Adopt-a-Street

Oh Engineers Without Borders, you are so close to my heart. We had a clean up this morning for the street we adopted. About 6 times a year volunteers head out early in the morning to pick up the variety of scum left behind on our road, NE 9th Street.

Among the cigarette butts, empty dime bags and rice krispy treat wrappers we found a few treasures: a rhinestone baby sandal, spray paint, a pocket knife and some barely used underwear. ;)

Walking along our street on this gorgeous day we started talking about sustainable energy. Calli and Nick are both interested in working with solar and nuclear energy when they graduate. As the only non-engineer present I always have a ton of questions...

For example...

Me: Fusion, fission, that's like what Doc Oc was working on in Spiderman II right?

Nick explains that fusion would be like building a sun (Exactly like Doc. Oc, btw! WIN!) and that by fusing atoms, in theory, there would be an unlimited power supply at our fingertips.

My next question of course was why build a sun when we already have one?
Why not put all of our resources into utilizing solar energy?

I recently attended a talk by Ray Kurzweil, who said we're not so far off. He explained a lot about the exponentially increasing advancements in technology. In the same way the first computer was guarded by the government and filled an entire room, and gradually expanded out toward the public (MIT had ONE in 1951), they have become so small and economical that every man, woman and teenybobber/adolencent/baby has one on their cell phone.

Ray theorizes that solar energy is going to explode in the same way... exponentially increasing so that in the next 20 or 30 years we will have solar panels so small and efficient we could fuel the worlds growing energy needs with a small floating island of plates in the ocean. Engineers. Are. So. COOL!

In the chance that we're farther away from solar energy than planned I did learn that nuclear power sources aren't so bad for the environment as I had once thought. I always imagined Chernobel type damage to the landscape after the power plant had been used up. Salted earth. Radio-active, glowing squirrels. No nuts. :(

Turns out most nuclear plants are fortified with lead and it's workers have less health risks than those who mine fossil fuels. France uses nuclear for almost all their energy needs; AND they've found a way to recycle the uranium a number of times so it's getting closer to being a sustainable source. That process is still illegal in America, but a girl can dream.
Anyways, had a great morning with Ashley, Christine, Calli and Nick in our sexy orange vests! Rock on EWB, rock on!