nuclear power plants
Your Questions About Sustainable Energy Technologies
Ruth asks…
How solar energy can be generated at competitive cost?
How solar energy can be produced at competitive cost for the welfare of people at large?Presently what is the status of its use in india?
admin answers:
Professor Andrew Blakers from The Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian National University will today report to the Greenhouse 2000 Conference in Melbourne that photovoltaic (PV) solar energy conversion can be cost-competitive with any low-emission electricity generation technology by 2030.
His paper describes how extrapolation of the huge economic and technical gains made by photovoltaics over the last 15 years gives confidence that a dramatic shift in electricity generation technology over the next quarter-century is possible.
Worldwide photovoltaic sales are growing at 40 to 50% per year. Government research & market support for photovoltaics of around $400 billion spread over the next 25 years can deliver the technology required to eliminate electricity production as a contributor to climate change. This is a large sum of money – similar to the cost of the Iraq war – but it is dwarfed by the $23 trillion expected investment in oil exploration out to 2030 or the $24 trillion investment in PV systems required to generate half of the world’s electricity by 2040.
Professor Blakers will also describe Sliver solar cell technology, which was invented at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Dr Klaus Weber and Professor Blakers in 2000 while attending a conference. Origin Energy, one of the sponsors of the Greenhouse 2000 Conference, is commercialising Sliver technology in Adelaide.
Work at ANU shows that Sliver solar cell technology can achieve electricity costs below retail electricity costs within five years, with the right investment. Explosive growth in sales in the commercial and residential sector will then follow.
Professor Blakers said that Sliver solar cell technology “can go all the way.”
“It’s not difficult to envisage Sliver based technology delivering electricity at a cost that matches wind energy, zero-emission coal and other clean energy technologies. No leap of faith is required; just careful engineering and adaptation of existing techniques from other industries,” he said.
Dr Weber added that it is essential to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel based electricity generation in order to limit climate change. The cost of doing this with advanced solar technology will be far lower than the pessimistic forecasts advanced by some analysts.
“The key to a clean energy future is the setting of clear and challenging targets and the provision of reliable, long-term support to the solar industry. The industry will respond and deliver the required technology,” Dr Weber said. Recent solar and fuel cell articles
Organic solar cells will help spur viability of alternative energy October 10, 2005
Imagine being able to “paint” your roof with enough alternative energy to heat and cool your home. What if soldiers in the field could carry an energy source in a roll of plastic wrap in their backpacks?
Harvesting tornadoes as power plants; renewable wind vortex energy October 9, 2005
Engineers are working to use artificial tornadoes as a renewable energy source according to an article in last week’s issue of The Economist. Storms release a tremendous amount of energy. Hurricane Katrina, a category 4 hurricane, released enough energy to supply the world’s power needs for a year, while the typical tornado produces as much power as a large power station.
Danish researchers develop hydrogen tablet; stores hydrogen in inexpensive and safe material September 21, 2005
Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material. With the new hydrogen tablet, it becomes much simpler to use the environmentally-friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel, but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers world-wide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.
High oil prices make Asia pursue green energy September 9, 2005
For energy-hungry Asian governments, the answer could literally be blowing in the wind. Across the region, renewable energy such as solar, wind and geothermal power is gaining ever greater credence as a way to curb the region’s appetite for oil and cut runaway import bills. With oil prices near $70, and expected by many analysts to stay over $50 through the end of 2006, governments believe alternative energy will help keep their economies growing.
Cockroaches and rats used as batteries? August 24, 2005
An article in today’s Manilla Times highlights some local research into using common household pests as energy sources. A group of scientists from Feati University recently devised a biological fue
Ken asks…
How do you feel about Nuclear power plants as a source of energy?
I have yet to make up my mind on Nuclear Energy, I would just like to see how you feel about it. I know some facts, but I would like to gain more knowlege. Also what are your ideas on Cold Fission?
