Teacher Preparation

Overarching learning goal: By participating in this activity students will recognise the arguments for and against nuclear power and will understand that although nuclear power offers a green energy alternative, it can come with a cost.

Teacher content information:

Facts about uranium and nuclear power -

Uranium is a dense radioactive material that occurs naturally in most rocks, soil and in the ocean in tiny amounts. Its average concentration in the Earth’s crust is two parts per million – more than gold, but still tricky to find.
Australia is one of the world’s leading exporters of uranium.
The main use of uranium is as the fuel source in nuclear power plants to create pollution-free power.
While the production of the electricity is pollution-free the construction of nuclear plants themselves are very energy intensive, expensive, take ten years to plan, take ten years to build and no-one wants them in their back yard because when they go wrong (such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl), they go really wrong and stay wrong for a very long time.
Most people very concerned with the disposal of the nuclear waste, which remains radioactive for thousands of years. This is something that no one wants to live near.
Uranium may have some minor role to play as a bridging source of energy in some specific cases. But like all the other non-renewable energy sources that we dig from the ground, uranium too will run out soon. The proven reserves will be running low by 2080.

For more reliable information about climate change in Australia, visit the Climate Council.

Student and classroom organisation

Step 1.

Engage students in a quick class wide brainstorm around nuclear power:

What do they know?
What have they heard?
How do they feel about nuclear power?

You can record the brainstorm on the board or use the online brainstorming programs bubbl.us or mindmeister.

Step 2.

Ask student to read the quotes from We Are the Weather Makers about nuclear energy, which can be found on their Student Worksheet. Students should form pairs and complete the '5 Whys' activity on the Students Worksheet.

5 Whys – Students are presented with a ‘why?’ question to which they respond. They are then asked a further ‘why?’ question about their response and so on. The process asks students to consider their responses deeply and to question the assumptions in their responses.

Step 3.

Still working in pairs students are asked to read through the Nuclear power statements (also available on the Student Worksheet). These can be read from the screen or you can print these and give them to students to work from.

Students are asked to place the number correlating with each statement into the appropriate quadrant on the table in the student worksheet.

Independently, students should then think of three questions they still have about nuclear power.

Once student have completed their SWOT analysis ask groups to share their responses, comparing these responses within the class. In addition, ask students to share the questions they still have about nuclear power – can anyone in the class answer these questions?

Step 4.

Ask pairs to join with another pair to form a group of four. Each group needs to decide amongst themselves whether they are for or against nuclear power. Give them a specified time frame within which to reach consensus: if no consensus is reached by this time you may need to move students into another group.

Groups are asked to imagine that they have been commissioned by either a nuclear power company or by an anti nuclear lobby group (the groups needs to decide which). Their job is to sell the message to the public that nuclear power is either important and should be used, or dangerous and should not be used.

Ask group members to think about their own strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes within the group and divide up the following tasks:

Devise a name and logo for the company/lobby group
Create a slogan that will be used in all forms of media through which you will advertise (TV, radio, Youtube, billboards, newspapers, SMS etc).
The advertising campaign must include the following: a storyboard for the television ad, a script for the radio ad, an email letter for local residents and the design for a billboard poster.

Groups should incorporate all their information into a Prezi presentation to share with the class.

Assessment

Groups should undertake a Worm Evaluation line for each group’s presentations. Like the ‘worm’ used during televised political debates in Australia, students graphically represent their responses to arguments. The axis should be labelled with a range from strongly disagree to strongly agree and students graphically illustrate the level of their agreement while listening to each presentation (use the graphs provided or ask students to create their own).

Homework/Extension

One of the big problems with nuclear energy is how to deal with the waste that is highly radioactive. The length of time that nuclear waste remains dangerous for the environment and humans is actually unknown, although it is predicted that it could be for as long as 240,000 years! How can we dispose of something for that long? Is it fair to leave the risks of this threat with future generations?

One of the most popular solutions is to bury nuclear waste. However, if we do bury it, then how can we be sure it remains buried? How do we make sure that future generations don’t dig it up? It has been suggested that the we should construct very large and very strong monuments on top of nuclear waste dumps to warn people in the future of the risks of what lies beneath. It has also been suggested that the monuments have messages carved in them in several languages to warn future generations of the nuclear hazard that these monument are guarding. However, think about this: archaeologists today are still trying to work out what the Pyramids in Egypt are all about and what the hieroglyphics mean.

Ask students to design a monument that they think would adequately warn future generations about the risks of the nuclear waste buried beneath their monument. Students should consider the following:

What will the monument be made of?
Where should it stand?
How will it look?
What will be written/drawn on the monument?

Students should create a 3D model of their monument, either by hand or using a desktop program.

Weather Makers - For or against nuclear power?

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