Paris... study, study, shop and eat
A little haute couture, haute cuisine and a lot of learning
Lisa McIsaac is one of three Cameco employees selected to attend the World Nuclear University in Stockholm Sweden this summer. They are part of a group of 90 students chosen from around the world to study for six weeks at the WNU Summer Institute. As part of their trip they spent a week in France touring nuclear sites ... with a visit to Paris. The following are highlights from notes Lisa has sent back to Port Hope.
"TGIF!" It's been a very busy, full and tiring week touring in France. But it went by quickly. The hotel in Cherbourg is the most beautiful setting of the week. The weather is bright and sunny with a cooling breeze off the English Channel. After arriving last night, I walked along the promenade.
The tour today was of the La Hague site 20 km from Cherbourg, including the reprocessing plant, environmental lab/offices and interim storage building for vitrified waste. Probably the best tour in terms of questions being answered and information given. Their security group includes a full-time firefighting team. We also visited the initial reprocessing plant, essentially a pilot plant with a capacity of 1 kg/day, which between 1981 and 2001 was decommissioned and decontaminated to 0.1 Bq/g. The building shell has been left as a demonstration site and museum (the site has 550 hectares so has lots of room to building new buildings).
The interim storage was really interesting. The building we saw is the secondary stage, where natural ventilation is used to remove the heat generated by radioactive decay. It is adjacent to the now-closed low-level storage site, with distinct peaked building roof profiles under the cap of earth and green grass.
The environmental lab has an amazing view-at least today with the clear weather. England is only 50 km away, across the English Channel.
We enjoyed another very rich and filling French meal of pate foie gras with smoked duck and salad. Then we boarded the train from Cherbourg to Paris.
Some of our group went to the typical sites like the Louvre and Eiffel tower and some went shopping. I did a little of both, starting at Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. Sunday morning I walked the Champs Elysees and found all the couture houses, unfortunately - perhaps fortunately - they weren't open that early in the morning.
Monday we started a 3-day session on nuclear law, security, and non-proliferation. As with many of the previous lectures, there was a lot of background information on the events happening at the time to cause this legislation to be developed. Yesterday was a review of non-power and non-weapons uses of nuclear and radiation. In the afternoon we reviewed the case study on law, security, and proliferation. I really enjoyed the case study as it forced us to push beyond the information available and make some personal commitments and decisions about what direction a company should proceed.
Friday morning we had a discussion on nuclear politics and gaining public trust and confidence. It proved the point that in a group of 10 lawyers, you will have 11 opinions and they're all correct.
Our group has had lots of time to talk to one another and there seems to be less thinking about what is currently being done and more thinking of ideas about what can be accomplished through innovation and teamwork. One, of many, things I've learned about team building is that working and thinking together, in close quarters, can certainly accelerate the team building process.
