Monday - T-205

So it's Monday, and this week didn't start off all that bad (except Alexandra was screeming for dad and telling me she can't decide anything and besides she hates me...#thejoysofbeingtheparentofasixyearold:/):

I went directly to the library after I left (the screeming) Alexandra in kindergarden: There I spent half the day on continuing to try to understand everything the data sorting program (hint: I still don't, but I'm getting baby steps closer) does, and then the other half of the day on my paper - got through the comments from Jon, and continued on writing about the "gamma ray strength function". I didn't get far, but at least it went forward instead of backwards. Also I planned a Skype meeting with Jon on Thursday (good, then you have to work focused this week, Sunniva ;)).

All of the sudden it was half past four, and time to get Alexandra.

Now I've finally sat down, waiting for some chili to get heated, and writing this little update for you. I'm also working on a blogpost about hairdos - some "working your ass off hairdos", actually ;)

this was A just before she got mad and told me she hated me (for the second time today) - I'm very happy that Anders got home just before she was going to bed, and by some sort of magic managed to get everything great again <3

PS: I'm sorry there were no Friday Facts last Friday - I'm just trying to focus a lot on my PhD these days, and since we were celebrating Alexandra's birthday on saturday, there wasn't any time left for blogging...or I would've had to steal time from my PhD time, and right now that's normally not an option...<3

PPS: It's 205 days left until my goal of handing in my thesis. H.E.L.P.

On this day

Today I've:

- worked on a "script" where I gather a lot of the information about what we use to analyse my data

- met up with Fabio

- tried Fabio's program for sorting data (looks like it working very well *excited*)

- made a list of what I need to do with analysis number 1 and analysis number 2

- made a HUGE pot of chili (no, it's not really related to my PhD...)

- been excited about the discovery of gravitational waves (all though I haven't really had any time to read anything about it, since I've been busy with preparing for Alexandra's birthday party)

I have not:

- made a list about the "nuclear physics year" - all anniversaries and all that (for example, today is Leó Szilard's birthday; the guy who first conceived the nuclear chain reaction, and patented the idea of a nuclear reactor - with Enrico Fermi)

- finished the "script"

- replied all those e-mails that are waiting and waiting

- gone through my receipts and stuff from yesterday's trip to Trondheim (very bad Sunniva - it should really be done the minute you get home, or it ends up just being postponed forever)

- written that blogpost about what I think about young girls in Norway today, whose biggest dream is to meat a "guy with some money"...

- finished that section in my paper that I thought I'd finish some time before christmas

- gone through the comments I got from Jon (my supervisor in Paris) on my paper

I'm going to (but not tonight :P):

- make a "nuclear physics year" list

- answer a lot of e-mails...(and maybe also become better at answering them more or less right away)

- make 5 different figures for paper number 2 

- finish the "script"

- try Fabio's program on the analysis I think I'm more or less finished with - as a double check of my results :D

- look at all the comments I got from Jon - and probably do something about them

- try to get Sunniva (my supervisor here in Oslo) to read parts of my paper - after I've worked on Jon's comments, and finished that section that I thought would be done last year

- make more figures (from another analysis), and collect them together with similar figures from Fabio's analysis in a document and send it off to Jon and ask him what he thinks

- start working HARD on my thesis - especially the chapter that I call "the bridge" where I'm supposed to explain how the experiments we do in Oslo are connected to full scale nuclear fuel simulations

- make 14 days goals; from now and until summer (?)

- read what Gry called "the most boring paper ever" (but it's probably - or hopefully - exactly what we need) :P

And the phdlife just goes on and on and on... Now I'm going to get me a bowl of chili - and then it's e-mail time <3

A new little something

So today I went to Trondheim; I started the day by getting up at just a little bit past four (Anders <3 gave me coffee, even though he was NT getting up at this time), then flying to Trondheim, talking to about 300 girls science and technology and all that. 

I have started this “tradition” to always get a little present for myself when I’ve finished a talk - a little sort of pat on the back “you did good” kind of thing - from me to me :) Normally it’s something I get when I’m at the airport, and quite often it’s some kind of jewellery... This time I bought a “silver” ring with “diamonds”, from one of my favourite cheap brands - Snö of Sweden - just perfect! 

