsessive amount of planning. but he is Too Good at it. and also he dresses like that#kristen has the atomic engine that theoretically lets her unmake and remake matters with her mind. but it consumes a huge amount#of energy so it's mostly useless. she's still a cult survivor also#gorgug lives his entire life on a ship with his parents who quit a cushy deal maintaining a space station bc he wouldn't be allowed on#the low gravity let him grow very tall but also his oxygen saturation is pretty bad so he's got breathing support#fig is a robot who just found out she's a robot like two months ago. she's been assuming everyone's a robot like her and she's been feeling#very betrayed by her mom lying about that part. she's on a body mod spree which is rough bc system-specific parts are expensive#and so is adapting random parts to her system#fabian's still a pirate captain's son. can't say anything that'd be able to get the vibes across clearer than that#adaine went to tech/business school. she put her monthly allowance towards an ecoterrorist group in her academy which turned out to be an o#and she's currently wanted by UTS. more than fabian. which makes him slightly mad#she's also acquired a passion for low-tech weaponry on the way. she likes ice picks and cleavers#I think up all of this for no reason except that once again the idea of all these people being 1/teens and 2/on the same ship to be posties#is hilarious to me. esp. if they were in a forum group chat beforehand
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Also idk but I feel it is important, for reasons of genre understanding, to recognize that good old fashioned murder is like the least violent thing anybody ever does in a proper spy story
#it's about the CORROSION it's about the INSTRUMENTALIZATION it's about THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BRUTALITY OF PREMEDITATED BETRAYAL#it's about human frailties fed into the engine that creates or sustains systemic power#it's about how you can kill with a pen or a lie or a spreadsheet or a silence#such that by the time actual blood is spilled that's merely the last domino falling in an outcome that's already long foreordained#spies#on writing#my posts
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#programmer humor#programming#geek#nerd#programmer#technology#computer#phone#mac#windows#os#operating system#website#web development#dev#developer#development#full stack developer#frontend#backend#software#hardware#html#css#meme#despicable me#gru#joke#software engineer#apple
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I don't like drawing engines too much these days because they stress me the heck out but @togetherness23 your comment under my post about Edward having a type sent me into a mad frenzy
#ttte#ttte edward#ttte henry#ttte boco#2x3#edboco#pup's art#sorz if it looks garbo#i barfed this out in eehhh two hourish#desperatly needed this out of my system#otherwise i won't sleep asjdshkdfg#engine art#damn that's like#two smitten edwards i've done now
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DRAW EMESIS BLUE GOOD ENDING
Arg I’m so sorry this took a whole seven days to complete because other stuff was kicking my ass but here
Basically the motto is blu Engi is so cracked that he fixed the respawn machine enough to heal every possible bad thing that happened 👍
god please if you can’t read my artist’s handwriting feel free to ask for image id
#Btw Archibald didn’t get alive because he sucks and is annoying#Everyone else is in the respawn system#Also my requests are still open!!#art#ask#tf2#roger's art#tf2 fanart#team fortress two#emesis blue#all mercs#Tf2 engineer#fanart
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Western Electric Co, 1953
#Bell Telephone System#1953#ad#midcentury#illustration#American Telephone and Telegraph#advertisement#engineering#1950s#vintage#mid century#Ma Bell#AT&T#advertising#phone wire#process improvements#technology#mid-century
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ART, visibly on the edge of a meltdown because SecUnit replied to a message from Holism with "k": i'm going to puke stop talking to Holism i swear to god. baby you're everything to me please please don't fuck Holism
#murderbot#system collapse spoilers#murderhelion#i've not yet begun to be obnoxious about this btw#i'm making a mountain out of this molehill#of course it's trying to seduce SecUnit; it's talking about civil engineering!#the relief ART must feel when SecUnit foists Three onto Holism instead#suck it Holism SecUnit's a jock it cares not for your intellectual temptations#go design an irrigation system or a bridge or something and die about it
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sometimes i get kind of exhausted by how hard it can be to find anyone describing their own experience with a specific kind of plurality.
It's so easy to find words and terms and definitions, and so much harder to find anyone talking about what it's like to be those things.
does that make sense? looking through pluralpedia can feel so large, and so empty.
#we ramble#i wish each entry had links to relevant blogs and articles so i could find out more#or they had a way for systems to submit their own experience with a term on the website#I'm currently trying to learn more about what it's like to be part of a created system and not having much luck.#search engines certainly aren't helping...#plural#plurality#pluralgang#underwater.post
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I have a request for people with experience with wheelchairs, if you personally use/used them or have people in your life that do: PLEASE COMPLAIN ABOUT THEM TO ME! TELL ME ABOUT THE WAYS IN WHICH THEY CAN SUCK! IN GENERAL OR SPECIFICS!
I need this information for a project I'm doing in my design class, wherein my group is going to attempt to prototype a wheelchair with both offroad and indoor capabilities, per say, that is still reasonably light and inexpensive. I'm asking this of you all on tumblr because to begin our project, we need to familiarize ourselves with the nature of this problem. We want our solution to actually be made with the opinions of wheelchair users in mind. I would be incredibly grateful if anyone could reblog or comment with any gripes they have about wheelchairs, especially in relation to their maneuverability, but anything works! Thank you so much for your time!
#disability#disabled#disabilties#physically disabled#sorry about the crosstagging this is not my side of tumblr#thanks again if anyone responds! or even spreads this around#i also am very aware that a lot of these issues are societal#with infrastructure not being designed for accessibility#and the affordability issue is a pathetic healthcare system failure (at least in the US)#but alas. this is what i get for going to engineering school. i must design mere products
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Fotini Christia named director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/fotini-christia-named-director-of-the-institute-for-data-systems-and-society/
Fotini Christia named director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science, has been named the new director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), effective July 1.
