The Innovators with George Davison

Nuclear Fusion and Fission with Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

October 26, 2021 Tomorrow's World Today Season 1 Episode 6
The Innovators with George Davison
Nuclear Fusion and Fission with Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Show Notes Transcript

The role of the Department of Energy’s National Labs is to innovate science and technology that eventually is applied in industries to solve big problems and challenges.

No one knows this better than Kathy McCarthy, the Associate Laboratory Director for Fusion and Fission Energy and Science at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In this episode of The Innovators, host George Davison talks to Kathy about women in STEM, how fusion is like bringing a star to Earth, the similarities between engineering and music, and more.

For more information about nuclear energy, head to TomorrowsWorldToday.com.

Introduction:

It all starts with one idea. Have you ever wondered how today's top CEOs, business leaders and people who work for the most innovative companies in the world found success? Join host George Davison, as he explores the innovators that are shaping tomorrow's world today.

George Davison:

Well, welcome to another edition of The Innovators. And today we have a new guest and she's so exciting to talk to. I'm going to introduce you to Dr. Kathy McCarthy and she's from Oak Ridge National Lab. Um, she, her title is officially the associate laboratory director of fusion, fission, energy, and science. Well, that's a mouthful. Well, welcome Kathy.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Thank you. Happy to be here.

George Davison:

Well, thank you for making that trip out here. You know, we have so many, uh, people in this audience that are going to be curious about how you've achieved, what you've done in your life, and I'm hoping you'll share what you can with us today.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

I'd be happy to do that.

George Davison:

Okay. Well then how about we start with some of the basics. A lot of the people out here probably won't know what Oak Ridge national lab is and what you do out there. So could you share that?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Yeah. Oak Ridge national laboratory is one of the Department of Energy national labs. And the role of the national labs is to do science and technology that eventually is applied in industry that ultimately helps industries solve big problems, big challenges.

George Davison:

So how do I, how could I engage a lab like that? If I'm in my business, am I an individual? How do I bring problems to you?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

So typically the way that that works is connection with one of our scientists and engineers, or potentially connections with one of our managers. And we go out and we'll talk at conferences and things like that. So it's that initial discussion working through? Well, how could the lab help put a plan together, go through the appropriate approvals and move forward from there. And from our perspective, working with industry is, is key. Now that hasn't necessarily been historically what the national labs have done, but for us to be able to take this science that we do and see it actually applied in industry, that's a really important part of what we're doing now. Right.

George Davison:

Very, very good. Yeah. That, cause you do want it to convert into something. Right. So, uh, but what's interesting maybe for the audience to know, is that chemistry class or that, uh, lab class, uh, that you're doing in, uh, in middle, let's say high school, maybe college. So there's a place to go,

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

You know, it's funny because I remember chemistry class in high school when we had to memorize the periodic chart of elements. Like, wait, why would I have to do that? And it's funny now because well, not so much in my everyday job as a manager, but when I was still doing technical work and I still need to understand all that, I actually use those things. And I don't think I really appreciated that at the time. Right.

George Davison:

There's basic building blocks. They're kind of putting them in our head and we're saying, Y Y you know, and, uh, you know, our teachers are, they're guiding us. They know they, they kinda know we need certain things and those basic building blocks, if you're going to be in the lab business, you better know your periodic chart is what I think. I just heard

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Part of it. Yes.

George Davison:

All right. So let's talk about Oak Ridge national lab and let's, can we frame how important innovation would be at your organization? Like how does, how does that work?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Innovation is key because the problems that we have to solve they're challenging problems. The reason a national lab would take something on is because you need a combination of unique facilities, unique capabilities, people looking at a problem from all different backgrounds to figure out how to solve it. And like I said, these are, these are very challenging. This isn't your cookie cutter sort of thing. That's why you come to a national laboratory. So innovation is key.

