On the 6th May 2020, the North West (NW) branch, in conjunction with the Young Generation Network (YGN), held the Young Person’s Speaking Competition regional final, with all the finalists delivering an engaging technical presentation.
With the Covid-19 pandemic preventing gatherings, the North West Branch had to adapt and so it organised and ran the first ever Speaking Competition Webinar.
The annual regional competition gives the newer members of the nuclear industry a chance to practice their public speaking skills and compete for the first prize of £300 and a place in the national final. To enter the event, budding speakers were asked to submit a 200-word synopsis proposing a talk topic. All synopses are reviewed by an independent panel, with five being chosen to present this year from the 11 entries received.
The judges for the evening were Donna Causon (Jacobs and NW Branch Co-Chair), James Gath (National Nuclear Laboratory and NW Branch regional winner 2019), James Dixon (Orano Projects Limited) and Monica Mwanje (Founder and Director of MM Creative Solutions).
Rebecca Houghton, an Efficiency Engineer at EDF, gave the winning presentation with her technical talk entitled ‘Ebb and Flow: How Nuclear Generation is Shaped by the Sea’. This presentation gave an insight into the relationship between the moon, the tide, the season and a Nuclear Powerplants Efficiency. Rebecca Houghton will now go forward to represent the North West in the YGN Speaking Competition national final that will be held in September.
The runner up speakers this year were; Samuel Kent (2nd place) from Jacobs, presenting ‘Facts with Context: fighting anti-nuclear propaganda’, Natalie Devine (3rd Place) from Urenco Nuclear Stewardship, presenting ‘Oil, Gas, Nuclear – Are any of them really safe?’, Einan Solomon (University or Liverpool) with a talk on ‘Hybrid Reactors and Their Uses’, and Adam Towne (Atkins) with a talk on ‘Evolution or Revolution; The Role of Nuclear Energy in the Energy Transition’.
You can view the full competition here