Current Events March 25: Swedish Bandy Final

A popular sport in Sweden is Bandy also may be known as Russian hockey. Bandy is played on a very large surface of ice about the size of a football field, with 11 players per team, and instead of a puck they use a ball. The Swedish Bandy final was played at Studenternas IP in Uppsala last which is where it is typically held on last Sunday, March 20. Uppsala is about 80 km north of Stockholm. The final was played between Sandviken and Bollnäs. The game is played outside and it was a sunny day with about 20,000 people in attendance. It was 5-5 at the end of the game because within the last couple of minutes Bollnäs scored one goal but it was taken away because of a mistake by the referee. It went into overtime and Sandviken won with a final score of 6-5.

Current Events March 19: Nuclear Power Storage Proposal

Due to the current issues in Japan with their nuclear power issues, Sweden has been focused on their own nuclear power. I read two articles one from The Local and one from Stockholm News, which are both Swedish news websites. In the Local there was an article about a recent pole that was done about Nuclear power in Sweden. The Pole found that 64% of 750 interviewed Swedes opposed the idea of installing a new Nuclear power plant in Sweden. Currently 50% of Sweden's energy comes from 10 reactors from three different power stations, and the is a starting controversy over whether these power stations should still be used.
http://www.thelocal.se/32690/20110319/

The article from Stockholm News discussed Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co. plan for Nuclear waste storage. The report was just recently released right after the Japan Nuclear issues. Their proposal is to store 8000 tons of used uranium in copper pipes 500 meters underground. Apparently the copper pipes need to be able to stay intact for 100,000 years and critics are worried that these pipes will not be able to contain the uranium for that long.
http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?NID=6907

I personally agree with those 64%, nuclear power is a solution and it is great that it currently powers 50% of Sweden, but it takes so much energy to build a Nuclear power plant. It takes 7 years for the nuclear power plant to provide enough energy to restore the energy it took to make it. Seeing as most nuclear power plants only last for 15 years, that 7 years is just a little under half of its life time. Since wind turbines only take 6 months of running to restore the energy it took to make it. Wind turbines last for about the same amount of time so I think it is a much better solution then nuclear. Also it was really bad timing to release this plan at this time, they should have waited a little bit before releasing the report. Along with the issue of not having a way to store Nuclear waste, and the Obama administration just canceling a plan to store nuclear waste in Nevada, it is not the right time for nuclear power.

Starting

During Christmas Eve dinner I received a phone call from Su Wood the Rotary Outbound Coordinator that I would be going to Sweden next year. Although there were many steps leading up to this point. It started at the end of my junior year when I originally began to think that I wanted to be an exchange student. I thought about it over the summer A LOT and at the end of summer I decided to start the process to become an exchange student. One part of becoming an exchange student is the application, it took a lot of work to complete. The application is very long, it's 15 pages, it including having an up to date physical and dentist visit. Also a tuberculosis test and multiple doctor signatures. Since this application can be so complicated we had a conference call with the rest of the future outbound exchange students from our district to discuss the application. After the conference call it took a couple of weeks to get the application done. Then we had a meeting where some Rotarians went over the application and interviewed my parents and me about how we would be able to handle having me be an exchange student. The interview went great and I had a few issues to fix with the application but I fixed them and sent in the four copies of my application to Su. When I sent in my application I had to pick three possible countries that I wanted to go to. I originally had Sweden as my 1st pick Norway as my 2nd and Poland as my 3rd. Unfortunately Norway was not an option because I would have been two months to old. So my final picks were Sweden, Poland, and Romania. A few weeks later on Christmas I found out that I was going to Sweden.
I am very excited that I am going to Sweden and that I am very thankful that I was able to have this opportunity due to the Rotary Club and my local Farmington Rotary Club. Over the next several months I will be posting about my experience leading up to my exchange, including the multiple meetings, homework, and reports that I'll be doing. I'll also use this blog to report about my exchange trip to Sweden.
Well that's everything leading up to receiving the news of where I'm going and I'll try to keep updating. Wow I can't wait to go!