“Fotini is well-positioned to guide IDSS into the next chapter. With her tenure as the director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center and as an associate director of IDSS since 2020, she has actively forged connections between the social sciences, data science, and computation,” says Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “I eagerly anticipate the ways in which she will advance and champion IDSS in alignment with the spirit and mission of the Schwarzman College of Computing.”
“Fotini’s profound expertise as a social scientist and her adept use of data science, computational tools, and novel methodologies to grasp the dynamics of societal evolution across diverse fields, makes her a natural fit to lead IDSS,” says Asu Ozdaglar, deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Christia’s research has focused on issues of conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world, for which she has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, the Palestinian Territories, and Yemen, among others. More recently, her research has been directed at examining how to effectively integrate artificial intelligence tools in public policy.
She was appointed the director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) and an associate director of IDSS in October 2020. SSRC, an interdisciplinary center housed within IDSS in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, focuses on the study of high-impact, complex societal challenges that shape our world.
As part of IDSS, she is co-organizer of a cross-disciplinary research effort, the Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism. Bringing together faculty and researchers from all of MIT’s five schools and the college, the initiative builds on extensive social science literature on systemic racism and uses big data to develop and harness computational tools that can help effect structural and normative change toward racial equity across housing, health care, policing, and social media. Christia is also chair of IDSS’s doctoral program in Social and Engineering Systems.
Christia is the author of “Alliance Formation in Civil War” (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which was awarded the Luebbert Award for Best Book in Comparative Politics, the Lepgold Prize for Best Book in International Relations, and a Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association. She is co-editor with Graeme Blair (University of California, Los Angeles) and Jeremy Weinstein (incoming dean at Harvard Kennedy School) of “Crime, Insecurity, and Community Policing: Experiments on Building Trust,” forthcoming in August 2024 with Cambridge University Press.
Her research has also appeared in Science, Nature Human Behavior, Review of Economic Studies, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, NeurIPs, Communications Medicine, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, American Political Science Review, and Annual Review of Political Science, among other journals. Her opinion pieces have been published in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other outlets.
A native of Greece, where she grew up in the port city of Salonika, Christia moved to the United States to attend college at Columbia University. She graduated magna cum laude in 2001 with a joint BA in economics–operations research and an MA in international affairs. She joined the MIT faculty in 2008 after receiving her PhD in public policy from Harvard University.
Christia succeeds Noelle Selin, a professor in IDSS and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. Selin has led IDSS as interim director for the 2023-24 academic year since July 2023, following Professor Martin Wainwright.
“I am incredibly grateful to Noelle for serving as interim director this year. Her contributions in this role, as well as her time leading the Technology and Policy Program, have been invaluable. I’m delighted she will remain part of the IDSS community as a faculty member,” says Huttenlocher.
#2023#2024#Administration#artificial#Artificial Intelligence#author#Behavior#Big Data#book#Building#change#college#communications#Community#computation#computer#Computer Science#computing#Conflict#crime#data#data science#Department of Political Science#dynamics#earth#economic#Economics#Electrical Engineering&Computer Science (eecs)#engineering#Engineering systems
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Jacob Black’s Self Saving System and His Shenanigans™️
#jacob black#jacob black’s self saving system#jbsss#twilight#the twilight saga#twilight renaissance#edward cullen#Tell me your MC is a loser without telling me that your MC is a loser.#I rewatched twilight the other day and the acting was so painfully awkward like ❓❓#guys I’m trying to finish the second part but college is killing me😭😭#it’s 45% done but the writer’s block and my schedule is just —#Like the quizzes and CTs are legit going to be the death of me.#Also can please someone teach me C programming ?#I can’t understand shit and I have a test in like three days.#why did I have to take engineering#just a lil something before I get my act together and post the second part
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The Taxi Project 1976: Steam Power Systems New York Taxi Prototype. A taxi concept for the MoMA commission made from aluminium for lightweight and resembling a small bus which provided plenty of interior space and easy access for wheelchairs. Propulsion was via a rear-mounted steam engine and the driver was protected by a bulletproof partition.
#The Taxi Project#Steam Power Systems#SPS#Taxi concept#concept#steam power#1976#MoMA#design study#prototype#raer engine#taxi concept#1970s#aluminium#lightweight
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Sometimes family is a steamie, a diesel and two hellspawns
#ttte#ttte Edward#ttte BoCo#ttte bill and ben#pup's art#you have no idea how long this has been in my system#well over a year#I'm so pumped i could finally draw this#i listened to the pedro song on loop the entire time i worked on this#engine art
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daisy/sousa foreshadowing (1/?) ↳ first meeting foreshadowed their endgame with a ship/missile like shape resembling the zephyr sailing through the stars in the background, they would later spearhead a mission in space together. the ripples on the sides also resemble the moment sousa is pulled out of his own time aboard the zephyr after he decides to stay with daisy.
@giftober 2023 | day one - first meeting
#giftober2023#dousyedit#aosedit#marveledit#daisyjohnsonedit#danielsousaedit#daisy johnson#daniel sousa#dousy#timequake#chloe bennet#enver gjokaj#agents of shield#filmtvcentral#userotp#dousyforeshadowing#from what i've gathered the emblem is from the air research and development command which was dedicated to researching and engineering new#aircrafts and weapons systems#everything on a set has purpose so I just thought it was really interesting they placed that between them of all places with how it looks#briegifs*
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