George Davison:

So people who think innovatively would be your most precious natural resource is that Thursday.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

I would agree with that. And it, and it's sometimes the innovation happens only because you've got this set of people with different backgrounds, maybe one individually, isn't the most innovative person, but they'll ask a question that makes you think about things in a different way. That's why that whole concept of diversity is important. Diversity from how you grew up, where you're from your technical background, not technical background, because sometimes the hardest questions come from the non-technical people,

George Davison:

You know, that is so true because that happens in our world over here too. And then the technical people have to say what you don't understand how that, uh, and then they have to say it out loud. And then all of a sudden the, uh, the whistles and bells start to go off and we've seen that as well. Good stuff. I, um, so I'm going to say it again because associate laboratory director of fission, fusion, energy, and science, I think that's one of the biggest titles I've ever heard in my life. And I, so for our audience, can you walk us through, what does a day in the life of that look like?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

My job is really exciting. I really do have the greatest job, uh, what, what we look at. If you look at the fission industry, the and energy industry, we have operating reactors, but we're looking at how do we make them operate more efficiently, right? Economics is key. What are the next things we need to so that carbon-free nuclear power can penetrate markets, that it couldn't necessarily with the conventional big reactors that exist. Now they're important, but we need to do more. And then you bring fusion into that. And this is a group of people and, and my graduate work was in fusion. So that's kind of done, not kind of, I've done about half my, uh, career in fusion and half inefficient. The fusion side is the very creative side, right? Fusion reactors exist in the laboratory. They don't produce economical energy. And if you think about, you've got the temperature of the, well, 10 times the temperature of the sun, 150 million degrees centigrade here. And right here, I have 500 or 600 degrees centigrade. How do you, how do you do that? And so we look at ways to do that in that combination of vision, energy grounded in, well, ultimately, here's what you need to do and fusion energy. Let's think out of the box on how to solve these, uh, these hard problems. You put those together and it benefits both. So I got the most exciting job in the world because I get to bring all those people together.

George Davison:

That's, that's pretty interesting. I don't know how you figured that out, like how to navigate your, uh, fission and fusion world to create this interesting space. But I imagine you're going to need more people in that space, in the future, right?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Oh, we are always looking for more people. Absolutely.

George Davison:

So let, let's kind of go back on a bit more of your personal journey as to how you got here, because we're looking for, let's say younger people coming up, right. So let's talk about your journey. How did you become interested in nuclear energy?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

I was actually going to major in music. I played clarinet in high school. I enjoyed it very much. Uh, I grew up in Livermore, California and the San Francisco bay area. My parents both worked at Livermore national laboratory and my mother very early before she had children and my father the whole time through when I was halfway through my freshman year in high school. So I grew up in this environment. My parents would have epic parties, physicists and engineers. And once we got old enough and weren't being sent next door to the neighbors during the parties, we got to stay up and talk with people. So I kind of grew up in that environment. I was good at math and science and I made a last minute decision really last minute, my senior year in high school to actually go into engineering instead of music, I still love music. Don't get me wrong. I kind of did the more practical thing. And my parents never pushed me in either direction, because if they had pushed me, for example, towards engineering, I guarantee you, I would be a music major right now, which is fine and good, but, but I think ultimately I made the right choice in specifically nuclear. So I decided in my senior year, I really liked math and science, but I don't want to be a mathematician. I don't want to be a physicist, but engineering, that kind of brings in all those different pieces. And I had a high school physics teacher, Mr. Wells, Malcolm Wells still remember him actually looked up recently and he's not alive anymore was a while ago when I was in high school. But Mr. Wells, um, this was the year that three mile island happened. So, so now you can figure out how old I am. I was not a child prodigy prodigy. So, um, Mr. Wells would talk about the three mile island incident as it was unfolding. And it was very much from the perspective of, you know, what, what could be happening and helping us to sort of think about these things. And he was also very much of the mind that nuclear energy is important. Nuclear energy is, is really key to reducing carbon mitigating climate change, even back then, all those sorts of things. So I thought, okay, engineering, nuclear, I'll try that. And then my first day at university of Arizona, I was enrolled in the nuclear engineering program.

