Nuclear energy makes a difference.
And I'm here to tell you a little bit about how I found that out.
I'm a nuclear engineer,
graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
As a child, I didn't picture myself studying nuclear engineering.
Actually, this course didn't even exist in Brazil at that time.
During high school, I took a technical course in computer science.
I would go to the technical course in the morning,
regular high school in the afternoon, and English classes at night.
And to get the technical degree, I had to do an internship,
and I ended up doing it at a nuclear company.
I'd fix the employees' computers,
and that would take me to their offices, which were around the power plants.
I would go there, look at the reactor building
and I'd have no clue of what was in there.
I'd just imagine, with curiosity, how all that worked.
At that time, I still didn't think about going into this field,
but I already knew I wanted to be an engineer
because I wanted to use calculus and physics to solve problems.
When I was about to enter college, the Federal University had just created
its undergraduate course in nuclear engineering,
and, at the time of registration,
I didn’t have much idea of what that field was,
but I was still curious.
During the first week of classes, I fell in love with it.
Throughout the course, I found out that radiation is used
for the diagnosis of diseases
and for the treatment of diseases like cancer;
that it's used for the sterilization of medical equipment, like syringes;
that it's used to sterilize even mosquitoes and eradicate diseases.
It's used in space applications.
Curiosity, that robot on Mars,
is powered by a nuclear battery.
It can even be used to change the color of a precious stone
or to help in the process of restoring a painting.
And I finally discovered what was inside that building
and how all that worked.
And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that.
It seems like a lot,
(Laughter)
but it's quite simple.
(Laughter)
The process of producing energy inside a reactor comes from fission:
a neutron hits a uranium atom,
which splits up, and in this division, this fission,
it produces two other parts, from two to three neutrons, and energy;
and these two to three neutrons split other uranium atoms,
and that's the chain reaction.
This energy is used to heat the water that's inside the reactor,
that red system.
This water heats the water in another system,
which then becomes steam, makes the turbine spin,
and the generator transforms this rotation of the turbine into energy
that's then distributed to houses.
And the most important thing I found out is that this energy is clean.
It's part of the solution for climate change.
I know that this isn't the first thing
that comes to your minds when you think about nuclear energy.
But it should be, because this process doesn't produce any greenhouse gases.
Nothing.
All of us have been feeling the climate changes.
Heat waves: in Rio de Janeiro, there have been days with a heat sensation of 50º C.
Agencies and institutes have researched
what we do to cause so much release of greenhouse gases.
And one of the main reasons is the use of fossil fuels, like coal.
Coal is still the most used energy source in the world.
The world still burns a lot of coal to produce energy.
During our water crisis,
when our reservoirs reached critical levels,
Brazil used its fossil fuel thermal power plants in full power
to supply its energy needs.
Aside from that, energy consumption has a tendency to grow.
It's an indicator of the availability of basic services in societies,
like the treatment of waste and sewage, hospitals --
That is, energy consumption is directly associated
to a country's development index.
And we're not likely to stop charging our phones,
using microwaves, fridges, TVs,
heaters, or air conditioning as in the case of Rio de Janeiro.
So, what will the world do when the need for more energy arises?
Burn more coal?
The ideal solution is to opt for clean energy,
which includes renewable and nuclear sources.
I know that many might think that, Brazil being a tropical country,
we could use only solar and wind power.
And I think that they are part of the solution too.
But these are two intermittent sources of energy.
They rely on the climate to produce power.
On a cloudy, rainy day, a solar plant will not produce that much energy.
With a lot of wind, or a little wind,
since wind power plants work within a specific variation of wind;
if there's too much or too little,
wind power plants won't produce so much energy either.
But a nuclear plant will produce 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
It's a reliable, basic energy,
and you know exactly how much it will produce, in how much time.
Besides that, it has…
This is a graph about greenhouse gas emissions
in the production of different kinds of energy.
If you consider the whole cycle,
the fuel fabrication, its transportation in trucks,
the maintenance of diesel generators in the nuclear plant,
then yes, you'll see a small production of these greenhouse gases.
But compared to other sources, according to research,
nuclear energy produces even less than solar.
