Linda Baine McGown

Energy Storage and Transmission

In the lifetimes of the present younger generation, raw energy will have to be produced not from oil or coal, but from solar or atomic sources. Our reliance upon fossil fuels will end within the lifetime of many of the readers of this book, and we must build a system for collecting and distributing inexhaustible clean energy in less than 50 years. If we fail to do this, our civilization will be in doubt.

Tides, Geothermal Heat, and the Big Winds

Wind generators, or “aerogenerators,” are often called by their older name: windmills. These were first seen in the twelfth century, and have been used mainly to drive machinery for farming industry, i.e., grinding grains. Modern wind generators can be seen on farms today. The rotors have generators linked to them, often behind the rotor. Such a generator is small and produces 1 or 2 kW, even in fairly strong winds of 20 km/hr. The modern wind generator on a farm is used to charge batteries which are kept I near its base, and these are used to supply the electrical needs inside the farm house at all times, independent of the momentary wind strength.

Shall We Run Out of Energy in Our Time

We have seen in the last chapter that the fossil fuel energy sources which we have been using will be exhausted. The amounts of all of these sources initially, before we started to use them, are shown in Table 4.1.

Transport and Industry Run on Electricity and Hydrogen

We have observed in Chapter 11 that it would save about 25% of our energy load if all the homes in an affluent, industrial country were run on solar energy, instead of fossil fuels. Solar-based hot water alone would save 6% of the energy load, in parts of the country where it could be used. However, the major part of our energy needs are outside the home. In fact, over half of our energy goes into the activities of transportation and industry.

Fission Reactors—What Can Go Wrong

There are numerous problems associated with fission reactors, and they are not trivial. We are talking about accidents on the order of magnitude of nuclear attacks in wartime; cancer in the later lives of many of us; genetic defects in future generations of mankind; accumulation of waste products that could be lethal; and even the possibility of terrorist threats that could make airplane hijacking look like simple street muggings. We will discuss all of these problems in this chapter, and then explain why, in light of all these dangers, fission reactors are still being used, constructed, and planned.

The Storage of Abundant Clean Energy

The storage of energy is not of much concern in our present fossil-fuel energy system. But remember that energy is stored in the fuels we use: coal, oil, and natural gas. As we have pointed out before, energy of the fossil fuels is stored solar energy.

Household Energy from the Sun

The part played by energy in the household (heating of water, home airconditioning, cooking, lighting, and refrigeration) comprises about 25% of the energy load in industrialized countries like the U.S. It would therefore be very worthwhile to get this energy directly from the sun by collecting it on rooftops, at least in the sunnier parts of the world. A pioneer in this field is seen in Figure 11.1.

How Long Does It Take to Develop and Build Up a New Technology

The following two points summarize those discussed so far in this book: 1. The energy supply is as important to a technological people, an affluent people, as the air supply to biological man. Seriously decreasing the consumption per person would cause economic depression, then disorganization, and, if the decrease were sufficient, disaster. A significant decline in the standard of living (rise in unemployment, increase in inflation, decrease in real income), compared with that of 1973, was already visible in the second half of the 1970s in several Western world countries. One of its causes was the increase in the price of energy which was occurring because of the exhaustion phase entered by the world oil resources. 2. We are running out of the sources of energy which we now use, and these will be exhausted within two to three decades. After that, we could burn all our coal (despite pollution, increased mining difficulties, and costs, etc.) which would extend the lifetime of the affluent and expanding economies a few decades more.

Converting Solar Energy to Useful Fuel

The conversion of light radiation to heat energy is a matter of common expeience—things placed in the sun get warm. However, different materials absorb different amounts of heat. For example, something which is dark gets warmer than something which is light in color. The reason is simple. Black objects absorb light, so that no light is reflected from black surfaces to our eyes. The light, once absorbed, is converted to energy of motion, causing the atoms and molecules in the object to move faster. This increased movement causes friction within the object, and is observed by us as a rise in the temperature of the object. In other words, the energy of the light is converted to heat energy, and the substance gets hotter (see Figure 10.1).

The Politics of Survival

Politics? According to the dictionary, it means “practical wisdom,” or “crafty and unscrupulous,” or “expedient.” What politics usually means in practice is the art and science of distributing the money which accrues to the government from the people’s taxes. Politicians are the people who decide this distribution, who make the decisions as to where and how it is to be used, and thus, as the flow of money controls action, it is by and large the politicians (more than any other group in the community) who control what new projects, whether they be road building or research, are carried out.