George Davison:

Isn't that interesting. So your, your discussion with other people that found a category interesting, inspired you and started getting you on a path, a direction. All right. So we have all these, uh, let's say high schoolers out there right now. We need them to start interacting with people like yourself and, uh, other mentor types of folks. Could you tell me what in your background is what you drew upon that led you to your current position?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

It's an interesting question. One of the things, as we're looking at, how do we attract people into stem and the wave specifically that we sell engineering doesn't typically appeal to, and I'll talk about women because I've looked at this quite a bit because it's one of the things I, I tried to help with an engineering tends to lag in stem in terms of, uh, women and underrepresented minorities, more so than other fields. So we tend to sell engineering as hands-on sort of things, fixing things, building bridges, building buildings, and that kind of thing. And that works for a lot of people. And actually that kind of works for me because one of the things I liked early on was putting things together. Um, my parents used to, there was a local theater company and my parents would be in the shows over there. And us kids would be kind of waiting while they did their rehearsals. And we weren't interested in watching, but there were, there were boards and hammers and nails and things like that. And I kind of, I liked putting those things together. I just liked doing that. My parents got me one year, um, a Lego set, which then built, they built on, I have this amazing Lego set. And I used to make these, these cars. It had a little engine I could do all that, you know, not an engine, a battery and cogs. So for me, it was playing with that sort of thing. And I really liked that really like that hands-on thing. On the other hand, if we're really looking at appealing to a broad audience, the other way that we need to sell engineering is in general, women tend to like to go into fields where they can help people. Engineering helps people every day. And we don't talk about that in that. So it was really, you know, a combination of those sorts of things. I have this great erectors, erectors that all these things that I, that actually saved and brought out when I had kids and bring them out for, for my grandchildren. And it was, um, nurturing, that kind of thing. And it, it, it, it, it graduated into my parents were very clever, right? It wasn't the, we really think you should do this, but rather let's put these things in front of you that, that peak your interest. So I remember one year I got a Heath kit and I got to put together a radio. So this was when I graduated to soldering and things like that. So all of those sorts of things helped me. It's not necessarily something that would, would help everyone, but that's part of the reason, the reason I think why I am, where I am

George Davison:

Exposure to stem type activities, and then letting you have the freedom to choose and play and create what you wanted to create. Right.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Well, and you talked about innovation. So here's another thing I like to fish. I've always liked to fish. My parents would take us fishing of, I've got two sisters, no brothers. So three girls, and two of us really liked fishing. My older sister doesn't like it at all, but we would catch grasshoppers and grasshoppers are good bait for sure. Right. Worms are too, but they're pretty easy to catch. So dad said, why don't you invent a container for grasshoppers so that, you know, you could, it could help you to, to get it out and be able to put it on hook. I worked on that and it was actually really never very good and never really got built, but he, but my parents encouraged that kind of

George Davison:

Right. Th that kind of thinking of, well, there's a challenge. Can you figure it out? Right? Yeah, that kind of, uh, there was a lot of that in our, in my brothers and my upbringing as well. And, uh, a lot of science, a lot of go explore, go figure it out around here. We refer to it as go fail your way forward, you know, learn how to pick yourself back up off the floor. Um, but you know, going back, you've mentioned, uh, some of the background of your parents in general, did you have any other mentors that are like sticking out in your mind that helped to shape you?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Yeah. And, and really, as I look through my career, so I got to University of Arizona and one, one of the professors there, I think it was actually a Meredith, even at the time that I went there was Norman hill Norman Hilberry Dr. Hilberry was part of the Chicago pile experiment. One of the very early demonstrations that led to practical applied vision energy. Dr. Hilberry took me under his wing and he would talk with me and he would encourage me that you should think about graduate school. You should do this. You should do that. So that was absolutely true from a school per, you know, education perspective. And my parents always continued to encourage me and my uncle as well. Um, my uncle at one point was deputy undersecretary for Casper. So we got to tour, we got to go through a Casper Weinberger's office. He wasn't there of course, and see those sorts of things. But uncle Larry, I still call him uncle Larry. He's 80 something now, but uncle Larry was also somebody I talked to quite a bit about, you know, what I should do and what are the opportunities. So I've been really lucky because I haven't really had to, I've had a lot of role models, a lot of people who really helped me,