And it has a great energy density.
A seven-gram uranium pellet produces
the same amount of energy as around 800 kg of coal.
A nuclear power plant occupies a space,
on average, a hundred times less space
than a solar power plant needs
to produce the same amount of energy.
Currently, nuclear power is responsible
for ten percent of the world's energy production.
And this number will grow, because dozens of plants are being built.
More than 20 only in China.
In France, more than 70 percent of its energy
comes from nuclear, over 50 plants.
In the US there are "only" 99.
In Brazil, we currently have two in operation.
Nuclear energy annually prevents the emission
of around 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Imagine if we replaced
fossil fuel sources for nuclear.
A research conducted by NASA and Columbia University,
in New York, in 2013,
concluded that the lives of 1.8 million people
have been spared from death caused by air pollution
due to the use of nuclear power.
Nuclear energy saves lives.
That was actually the title of my video
when I applied, last year, to the World Nuclear Olympiad.
In the video I chose to talk about medical applications,
because my grandmother was undergoing cancer treatment
and she was going through those radiotherapy treatments.
But before talking about the Olympiad, I want to tell you about how I got there.
I started my undergraduate studies in 2011,
and in my class there were around 25 students, only 3 girls.
Since the beginning of my studies, I got involved in everything possible.
In the first week of classes,
I went to talk to a professor, to understand the field better,
and he offered me a position in his lab.
And as soon as he could, he offered me a research scholarship,
and I finally started using calculus to research about nuclear reactors.
Also in the first year, listening to a talk by a researcher
of a lab in the United States, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
he offered to talk more with the PhD students
to establish an agreement and share research,
and I, at the height of my first graduation period,
went to tell him I wanted in.
After a lot of effort on my part, and mainly on his part
to convince the people from the lab, I got a two-month internship,
and it was my first trip abroad.
During those two months, I developed a software
using the knowledge acquired in my technical training,
a graphic interface on a nuclear database
that was submitted and added to the database
of the Radiation Safety Information Computational Center, in the USA.
(Applause)
I participated in and organized technical visits
that allowed me to finally enter that reactor building
that seemed, at first, so mysterious to me.
And in 2014, I took part in the Science Without Borders program
and studied in the USA for a year,
which was, by the way, a childhood dream.
I had even considered going to the United States as a babysitter
in order to achieve this dream, but God knows best,
and when I managed to fulfill this dream, it was in the best way possible.
Over that year, two of my colleagues and I were able to do an internship
in one of the largest nuclear companies in the world,
based in the United States,
and I am currently an intern in this company, in its Brazilian office,
and this week I was formally hired.
(Applause)
The Nuclear Olympiad happened in 2015.
I submitted this video on medical applications,
and one of the Olympiad stages was to promote this informative video.
And it was incredible to notice how people's perception changed
when they found out the benefits of this application.
Throughout my experiences in college,
I came to learn more and more, and to notice the importance
of making the benefits of this technology known to the public
and encouraging the expansion of its use.
I took the responsibility of talking about it.
The final stage of the Nuclear Olympiad happened in Vienna, Austria.
I was the only finalist representing the Americas
and the only woman.
(Applause)
And I won.
(Applause) (Cheers)
My biggest satisfaction, when I won,
was seeing the benefits of this application being widely promoted
and being able to prove that women do have a place in engineering and in science.
(Applause)
I took the responsibility of promoting
and showing that we need to take urgent action,
because the climate changes we've been feeling are drastic.
We need to change the fossil fuels that are being used, for clean energy,
and nuclear energy is clean,
it is an energy of high density
and it is safe.
And, besides, I wanted to tell you a little bit about my trajectory
because I believe that each one of us
has the capacity to bring positive changes to our society.
My wish and desire for each one of you
is to have found, or find yourself in your field of expertise, as I have.
And that, in this way, you can help solve problems,
and seize the opportunities,
not only the ones that appear,
but create your own opportunities for growing and learning.
And through this, you can bring about positive changes to society,
to the world, to your community.
Because, just as I believe that nuclear energy makes a difference,
you and I also make a difference.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Oh! I forgot!
The picture of me receiving the award.
(Applause)