Ep 36: We Need Nuclear
Synopsis
Nuclear Science & Engineering PhD Student, Kaylee Cunningham, AKA Ms. Nuclear Energy - joined the podcast to talk about some common misconceptions about Nuclear, its role with respect to Climate Change, and the historical events over the last seven decades that Nuclear Energy has been publicly used.
Podcast Audio Version Here:
Podcast on YouTube
Meet the Guest Star
Kaylee Cunningham
Kaylee is a first year PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studying Nuclear Science and Engineering. And in May of 2022, she received her bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Florida .
In the Summer of 2019, she interned with Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and won several awards for her research on the Versatile Test Reactor Project.
In the Spring 2020, she had the opportunity to work with the University of Florida and NASA, to computationally model nuclear thermal propulsion fuel.
The following year, I interned with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Probabilistic Risk Assessment Branch and got to sit in on NuScale’s risk assessment NRC meetings.
This past summer, Kaylee interned with BWX Technologies in the Advanced Technologies Branch. There, she got to work on calculating corrosion rates for nuclear thermal propulsion fuel.
And currently, she’s working with Dr. Mike Short in the Mesoscale Nuclear Materials Group studying radiation damage in materials for fusion technology. In terms of Science Communication; Kaylee, is known as “Ms. Nuclear Energy”, and has acquired over 60,000 followers on TikTok for her videos advocating for nuclear energy.