George Davison:

That's a blessing. Um, so maybe that's a good spot to kind of put a place holder on. Let's imagine for a moment that you didn't have those mentors, um, being a strong minded, young woman, what do you think you would have done?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

That is a really good question. I don't know. I might've come this direction anyway. I have to tell you, I have not ever been one of those super organized planner people. Here's my one-year five-year ten-year I kind of been a little bit of a, not pin ball necessarily, but certain directions that I've gone, they've kind of fallen into my lap. I'll give you an example. Graduate school. I was looking at, should I go into nuclear engineering or should I go into nuclear medicine? I looked into both and decided, Hey, I got to go to go to school too long for nuclear medicine. I'll do a PhD in nuclear engineering, by the way. That's probably not a good judgment on my, I think they're about the same amount of time, but that's okay. But I think all of us look for one of the things I try and do now, because I recognize I was lucky. I had all that I had that support system. I do try and go out and talk at the schools and, and, you know, trying to explain to elementary school children, how nuclear fusion works. That's like one of the hardest things I've ever done. Oh,

George Davison:

I can't imagine.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

And, but, and, and I, I go and I I'll, I'll talk at universities. I'll talk at, at, um, different conferences focused on different groups of people. I think we all really need to do that. And it's interesting. Cause I have had a lot of women, for example, come to me and say, I really appreciate you did this. You did this, you came and talked with us because I do look at you as a role model, which honestly never really thought of myself like that.

George Davison:

Well, but you know, look at it from where they're coming from. You know, if they're, if they don't have mentors, they don't have, let's say two parents at home. Some of them have no parents and that's kind of our part of our audience. Right? We have these kids in school, they're directionless. They don't know what to do. Um, really that, and they, some of them don't have a caring hand to help guide them. Right. Even though some people do have caring hands, we usually I'll figure it out myself. Cause we usually, like you said earlier, if they said pick one direction or the other you'd pick the one they tell you not to take. Um, so we are rebellious, but if you don't have anyone helping along the way, um, you do have your teachers, right? So, you know, maybe a, which has come up in other discussions as to if a young person and you need some guidance, you know, that's a good place to try.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Well, and one of the things that several national laboratories do, and by the way, the first 25 years of my career were at Idaho national laboratory. I know it very, very well. One of the things they did was the high school teachers workshop. They would bring in high school teachers from all over the United States. I can't remember how many states they ended up covering. They also had some foreign teachers and they basically would teach them about nuclear science and engineering, nuclear science, and technology, and give them the tools to be able to teach it when they went back home things like here's a Geiger counter. Here's how it works. You know, you can put it up against Fiesta where, and Fiesta where you'll actually get a reading. Right. But it, it, it, the teachers, they need the tools to be able to teach. And, and I think that was a great thing that, that, um, Idaho national laboratory did and that other national laboratories have as well. This sort of outreach and Oak Ridge national laboratory does outreach as well. I think it's part of our job to help with.

George Davison:

I'm glad to hear you say that, um, invention, Atlanta Institute, we S that is what challenged with, uh, with that organization. It's for example, uh, 3d printing is a big, big 3d printing the same. I mean, it's, it's just, I remember when we've got our first 3d printer, it was a huge machine, made little tiny parts, really fragile, and now they make a machine that's big and you can really hit this stuff in it strong. But if we don't have teachers that are intrigued with 3d printing, right, they, they're not taught those skill sets later in life. They can't teach our youth today, but, um, you know, kids can help drive it. I've seen some of these young kids ask, I want to learn how to do 3d printing and teachers are good at picking up the phone and asking questions. And so, um, yeah, it's, I'd say without family being there and guiding and pushing you in the right direction, we need to find ways of, and that's part of what this, this is all about, right? How do we give knowledge and mentorship to as many young people as possible? So they don't feel lost. Um, do you have any other suggestions on that, on how to not feel lost or I'll just move on if you think little did their,

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

I think part of it and, and you, you alluded to this earlier. It is really important that people understand that it's okay to fail. And I worry a bit that as a society, and even in the research that we do for the department of energy, there is the expectation that you can get it right every time. And if you get it right every time you're not thinking out of the box in us, so we have to help kids to understand it's okay to fail.

