Does your work help improve or save peoples lives?

Question: Does your work help improve or save peoples lives?

Asked by anon-201761 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 7 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-201682, anon-201773, anon-201674, anon-201686, anon-201743.
- George Fulton answered on 7 Mar 2019:
  
  I work at UKAEA (UK atomic energy authority), we often get local businesses to carry out some work for us. This means that local start-ups can grow and do well and this helps to improve the lives of people that live nearby. This is important because industry in the UK is suffering a lot at the moment and some areas rely heavily on industry jobs for a living.
  
  P.S Nuclear fusion might sound dangerous but as of yet (40 years of operation) not a single casulty has occurred.
- Sophia Pells answered on 7 Mar 2019:
  
  It could do in the future if things go well! My work could help contribute to new radioactive atoms being used for cancer therapy and imaging. The idea is that this could lead to more personalised radiation therapy so people could get just the right amount of radiation to kill tumours in their body but not do damage to healthy cells in their body.
- Meirin Oan Evans answered on 7 Mar 2019:
  
  I have no idea where, but I am confident that particle physics research will help improve and even save people’s lives in the future.
  To be able to study particles, we need to push forward the boundaries of technology, computers and engineering. These new technologies, computers and engineering techniques can then be used to help people. Three examples that came as side-benefits of particle physics are: the World Wide Web, particle accelerator techniques to treat cancer, touch-screen technology.
- Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 7 Mar 2019:
  
  It will help us clean up nuclear fuel debris with more knowledge, which ultimately keeps the people doing that task more safe. Unless it’s robots doing that job!
- Andy Buckley answered on 7 Mar 2019:
  
  I think it improves lives in the sense that knowing more about the universe we live in, and playing my own small part at chipping away at the big questions on the research frontier, tells humanity as a whole things that we never knew before. Most people will never know; some will know via fleeting news items like the HIggs boson or gravitational wave discoveries; but it’s part of the mix of human endeavour. And a “side-effect” of asking those big questions is technology development like the WWW, medical imaging improvements (e.g. PET scanners), and new cancer treatments like hadron therapy.
- Emily Lewis answered on 11 Mar 2019:
  
  I think it won’t directly save peoples lives, like Sophias work- but it will help reduce the effects of climate change if all goes well which will improve lives in general.
  Nuclear fission has a pretty bad reputation. But it doesn’t produce carbon emissions and so does not contribute to global warming which is the main problem facing the world at the moment.
  I’m trying to make reactors as safe as possible and to produce the minimum amount of waste so we can build more and move away from oil, coal and gas.

Question: Does your work help improve or save peoples lives?

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