Also if you could give you age that would be helpful, by all means you do not have to. -Thank you for your time.
admin answers:
The greatest technological challenge of the 21st century is to meet energy demand in an environmentally sustainable way. Nuclear energy is a carbon free energy; however, current fission technology leaves a deadly legacy – radioactive waste that is toxic for tens of thousands of years. To put the energy demands of humans in perspective with nuclear energy, please see the lecture by Nate Lewis (California Institute of Technology). In 2006, humans are consuming energy at a rate of about 14TW (14 trillion watts). Using current technology, in order to generate 10TW of energy, we would have to build a new reactor every single day for the next 50 years. This would be a monumental effort in stupidity and futility. Furthermore, this would not meet growing energy demand, which is predicted to be ~28TW in the year 2050. The clearest alternatives are wind energy and solar energy. Practically, wind energy used globally can potentially provide ~2TW energy, meaning that solar energy is going to be our primary energy source. The energy that strikes the Earth in 1 hour as sunlight is enough to provide humanity’s energy needs for 1 year (~14TW). However, this energy is diffuse, and we still need to develop low cost, efficient methods to convert solar energy to fuels and electricity. Research is progressing rapidly in this topic. The world needs to committ massive resources to this right now.
The second part of your question relates to cold fusion. Interestingly, fusion is the source of sunlight, so using solar energy, is in a way, using fusion energy (we don’t have to worry about the problems of containment and generating fusion pressures and temperatures). There are a few research projects around the world that are working on finding useful methods for controlling fusion reactions for energy. Perhaps the most well known involves a giant room with thousands of high energy lasers that are focused at a pelletized source of fusionable material. In this scheme, the energy input from the lasers initiates fusion. This technology is promising, but is far from being economical. Research efforts should continue.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
Your Questions About Sustainable Energy Fund
Mark asks…
What is predicted to happen to the gas prices in california? will it ever drop?
What is predicted to happen to the gas prices in california? will it ever drop?
right now its like 5 bucks a gallon. is the price predicted to rise? when will the price start dropping again? which president do you think will help us stabilize our economy again and have decent prices for gas in california? it is outrageous.
maybe something bout US owning Antarctica? will that help the gas prices become more stable?
admin answers:
Sorry but high gas prices are here to stay until such a time exists that demand significantly decreases due to other options. The US produces about 3% of the oil on the market and we use about 25% of what is consumed worldwide. Today, China and India have a growing demand for cars and gas. Gas prices are about $9 a gallon in Europe so we really don’t have much room to complain. Both McCain and Obama will have their work cut out for them. Drilling off-shore will have no effect on gas prices for a long, long time other than some sort of immediate feel good sensation that our leaders are doing something. It will take 10 years before off-shore drilling will yield a drop. The best solution is for you and I to reduce our individual consumption and then support policies through your voting habits that fund alternative energy, conservation and sustainable living. The way I do that is to consolidate my car trips and my husband and I ride our bicycles to work. We thought about mileage when we purchased our vehicle 2 years ago, knowing that gas prices would go up (how could you not know???? I’ve known since I the oil embargo of 1973 and I was only 11!!!!) We live in the mountain southwest where it snows heavily in winter so we need an SUV and got a Honda Element, which is very fuel efficient. We voted to increase our sales tax locally to expand city bus service. The initiative passed and we hope to take the bus to work by next summer. The bottom line is that American lifestyles are going to have to change. Some people might tell you that such changes will set us down the road to a socialist way of life similar to Europe. Well I have traveled in Europe extensively and I don’t see them complaining about riding bicycles on municipally maintained bike paths and lanes or using public transit, which is fantastic. My travels suggest to me that middle class Europeans manage pretty well, despite having to pay $9 a gallon and use buses and trains to get to work and school. This is not outrageous, this is the real world.
William asks…
What are the benefits and limitations of the current method if nuclear waste disposal?
It is a long question.
If possible, please add details. If possible, because beggars can’t be choosers. I’d be thankful if you just wrote a sentence as long as it answers my question. Hell, I’d be thankful if you wrote a word.
This might be redundant, but thank you in advance for the people who answer.
admin answers:
A very important question due to the fact that the current method of dealing with high level radioactive waste is to safely contain it or isolate it from the human environment.
In fact to date, there is still no long term solution on how to safely dispose of radioactive nuclear waste.
What the governments don’t want us to know is:
1) Nuclear power is not as clean as they portray it to be.
2) Governments spend ten of millions of our tax dollars annually to promote nuclear energy as “clean”.
3) Tritium a by-product from nuclear power plants is routinely released into the air and water as a gas,; no filtering is economically feasible.
(Tritium is a carcinogen, causes radiogenic cancers, birth defects and genetic mutations)
4) Nuclear power is not sustainable technology.
5) Greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation due to uranium mining, milling and enrichment, transportation to power plants and storage facilities and storage maintenance is poisoning life on earth.
6) In the United States alone, geological data confirms that there are over 4,000 open pit and underground uranium mines, generating approximately 3 billion metric tons of toxic waste.
7) There is no safe storage or disposal solutions for the radioactive nuclear waste we produce on a daily basis.
8) Nuclear waste from spent fuel rods will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years!
9) Nuclear power facilities worldwide are at risk of being attacked and or sabotaged as they make the perfect deadly weapon.
10) The term “Isolation” from the environment is relative due to the fact that radiation from the spent fuel will eventually be released into the biosphere over time.
The extreme longevity of nuclear waste is the one reason why we should not be producing it at all.
Until we discover a way to dispose of it safely or illiminate the waste completely a moratorium on the building of any more nuclear power facilities should be enforced.
Much research and funding has gone into the finding a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem.
Some of the proposals which have been very controversial and opposed have been;
Disposal of the radioactive waste deep below the earths surface in mined repositories deemed geologically sound.
This is the actual legal designated form of disposal to date, though it has not been demonstrated to be technically safe or infallable.
There have been other proposals in the past such as, shooting it up into space and burying it up underneath the polar ice caps.
One of the most troubling and insane ideas has been to bury it underneath the bedrock on the oceans floor. It would be almost impossible to monitor and it would take only one mistake to release and poison the earths oceans for millions of years.
Nuclear waste has been kept out of the publics mind and out of sight for the most part. This is done intentionally to avoid any opposition or public “watchdog” reviews.
It is the future of the planet that we are choosing to ignore when we let government and corporations take control of such an important issue. The nuclear power industry has only one objective, to make money! To promote their industry.
The more nuclear power plants built, the more radioactive waste the earth is going to be contaminated with.
Our future generations will be burdened with monitoring the millions of storage facilities littering the face of the earth.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
Your Questions About Renewable Energy World
Sandra asks…
How much money was made from renewable energy 2011?
I’m trying to see how much money was made from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.
admin answers:
Thats a good question. Perhaps not as much was made as was spent developing those sources. Renewable energy has been a prevailing issue due to our energy dependence and the high cost of oil. While the high cost of oil makes huge amounts of money for oil companies and OPEC, we will undoubtedly one day have to resort to the use of alternative and renewable energy to power our vehicles along with other modes of transportation as well as heat our homes and generate electricity for households and businesses. My speculation is that we will continue to use light sweet crude until the wells in the middle east run dry and then develop corn ethanol and become the primary exporter of fuel in the world bwahahahaha
Sandy asks…
Which renewable energy source has the greatest net energy yield?
Which renewable energy source has the greatest net energy yield?
A. Solar Energy
B. Hydroelectric
C. Wind
D. Biomass
E. Hydrogen Fuel
F. Geothermal
And please explain why you picked the answer , for example :
F , Geothermal , this is beacuse …….
Thanks , i need the answer+explaination by tonight .
admin answers:
Geothermal As A Green Energy Source
——————————————————————————————————————————————-
Geothermal energy is energy obtained by tapping heat from the earth itself. This comes from magma and the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium.
The downside to geothermal energy is the fact that it is expensive to build. On the other hand, because the earth’s crust continuously decays replenishing the heat, it is still a renewable source of energy.
There are three types of geothermal plants around. These are namely dry steam, flash, and binary.
Dry steam plants take steam out of fractures in the ground and use it to directly drive a turbine that spins a generator.
Flash plants take on water at temperatures over 200 °C, out of the ground, and allows it to boil as it rises to the surface then separates the steam phase in steam/water separators which runs the steam through a turbine to generate electricity.
Last, you have binary plants. Here, hot water flows through heat exchangers and that boiling organic fluid is what spins the turbine.
Once power is generated, the condensed steam and remaining geothermal fluid from all three types of plants are injected back into the hot rock to pick up more heat.
Geothermal plants are used operational in different parts of the globe. These are usually located in geologically unstable parts of the planet. You can see some in Chile, Iceland, New Zealand, United States, the Philippines and Italy. At home, two most prominent areas for this are in the Yellowstone basin and in northern California.