George Davison:

Yes. It's like, it's hard for a teacher to say that, right.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Maybe not fill the tests. Right.

George Davison:

Right. All right. Well, let's keep moving then. Uh, we're going to start touching on advice, um, that maybe education and that kind of thing played in your life. But if you could

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Go back in time and you could do one thing over again in high school, or maybe in your early college years, what would it be and why? Hm. I think,

George Davison:

And I'm asking in terms of like career development, like leading you in a direction.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Well, I hate to say this out loud, but, but, you know, maybe listen to my parents more, but I'm not sure that anybody ever really does that, but, but I think that seeking out adults and asking them for advice, I think that's a really good thing. And, and I don't, I didn't do that all that much. I was kinda lucky again, because I had, you know, uh, a support, a support group around me, but also really taking advantage of opportunities that come up in the community to learn things right. To go, to go to things. And again, one of the things I was really lucky about, I remember when Livermore national lab had an open house, which they didn't typically do right. As a weapons laboratory. And one of the things they had was this simulator you could play on. That was kind of like a precursor to SIM city. That was a long, long time ago. I remember that. That was cool. And that was really inspiring going there and seeing that. So, so take advantage of those sorts of things. National labs do open houses periodically. So, you know, butterfly wings actually don't have pigments it's if the color is made by the reflection of the light, if they, if it actually had pigment, they'd be too heavy to fly. So we, and this was, again, back when I was in Idaho, we've done similar one. That was COVID. And I've only been at ochre since COVID, but we've done, done similar things at Oak. Historically, you bring people in, bring kids in, have looked through these microscopes and explain those kinds of things that are super interesting. We need to explain, to help them understand how exciting it is in the world of science

George Davison:

That gets the imagination going. Right. Very, very important. Very big. So how important are stem based classes for someone interested in pursuing a career in your field?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

The importance, one of the things I really liked about nuclear engineering is it's, it absolutely is, is take, uh, you need to have a good math basis for Charles to have a, have to have a good physics basis. It's very, very heavy in physics. So, well, I'll tell you something, maybe I should have done back when I was younger. There were times when I crammed for a test, right? When you cram for a test, I'll, I'll admit it. You actually don't learn things as well as when you actually got to learn it all along. Don't cram for tests actually pay attention to it. But that foundation is really key. And I did find myself in times in college, I'm in a class thinking, Hm, yep. Probably should've known this and had to kind of go back and learn it. So I would say, do, do pay attention to those things.

George Davison:

It's so funny to hear you say, don't cram for tests, that there's a young man. Who's a, in our life now. And, uh, and he's a very intelligent young man and he scores very well on his tests, every one of them. But what he learned was that I don't like bad stress is how he said it. And I said, what is bad stress or bad stress is when I put things off so much that I get down to the final hours. And now I'm trying to put all this information in my head. He said, there's good stress and good stresses. I know I have that test coming it's in 10 days. So I put the burden on myself to take a piece of that on Monday and other piece on Tuesday, by the time I get three days away from that test, I go take a test. I'm not in stress. I, I pre stress and then I have no stress. And I thought that's really good way to think about it. Right. Get ahead of it, you know, but if no one tells you that, and actually his co his counselor as the one who taught him that and, uh, uh, darn I wish I had a counselor like that.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Okay. Like, I, I still even now sometimes mess up on that one. Right. So, so yeah. Do learn things. Don't cram things

George Davison:

Well said. Okay. So, um, let's see here. So knowing what you know now, what advice would you give a person interested in entering into your industry today?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Ask questions. My industry is so broad. What is it that you like to do? Are you interested in the current fleet of fusion reactors, keeping them going? And that's not as easy as it sounds, think about, um, having to survive very, very cold weather, very things like that. There's, there's all different aspects of the current place. Are you interested in the next generation? Do you like to look at ways to do things better? If that's the case, maybe you want to kind of go the direction, more of research and that would put you in a certain direction in terms of your classes and things. So, and I think this is true for any field. There's so many different options, so many different paths you can pursue. So you're kind of interested in something. Well, check into it, ask questions. If you have an opportunity, a lot of labs do high school, um, internship internships for high school kids. Certainly when you're an undergraduate doing an internship, it can be at a private industry. It can be at a national lab. That'll tell you really what the day-to-day life is for somebody like me, or back when I was a researcher and actually did things.