I like that by doing it this way, my things end up having a little story - they're memories from when I've gone to different places, talking about different things, to different people. I think that's nice <3

I love sparkles, and sometimes a girl needs some sparkles ;)

Hope you all had a great Wednesday!

AGR

Happy birthday, Alexandra Grønstad Rose! Today you're turning 6, and I just can't believe how time flies. It really feels strange that you're already the oldest one in kindergarden, and in a couple of months you're starting school... I love you to Proxima Centauri and back <3

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But then there's something funny. So AGR are Alexandra's initials, but it just hit me that AGR is also a type of nuclear reactor: the Adcanced Gas cooled Reactor. So, me, Sunniva Rose, nuclear physicist, gave my daughter a name which is an acronym for the type of nuclear reactors they have in Britain.

O.

M.

G.

!

- my beautiful girl -

Fuel on a Friday - 10 Facts

I can’t believe it’s Friday already. 

This week has just gone by so fast. It started with Alexandra still being sick on Monday, and then on Tuesday I went to Stavanger, and spent around 50 hours there - giving two talks, and talking to so many interesting people. (I think I’ll have to write about some of my thoughts about the Norwegian oil industry - just not right now.) Yesterday I got home, and the evening was spent with Anders; we shared a bottle of wine, he worked on his code and I scanned all my receipts from the trip, and sorted them into the right folders (not fun doing, but it feels GREAT when you’re done, especially when you realise you’ve spent roughly 9000NOK on travelling, that you of course want, and will get, back ;)). Then we made the working your ass off thai chili, and around that time I got a migraine…:/ 

However, today is Friday, and luckily I woke up this morning feeling great again - hopefully there'll be many months before I get another migraine attack!

So Friday is luckily NOT equal to migraine, but it IS equal to FACTS! It's finally time for ten Friday Facts about Fuel - nuclear fuel, of course:

1. the fuel in a nuclear power plant is placed inside the reactor core. Mostly all the fuel soaked in water because water is great for cooling the fuel, which is the same as removing the heat - which is exactly what we want; we want water to be heated so that we can produce steam and thus generate electricity with a turbine <3
2. we often call it "burning" the fuel, but it's no real burning going on - the fuel is the place where the fission chain reaction happens (the energy from nuclear power comes from fission of nuclei inside the fuel :) ), so when I talk about (nuclear) fuel I mean material where there’s a chain reaction going on.
3. nuclear fuel is made out of slightly radioactive elements; it can either be uranium, plutonium, or thorium
4. a small part of the fuel has to be fissile; meaning it has to have a really big chance of splitting if it's hit by a neutron. The fissile material can be either uranium-233, uranium-235, or plutonium-239
5. thorium is NOT fissile, so thorium must be mixed with something that is. This means that in thorium based fuels it is actually not the nuclei of the thorium atoms itself that fissions - thorium is first transformed into uranium-233, and then this uranium nucleus is the one that fissions and releases energy :D
6. the fissile part of the fuel is typically just 5% of the total of the fuel. The rest of the fuel (so, the majority of the fuel, really) is either thorium-232 or uranium-238.
7. the "flame" in nuclear fuel is the neutron. There is of course no real flame, and there is also no burning (see point number 2.), but I think that calling the neutron "the flame" is a nice analogy, since the neutron is what makes the nucleus fission and then release all the energy <3
8. the most common nuclear fuel is called UOX, which is for uranium oxide, meaning that it’s not pure metallic uranium (uranium as an element is a metal), but uranium and oxygen ( the oxides are used rather than the metals themselves because the oxide melting point is much higher than that of the metal and because it cannot actually burn, since it's already in the oxidized state.)
9. used fuel can (and should, in my opinion!) be recycled, since it has a lot of material that is really useful (actually: typically only half a percent of all the fuel fissions during the years it's in the reactor, so if you throw away all that's left after a couple of years, you throw away A LOT of resources). If you recycle these materials - which can be uranium-235 that just hasn't fissioned yet, or plutonium-239 that has been made during the time the fuel was in the reactor - you have to mix them with fresh fissile material, and when you do this the fuel is called MOX. MOX is short for Mixed Oxides :D
10. if you get really got at recycling, and you have the kind of reactors that are optimized for this type of MOX fuel (see point number 9.), you can actually end up getting 200 times more energy from the fuel than you normally get today!