If you were to compare the amount of energy collected from geothermal to solar, you still get more from the sun. Despite that, people should still use it since solar energy cannot be harnessed when the clouds block the sun’s rays from reaching the solar panels.
Geothermal energy is a green energy source just like wind, hydropower and biofuel because it is a renewable. By maximizing its potential, we don’t have to worry about the price of oil in the world market when it hit more than $110 a barrel and is now under $40 in the world market.
But that is not the only thing we should be concerned about. We should also do our best to protect the environment given that coal fired and nuclear power plants produce harmful gases and radioactive waste that may cause to people and the surrounding areas.
———————————————————————————————————————————————–
Why Is Hydropower A Green Energy Source?
Why is hydropower a green energy source? It is because we are able to harness electrical power by converting water into electricity.
The use of hydroelectric power or even hydroelectricity dates back to Ancient Greece and China when they installed waterwheels in rapidly flowing rivers to turn millstones and other equipment. Years later, this was used in the New World which is now known as North America to power saws and other equipment.
But the hydroelectric plants of today still use the same basic principles as the historical waterwheel with some variations. The difference is that we use the force of the power to push the turbine which in turn powers a generator thus generating electricity.
To make sure that there is a steady flow of power being produced, a dam has to be built to retain the water. If there is a need for more power, the gates of the dam are opened so water can be released. During non-peak, the gates are closed. To ensure there is water at all times, some dams have a recovery and pumping systems to the water released can be used again.
There are issues with the use of hydroelectricity. Some claim that it poses a problem for fish and aquatic plants on both sides of the dam. Because the flow of water has been altered, the nutrient rich silt which helps crops grow could be affected which is exactly what happened when the Aswan Dam was completed in Egypt.
Lastly, you have ocean thermal energy. Here, you get power based on the different temperatures in the water. For this to work, you need at least 38 degrees Fahrenheit difference between the warmer surface water and the colder deep ocean water. Still in the trial stage, it is used Japan and Hawaii.
Hydropower is a green energy source. It is safe to use and what is even better is that it is renewable.
———————————————————————————————————————————————–
My answer is : Hydro and Geothermal
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
Developing Nuclear Power as Alternative Energy
Many researchers believe that harnessing the power of the atom in fission reactions is the most significant alternative energy resource that we have, for the fact of the immense power that it can generate.
Nuclear power plants are very clean-burning and their efficiency is rather staggering. Nuclear power is generated at 80% efficiency, meaning that the energy produced by the fission reactions is almost equal to the energy put into producing the fission reactions in the first place. There is not a lot of waste material generated by nuclear fission although, due to the fact that there is no such thing as creating energy without also creating some measure of waste, there is some. The concerns of people such as environmentalists with regards to using nuclear power as an alternative energy source center around this waste, which is radioactive gases which have to be contained.
The radiation from these gases lasts for an extraordinarily long time, so it can never be released once contained and stored. However, the volume of this waste gas produced by the nuclear power plants is small in comparison to how much NOx (nitrous oxide that is, air pollution) is caused by one day’s worth of rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles. While the radiation is certainly the more deadly by far of the two waste materials, the radiation is also by far the easier of the two to contain and store. In spite of the concerns of the environmentalists, nuclear power is actually environmentally friendly alternative energy, and the risk of the contained radiation getting out is actually quite low. With a relatively low volume of waste material produced, it should not be a difficult thing at all for storage and disposal solutions for the long term to be developed as technology advances.
The splitting of an atom releases energy in the forms of both heat and light. Atomic power plants control the fission reactions so that they don’t result in the devastating explosions that are brought forth in atomic and hydrogen bombs. There is no chance of an atomic power plant exploding like a nuclear bomb, as the specialized conditions and the pure Plutonium used to unleash an atomic bomb’s vicious force simply don’t exist inside a nuclear power plant. The risk of a meltdown is very low. Although this latter event has happened a couple of times, when one considers that there are over 430 nuclear reactors spread out across 33 nations, and that nuclear reactors have been in use since the early 1950’s, these are rare occurrences, and the events of that nature which have taken place were the fault of outdated materials which should have been properly kept up. Indeed, if nuclear energy could become a more widely accepted form of alternative energy, there would be little question of their upkeep being maintained. Currently, six states in America generate more than half of all their electrical energy needs through nuclear power, and the media are not filled with gruesome horror stories of the power plants constantly having problems.