George Davison:

All right. So what classes though, would you suggest, do you have any?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Oh, uh, you talking well when you're in high school, through high school. So you do. Okay. So as you get to high school, you do have opportunities. For example, take calculus. It's not a required class. I think I like things like calculus, to me, it's a black and white and here's the answer, which is one of the reasons why I'm an engineer, not a philosopher. So that whole thing that holds not having a real answer kind of makes me a little bit crazy. So, so math classes are really important. Physics classes are really important. And, but also don't ignore the other side of things because engaging your creative mind. So I think for me, music helped me with my engineering because it's just, it's there, there's a lot of similarities. So try to do both.

George Davison:

There's a lot of engineering and music there is. So, you know, but probably the creatives in the music side don't want to think of it that way.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

No. And actually to take the engineering piece of it, read the music, I can play the music and turn it into music that takes the creative side. Right. Your other brain, your other side, I always forget, which is left. Right. But yeah.

George Davison:

All right. So let's chat for a moment about, you know, we have all these different people in our country and all different walks of life. Right. Do you think any and all of them can be successful? Yes.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

I absolutely believe that. Um, one of the things it's, it's really fascinating if you look at, so I am the granddaughter of immigrants. Um, I, I'm not the person that can trace by heritage to the Mayflower. We haven't been here that long, but my mother's parents came from Spain, came from very poor family. They worked in Hawaii in the sugar cane fields first and then came up to the San Francisco bay area. But for them, education was really important to me. I always emphasized it. So, you know, you look at now, my, my, my mother got a degree from UC Berkeley. Um, her parents, actually, my grandfather did take some classes at UC Berkeley, you know, and now you look and I have a PhD in nuclear engineering. Anybody, anybody can be successful.

George Davison:

It sounds like you believe it wholeheartedly. And education played a very important role in your and your family. Yep. Yep. So that's a way that you helped yourself or helped your family to move in a direction that you wanted to see.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

You know, for me, again, there was always that emphasis on education. And I think this is one of the things that a lot of kids growing up don't have that. So how do we help them to see that, to get that, that, uh, understanding that, and by the way, college isn't for everyone, we need people that do things other than, than, than go to college and do what I do. But I think that there's that whole untapped segment of kids that could be so good at this, but we're not reaching them. So what do we do? One of the things that we have, we're having a lot of conversations at Oak Ridge national laboratory, and the AP find this across the United States is how do we help people into this? How do we get that diverse group in involved in what we do? And by the way, Oak Ridge national laboratory does an amazing variety of things. I'm just one of a small part of what they do. We do pretty much everything, biology, all sorts of things. So there's kind of something for everyone. So we're talking to the laboratory about programs that can help with that pipeline and engaging some of these communities that don't even hear about these opportunities, because that's, what's going to have to happen in order to, to really change things,

George Davison:

