It's half term, the weather is not looking great, it is CoP26 next week, what should I do with my children?

As half term starts many of you may be wondering how to fill your children’s week especially as the weather does not look great, well I have an idea. As this week is just before CoP26 starts, help your children learn about how most electricity is generated, how nuclear fuel works, applications of nuclear beyond electricity and enter a competition.

First off is a great little video narrated by a child for children.

Then once they have watched the video, complete the fun activities including making a wind turbine.

Then enter a competition to design a poster to tell other people about nuclear energy. (Closing date 7th November).

?? What better way to spend a day of half term???

All the resources discussed above can be found here https://www.nnl.co.uk/employee-area/cop26/nuclear-energy-a-kids-guide/

If you would like to take this one stage further, you or your child may be thinking Why am I promoting making wind turbines yet working in the nuclear industry?

Great question and that is because while I very much support nuclear energy, nuclear is just one slice of the solution for clean energy. Last year renewable generation of electricity reached a record 43.1 per cent, outpacing for the first-time annual fossil fuel generation. Over the last ten years, renewable generation has increased from 6.9 per cent to the current record high. When we include nuclear, total low carbon electricity generation also reached a record high of 59.3 per cent last year. (This is the source of this information)

So understandably you may now be thinking Why, if renewables are growing at this rate and more planned, do we need nuclear?

A fair question and from a current electricity demand point of view and with the development of innovative energy storage (for storing energy for use when it is not windy or sunny) we are making awesome headway, although will still need nuclear energy (such as Hinkley C and other new stations) to support in clean electricity generation.

However electricity is the easiest bit of our energy use to decarbonise, (we all have wires to our homes), electricity is also only a small portion of our overall energy use.

Almost all of us have gas or oil (i.e. fossil fuel) central heating and we can’t just flip all that to electric heating, the electricity grid and wires just can't take it. When we think about transport, we cant't fill a jet plane or cargo ship with batteries with all that extra weight ships would sink and plans not be able to take off. So how are we going to decarbonise the wider energy sector beyond electricity? Well nuclear energy can be a part of that. As well as supporting with low carbon electricity generation nuclear plants are extremely well suited to support with producing other fuels such as heat, hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which we can use to support in providing clean energy to heat homes, industry and power planes, ships and other heavy transport among other applications.

Addition I have been asked by a few people about further reading in this area. There are quite a few sources I could recommenced to further explore this. A good starter would be the Royal Society Nuclear Cogeneration paper released last October. Things have moved on in last 12 months but as a impartial starter this is a good read and has some useful graphics to help students.

We all know we have a challenge on our hands and CoP26 starts next week where world leaders will discuss this more, but we need your children’s help to, hence the competition with the challenge to design a poster to help tell other people about nuclear energy, to win one of four ￡25 book tokens.

?? So there we have it a day of half term covered for you. ??

Hope you all have pleasant and peaceful weeks and whether you have children or not, enjoy the resources produced by the National Nuclear Laboratory.

Additional information

Also as a little extra, if your children had fun doing the above and would like to see a paper nuclear reactor being built, in typical Blue Peter style here is one I built last year in my study and who knows during the Christmas holidays the instructions for how to make this may be released in a similar way….

Finally if you would like to hear ideas currently floating around for other ways to engage people about nuclear energy, this video from last year’s Civil Nuclear showcase is useful, watch out for the chap at 12min 12 seconds, who asks you to close your eyes and come on a journey…

Please note this article is written by me as Robert and is in no way endorsed by my employer or anyone else, it is just me wanting to give you an idea for half term for your children to help them understand energy something I am very passionate about.

While I have picked on NNL's material, I could equally (and now you might want to explore) have used Cavendish STEM material, with an awesome ‘My Life as an AGR Fuel Element’ booklet, or maybe use some of EDF's Inspire Education Programme. Or even the actual COP schools outreach material. There is loads of great material out there and yet more on the horizon, I won't spoil it but the industry has something quite awesome coming out to support in schools early next year