- my fuel when I got to Stavanger airport yesterday: Chablis and Cæsar salad - as I started going through all the receipts (a lot!) rom just two days travelling -

Looking back - part 2

Finally - here's part 2 of the looking back at 2015 blogpost. This has taken too long, I know, but I guess my excuse is I'm trying to fix my PhD thingy (that's my excuse for everything this year :D).

July

Anders went with the guys to Asia. I missed him sooo much it's close to embarrassing :P These were pictures he sent me as he was looking through his phone - you see, I'm pretty sure he missed me to...<3

I went to Spain and Toledo, to David and Lucia's wedding...

 ...looking like this :)

And I worked on the same f*****g paper I'm trying to finish now...

August

I was honoured to give the main speech for all the new students at the University of Stavanger. OMG! It felt great.

I was a guest at the radio show "Salongen".

Anders and I (and Ann-Cecilie) went to Berkeley. We had a fantastic trip, and I don't think I have ever seen Anders as happy as he was when he rented this car...

(I still haven't got to do all the stuff I was supposed to do just before, and during the week we spent in Berkeley, and that does of course not feel especially good...why does everything take so much time?)

September

We went to Konserhuset to celebrate research and the Norwegian Research Council, and I'm quite sure we got much less food and wine than we've got there before... Was still a fun night, though :)

I wrote about what goes on inside our CACTUS. CACTUS is the name of the detector system you see here - it has that name because it looks like a cactus :D

And I gave a talk at the book launch of Kathrine Aspaas' "Rosa er den nye pønken" - I feel very honoured to be mentioned in the book <3

October

Maybe the busiest month of last fall?

Since Anders was gone all of July, I promised Alexandra we would go someplace warm and nice, where they had lots of ice cream, a pool, and sea. Alexandra, Anders and I ended up going to Fuerteventura and Las Playitas - we were soooo satisfied with that place, and really want to go back to that exact hotel :)

I got glasses.

Anders and I were guests at "Abels Tårn".

I gave a talk at "Radiologisk Høstmøte", and annoyed some people by writing about How to dress as a female scientist.

I gave my third TEDx talk at TEDxBergen: "Could nuclear weapons save the planet?", and was so happy Anders could join me in Bergen <3 

November

Focus, focus, focus! I started the #teamsunnivarose tag, and focused hard on working hard :)

December

I worked on my analysis and my paper on uranium, prepared for Christmas, and wrote about the anniversary of the Chicago Pile no 1 - the very first nuclear reactor.

Part 1 of the looking back at 2015 is HERE.

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I'm still at home, waiting for a delivery from IKEA that will arrive some time between now and one o'clock. Boring, but luckily I can do quite a bit of working from home. There will be focus on my paper (oh yes, it takes forever - that's life in academia for you), and later today there will of course be Friday Facts here on the blog ;)

Stavanger next

Hi everyone...

Alexandra's still sick. Yesterday I was so sure that today would be the last day with no kindergarden, but then she has actually been a little bit worse today, so it looks like tomorrow will also be spent at home. It's never a good time when kids get sick, and especially when it happens when you have deadlines and are going away...which is the case for me now :/ Tomorrow I'm going to Stavanger and I'm staying there until Thursday. I'll be giving two talks; one at THIS conference, on Wednesday, and one at a school - about nuclear physics and research and stuff, on Thursday. So I'll be heading for Stavanger tomorrow morning, and fortunately I have the best Anders <3 who's staying to take care of Alexandra.

// memories from another trip to Stavanger - unfortunately Toril's not there this time :/ //

Now it's time to finish booking my flights and my hotel room, and to look over my talks. Then Anders I will start season two of West Wing. We just started watching it, and oh my, the season finally of season one is the biggest cliffhanger I have ever seen...!

Kisses!