Right. To open it up. Right. Bring in different thoughts, different kinds of folks. But I I'm really happy you shared some of the background, um, you know, where your family's from. I think it means something to look back and say, yeah, we, we sweat and we worked hard and we sounded like they were working in fields and yeah, literally, and, and we got our hands dirty. It's all right. To get your hands dirty. That's part of the process of advancing. If you want to, or you can keep doing that. If that's the kind of work you like. Um, but sharing that story is, uh, I think it's really important. People see that. Cause sometimes people like I'll go, I'll go to some of these seminars and sometimes on teaching some of these seminars and it's, it's terrible to hear like I even teachers in some of the school districts that are, um, they're like, oh, we can't, our kids can't do this kind of stuff. You know, and we don't have access. And, um, and I think to myself, well, I've, I see school districts at the, at the best level. And I see it at the worst level and each of them have their strengths and each of them have their weaknesses, you know, kids who have everything going for them. Uh, they have a lot of problems coming. Usually, you know, you see a lot of drugs, you see a lot of problems cause they're directionless as well. And then you have kids who have nothing. And I think one of the benefits there is it's like failure way forward. Right. You know, you have nothing to lose, try again, or keep going, keep working. And, uh, yeah. They just, those two different worlds don't know what the strengths and weaknesses are of those two worlds, but we need them all right. To get to where we're trying to go. Um, so thank you for that. Uh, that thinking on your part, um, so anyone can be successful is what we just concluded

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

And success means all different things. Again, I don't think everybody should be me remind what I've done. That's just what worked for me.

George Davison:

Success is abroad work. Yeah. So some people it's money to others. It's making a contribution to society, or I just made the most successful cookie batch I ever made in my life. Right. So there you go. Yeah, it is. I like good, good.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Me too. Actually, I like the batter better than the cooked ones, but

George Davison:

Yeah. Out if you leave that bowl, uh, good stuff sitting there and it won't be that way when you get back. Alright. So can you talk a little bit about what you think the next big innovation in the nuclear industry is going to be and how can students in school begin to prepare for that innovation and beyond

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

One of the, well, I'm going to talk about fusion is the next big innovation in nuclear, right? Both nuclear, uh, um, processes, both vision and fusion. And there are absolutely challenges in fishing too, but I think probably a lot of the other people that you're talking with will talk about that. So I'm going to talk about fusion when we, what we're doing in fusion is bringing a star to earth. We talk about it like that. And you think about what does that mean? And what does that take? And, and specifics. One of the things I would say, understanding materials, and actually this is true, not just for fusion, but for almost any industry. When you get a failure, you can almost always, or quite often tie it to some failure in materials. And so developing materials is important. Um, so I think that, that the next big innovation that is truly needed and we're working on this is materials that can withstand, uh, extreme environments and it's not limited to fusion. Right? We talk about this when we, when we put, um, spaceships into, you know, to go wherever they're going to go, they have to withstand heat, things like that. So I think that that's a really, really important area. And of course, tied into all of this is computers. And that's another area that is so much when we talk about quantum computing and don't ask me to explain it. Um, but, but, but those sorts of innovations are key.

George Davison:

Yes. So I think what, when you say material science, maybe the idea behind that would be how to, how to hold, how to have things held together, even though you have extreme temperatures on both sides of the raw of the material in the middle. Right. So we're trying to control this temperature, chasm, so to speak, right? Yeah.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Yes. And keep that really, really hot away from something that can't withstand the really, really hot.

George Davison:

Yes. So that's an interesting field. So it let's say, I like that idea. I'm listening to this. What do I, how do, how can I start to think that maybe I could get in there and help solve that problem and that material science problem. So

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

It's, it's looking at, I would, first of all, you can do a lot of looking on, uh, on the internet. Be careful what you read on everything is right. Go to the national lab website. Cause they'll talk about the sorts of things that, uh, the sorts of challenges that exist. But if you're, if you're going into college and this was one of the things my, I have a niece who is, uh, just finishing up a engineering degree at university of Arizona. And she, and I talked quite a bit, we talked about graduate school and I talked about material science for the reason that I said earlier, where there's so many things that you can apply it to. So, so first of all, that good basic education. But then when you start talking about when you got a fusion reactor and it sees neutrons energetic neutrons, more than from a fusion reactor, the, the surface gets bombarded by lots and lots of neutrons so much so that it changes the structure of the material. And we have to understand how that behave. What is the behavior once it's changed? Cause you still need to have, it can maintain its integrity. So maybe you're interested in things at an atomistic level. I want to be able to actually model Adams, which by the way our supercomputers allow us to do now. Right. And how they move and how all these things interact. You know? So that's a direction that, that you could go. But I, I can't underestimate the importance of internships connect with people, reach out to find a high school teacher. Like I had Mr. Wells had, I had my parents too. And all the people at the really great parties that my, my, my parents held, but talk to them and ask them questions. Cause they actually really like it.

George Davison:

Right. And that's, uh, I think we need to go back for just a moment though, to make sure that our audience understands what we talk about material science, because we know what that is. It doesn't mean what does material science mean?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

So think about the surface of this table and this is what we see. We actually enlarge it so that we're looking at a, um, uh, a size part of the, part of it on the order of the, think about the width of your hair, uh, the average hair, like is there different, you go down and look at things at that level. They look totally different. So I see this flat surface and I see that it's white. Well, if you look at it with powerful, powerful microscopes, that's not what you see. You'll actually see imperfections, you'll see little holes, you'll see, this is a composite. So it's got different materials. So I'll see the different elements and understanding how those move that's what makes this a table that works or a table that, you know, if I set something down on, it creates a stress that causes a problem.

George Davison:

Understood. So what we're talking about then is when you let's say, look at something through microscope and you can see it down at the very, very, very small level, what are these particles? What, how do they all come together? How do they create some kind of a surface, right? And then there's thousands and thousands and thousands of different types of materials and how can you bring them together? How can you combine them? How can you integrate one material that doesn't belong with another, can that be figured out? So let's say that the material science area, knowing that it's, uh, an emerging area, um, you know, other particular places that I can learn about that accessed by my school computer.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Absolutely. Uh, you will find various websites that, and again, I would start at the national laboratory websites and the links are perhaps a bit more, um, you can count on them a bit more to be accurate. Thank you. Reliable was the word I was looking at you, you can, you can certainly start there. The other thing too, is kind of, depending on what level you are, you can find some really interesting podcasts out there. Uh, for example, MIT has a series, they do a lot of their classes as podcasts. You can just go and you can access them for free. And I think, I think doing things like that can help quite a bit. So it sort of depends on the level that you're at.

George Davison:

Right, right. That's a good idea. So will the suggestion, one of the suggestions would be get ahold of some of the labs or one of the more technically oriented schools, like an MIT and see what they're offering online that you can just grab onto it and listen and see if it inspires you in some way. Absolutely. All right. So let's, let's go in a totally different direction. Now we're going to move on to, uh, the world of big education, politics, government, that kind of thing, where we're going to pretend for a moment that we have our educator, people that are guiding the ship on what we should be teaching our young people. If we were able to communicate with them directly based on your background and all the work you've done over all these years, if we could talk to them directly, what, like what would you suggest to them as ideas on how to best teach our kids?

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

That is a really tough one because different people learn in different ways. I'm actually going to use as an example of, I think a really good way to teach is, is the whole Montessori process. My husband and I sent our kids to a Montessori school through sixth grade. And the reason why I say Montessori is because they do it both in a hands-on sense. So when they were teaching our kids about numbers, you know, you actually had, I can't remember what they call it I can't remember things that you touch and move that show you. This is how much one is 10 is a hundred, right. Starting at the real basics. But then they would also have kids looking at things from the book perspective, different kids learn in different ways. Don't assume everybody learns the same way. That's, that's honestly the number one, but Montessori. The other thing that they did is are our kids. So early on, before kids can write, they were able to write book reports by parents would come in and I did this, um, and volunteer to write what they said. And we wrote these stories for them, right. To help kids get into that whole mindset. And, and I, I, there's so many other good examples with the approach that Montessori takes, but I think the big message is different. People learn differently and the super good teachers are. Yeah, they do. We need to pay our teachers more. I will just say that because they're so important. They really are. They are how to get the political in there too.

George Davison:

Well, Kathy, I can't thank you enough for coming in here today and sharing your wisdom with us.

Kathy McCarthy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation.

Conclusion:

For more information about the innovations and ideas changing tomorrow's world tune into tomorrow's world today, now streaming on Science and Discovery, or visit tomorrowsworldtoday.com.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible].