Part XIII: Conclusions And Tiny Sliver Of Hope?

We started the energy series on June 27th and today we come full circle, as we end it with Part XIII:Conclusions. I have no doubt that 99% of people will disagree with "utliizing" one or more of the energy sources that we have looked at through this series. The twelve sources that We looked at were: Oil, Coal, Wind, Solar, Waves, Biomass/Biofuels, Hydropower, Geothermal, Natural Gas, Nuclear "fission", Hyrdogen, and Nuclear "fusion", with the attitude that we MUST use all of them on a massive scale.

We started the series with these two opening paragraphs: As we begin Part 1 of the energy series with Why We Must Drill Here, I want to give the opposing view of drilling off shore and in ANWR from the Sierra Club, and some leading Democrats. There are more arguments out there for why we should not drill, but my overall view is that we should drill, so I am not going to be Fair and Balanced on this subject, as my Favorite News Channel would be", because it is just too important to the survival of our Nation's energy needs, and possible independence to give much weight to naysayers, no matter how well meaning, as they are wrong!!


The main story behind all of these posts was that we CAN become energy independent and wean ourselves off oil over the next decade IF we have the WILL to DO IT, and so far we have seen nothing to suggest that the politicians or our fellow citizens are going to do anything but whine about the problem, without the RESOLVE to do everything in our power to change it. So while I have done a post about each energy method that we MUST utilize, I have little hope of it actually happening, thanks to the tree hugging liberals who don't care if we survive, and the dollar hugging bastards who only want oil, or other profit producing energy sources, as our main energy drugs. I see the death of our nation by this suicidal course, as "everyone" knows what they know, and to hell with working toward a common end!! God will not help us, and we damn well seem Hell bent on not helping ourselves!!

Over the course of this series, we have seen the events unfolding in our daily lives concerning the rising oil prices, and the bickering and between the those who do not want to drill more (mostly Democrats), and those that do want to drill more (mostly Republicans, including the President), and there does not seem to be any give on either side at this juncture in time. So, we will see that my hope for seriousness from our Nation's Leaders on this important issue, was nothing more than a "waking" dream, and 15 or 20 years from now~~If we survive, we shall still be in the same sad situation that we are in now. Energy dependence on wholly unreliable sources, and prices that grind the common person to dust!!

So I am left with my "fantasy" of American's actually getting serious enough about energy problems, and begin to care so much so, that they absolutely "choose" to make this the number one issue in importance, and treat it as not only a National Defense issue, but a National Survival issue. Then we could see the utilization of every energy source mentioned. These sources "fully realized", with energy conservation, could potentially make us energy independent! This could open a new chapter in America's history, but unfortunately, we are petty creatures, who will continue to argue among ourselves, until it is too late, or if God saves us by allowing us to "find" another Lincoln, Roosevelt, or Kennedy, to inspire us to become more than the sum or our parts, for a National, even Worldwide goal. This will obviously have to wait until after this election, as the two people running cannot see the forest for the trees of their own backgrounds and perceptions. Obama "could" have been the One, if not for the blinders of his "inner tree-hugging socialist", and McCain, Never was a viable "Big Vision" person, as he is wholly owned by his former "hosts" overseas, and whatever else bounces around inside that angry mind of his.

All of you on the left who refuse to drill, anywhere, anytime, are as responsible for this mess, as those on the right, who only want to drill, everywhere, everytime, instead of utilizing EVERY resource out there, including one of the most important ones~~Conservation. This coupled with everything we have covered in this series will not only acheive our goal, but make us better people in the process. This MUST be the biggest, and most important undertaking in our Nation's history, and whether we expend every penny of our treasure or not, there can be Nothing but Total Victory, in energy independence, to make it worthwhile!!

I keep reading that no matter what, it will not help right away, but those people are missing the point. We need to throw all of the rule books away; therefore, no hearings, zoning reports, etc., etc., anything that impedes the processes of any energy source, must be pushed aside and we do what is "reasonable" and "safe" enough~~for now~~to get to our goal!! Just the fact that the world would see "US" embarking on this course would be enough to affect prices today, and tomorrow...and that is the goal~in the short term, with energy independence for the long term. Let's stop fighting, put aside politics, rhetoric, and environmental issues, and DO IT, and tweak IT as need be, so as to not Totally destroy "everything" to accomplish this goal!!

And then I woke up~~~
~~and realized it will not happen!!

While I do not believe that we shall do what we need to do for National survival, I do have the itsy-bitsy-slightest bit of hope, because there is a sliver of hopeful news, of what people are doing already, to make things a little better in their communities, including the following one I found this morning as I was preparing this post.
We shall also try and drop a post in now and again as a reminder, of what we "NEED" to do to Fix Our Energy Problems!! Enjoy the small story below and Have A Great Sunday Afternoon!!

This story was at Yahoo News, and was titled "Small towns get creative as fuel costs bite", and begins:
Police officer James Denman gets a cup of coffee at a local convenience store as he prepares to swap his gas-guzzling squad car for a more energy-efficient patrol vehicle -- a bicycle.
In Scotch Plains, New Jersey, police are doing more cruising on bikes, while elsewhere across America, small towns are taking unusual measures to rein in rising costs.
One Connecticut town plans to put century-old dams back to work generating electricity, while other communities are telling workers to turn off their vehicles when stopped instead of letting them idle.
Gasoline and heating oil prices have soared, electricity has grown more expensive and health care costs keep rising, prompting municipalities to do what they can to cut costs.

link to full story

Part XII: Fusion

In Part XII: Fusion, we look at the final energy source in this series, with Conclusions coming tomorrow with all that we have learned:
Fusion is the fundamental energy source of the universe. It is the process that powers the sun and the stars. In a fusion reaction, large amounts of energy are released when the nuclei of two light atoms (deuterium and tritium) fuse together to form a heavier one, helium. Tapping into this energy source offers the prospect of a long-term, safe, environmentally friendly option to meet the energy needs of a growing world population.
Fusion is a particularly attractive energy solution as it uses a fuel that is abundant and available everywhere. The primary fuels used in fusion are deuterium and lithium. Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope, which can be readily extracted from water (there is around 30g of deuterium in every cubic metre of water), and lithium is an abundant light metal from which tritium can be generated inside the reactor.
In hydrogen atoms the centre, or nucleus, contains only one proton. In deuterium the nucleus contains a proton and one neutron, while for tritium there are two neutrons with the proton. The fusion of one deuterium nucleus with a tritium nucleus makes a new nucleus of the element helium (also known as an alpha particle), a neutron and energy – lots of it! The extra neutron can be used to generate more tritium fuel from lithium. One gram of fusion fuel could generate 100 000 kilowatt hours of electricity – to supply the equivalent power you would need to burn eight tons of coal!

Fusion reactions occur at high temperatures when the nuclei collide with sufficient energy to overcome the natural repulsive forces of their electrical charges. They occur naturally in the sun at temperatures of 10 - 15 million ºC, producing the energy that sustains life on earth. However, in the sun the fusion fuel is heated and compressed by massive gravitational forces. On earth we cannot use gravity, so the challenge for fusion researchers is to compensate by heating a lower-density plasma to a higher temperature (about 100 million ºC, or 10 times hotter than the core of the sun) with excellent thermal insulation to initiate self-sustaining fusion reactions. 100 million ºC is well above the temperature at which a gas is completely ionised and becomes a plasma, the fourth state of matter. In an ionised plasma the positively-charged nuclei and negatively-charged electrons of atoms are separated and move about freely like molecules in a gas. More than 99% of our universe exists as plasma but most of it at much lower temperatures!
To reach fusion conditions in the plasma, powerful heating is necessary and heat loss must be kept to a minimum by keeping the hot plasma thermally insulated from the reactor walls – a process known as confinement. This is a difficult task, both in terms of understanding the complex physical processes involved and developing the sophisticated technologies required to control them. Two different technologies have been developed in fusion research: magnetic confinement and inertial confinement.

Magnetic confinement uses strong magnetic fields to provide the thermal insulation of the plasma and allows the possibility of steady state operation, while interial confinement uses high-power lasers or ion beams to heat and compress minuscule pellets of fuel.

A brief history of fusion:
The first clues to how the stars function were revealed in Einstein’s deceptively simple equation E = mc2 derived in 1905 as a consequence of his special theory of relativity.
This famous equation predicted that a tiny amount of mass could, in principle, be converted into a tremendous amount of energy. Einstein’s relation generalised and extended the previous 19th century law on conservation of energy established by von Helmholtz and Mayer to include the conversion of mass into energy.
What was the connection between Einstein's equation and the energy source of the Sun? The answer was not obvious. Astronomers did their part by defining the constraints that observations of stars imposed on possible explanations for the generation of stellar energy. In 1919, Henry Norris Russell, a leading theoretical astronomer in the United States, summarised concisely the hints on the nature of the stellar energy source. Russell stressed that the most important clue was the high temperature in the interior of stars.
Francis William Aston discovered the key experimental piece of the puzzle in 1920. He made precise measurements of the masses of many different atoms, among them hydrogen and helium, and found that four hydrogen nuclei were heavier than a helium nucleus.
The importance of Aston's measurements was recognised immediately by Sir Arthur Eddington, the British astrophysicist. Eddington argued in his 1920 presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science that Aston's measurement of the mass difference between four atoms of hydrogen and a helium atom meant that the sun could shine by converting hydrogen atoms into helium. This burning of hydrogen into helium would (according to E=mc2) release about 0.7% of the mass equivalent of the energy. In principle, this would allow the sun to shine for about 100 billion years.
In 1939, Hans Bethe described a quantitative theory explaining the fusion generation of energy in the stars (including our sun). The results of his calculations presented in a paper entitled "Energy Production in Stars,'' won him the Nobel prize for Physics in 1968.
With the general theory for fusion reactions now understood, experimental efforts to control the release of fusion energy for net energy output could now be progressed and continue today.
The first fusion experiments were conducted in the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, UK, during the 1930’s but results led the eminent scientist Lord Rutherford to pronounce in 1933 that “anyone who looks for a source of power in the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine.”
However after World War II and the technical success of the Manhattan project that developed the first nuclear weapons, an increased interest in atomic physics and fusion in particular was seen.
There was serious interest in the peaceful use of fusion physics all around the world. In fact, in 1951 scientists in Argentina claimed to have controlled the release of nuclear fusion energy. These claims proved to be false but they acted as a spur to many other research groups.
In the UK, much of the early work on fusion was undertaken by universities, principally Sir George Thomson’s group at Imperial College and Peter Thonemann’s team at Oxford, before being centred respectively at Harwell and Aldermaston. Sir George Thomson even developed a patent for a fusion reactor. In 1952 Cousins and Ware built a small toroidal pinch device, but the original large-scale experimental fusion device on which most British fusion physicists worked during the 1940s and 50s was housed in a hangar at Harwell and called the Zero Energy Toroidal Assembly (ZETA). ZETA was a stabilised toroidal pinch device and worked from 1954 until 1958 giving results that showed initial promise and gave clues to later larger devices.
In the US, Lyman Spitzer started the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory working on a magnetic confinement device called a stellarator. James Tuck, a British physicist, began work at Los Alamos National Laboratory working on magnetic pinch devices and Edward Teller expanded work on the hydrogen bomb at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to include inertial confinement techniques.
In the Soviet Union, significant fusion research was also being undertaken. At first all these national projects were shrouded in secrecy, but with the temporary thaw in the Cold War created in 1956 by the visit of the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Bulganin to the UK, the first attempts at global co-operation were created. The Russians brought their leading fusion expert academician I V Kurchatov to give a lecture "The Possibility of Producing Thermonuclear Reactions in a Gas Discharge". This described Soviet work in the field and the UK shared its ZETA experience.
Fusion research also started elsewhere (e.g. France and Germany). International co-operation began under the normal scientific exchange of information as countries declassified fusion research, and an Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva in 1958 sealed the start of the process. In the UK this led directly to the setting up of a custom-built laboratory at Culham that would subsequently become the home of the Joint European Torus (JET).
Almost 10 years later (in 1968) results from the Russians Tamm and Sakharov using a new type of magnetic confinement device called a tokamak caused a major stir. Their experiment ran at temperatures ten times higher (10 million degrees centigrade) than anywhere else in the world with excellent confinement results.
The success of the Russians, confirmed by visiting UK scientists in 1969, led to the construction of many tokamak experiments and its position as the dominant technique for fusion research today.
In 1978 the JET project was launched in Europe coming into operation in 1983. The Japanese tokamak JT-60 came online in 1985. In 1991, JET produced for the first time in the world, a significant amount of power (1.7MW or 1.7 million watts) from controlled nuclear fusion reactions. Subsequently, in 1993 the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) device in Princeton produced 10 MW of power with a plasma fuelled by a 50/50 mix of deuterium and tritium.
In 1997 JET established the current world record for fusion power producing 16 MW of power. All the work in these and other tokamak experiments around the world have given the designers of ITER the information they need to take the next step in the history of fusion.
How does a fusion plant work:
How can fusion produce electricity in a future power plant? The fusion reaction can be simply written as:
Tritium (3H) + deuterium (2H) >> Helium (4He) + a high-energy neutron (n)
In a fusion power plant most of the energy produced by the reactions in the plasma is carried by the neutrons. These high energy neutrons (14 MeV) are captured and their energy used to generate electricity. The energy of the neutrons is absorbed in the structures lining the plasma chamber (known as a torus) walls. The remaining energy in the helium (4He) particles maintains the high plasma temperature. An outline design for a fusion power plant is shown below.
In a fusion power plant the plasma would be confined in a large vacuum vessel surrounded by a neutron absorbing breeding blanket. The breeding blanket has a dual function: it converts the energy of the neutrons into thermal energy and it ‘breeds’ new tritium from lithium to provide more reaction elements.
A large scale vacuum systems is required to ensure an ultra high vacuum in the reactor vessel and to maintain the vacuum surrounding the Superconducting coils located outside the reactor vessel that provide the required strong magnetic field to confine the plasma away from the vessel walls.
Cryogenics (circulating very low temperature liquids) are used to remove the waste and impurities from the plasma, cool the super-conducting magnet coils to allow them to operate, separate the waste gasses into their different individual components for disposal or recycling, provide the cooling for the Radio Frequency heating sources and control the gas pressure of neutral beam systems.
A circulating coolant removes the heat from the blanket and, in the heat exchangers, steam is generated to drive turbines for electricity production.
The main challenge in fusion is to maintain the high temperature of the plasma for long periods of time. In a burning plasma the energy of the Helium nuclei are the main contributors to heating the plasma. However, the plasma is constantly being cooled by impurities picked up from the vessel wall. A divertor system in the vacuum vessel extracts waste gases and power from the plasma and new deuterium and tritium is continuously injected into the plasma.
And the advantage of fusion are:
Almost limitless fuel supply. The basic fuels are distributed widely around the globe. Deuterium is abundant and can be extracted easily from sea water. Lithium, from which tritium can be produced, is a readily available light metal in the Earth’s crust.
No greenhouse gas emissions. Fusion power will not generate gases such as carbon dioxide that are causing growing concern with regard to global warming and other damaging effects on the environment.
Suitable for the large-scale electricity production required for the increasing energy needs of modern cities. A fusion power station will generate a large amount of electricity around the clock.
Waste from fusion will not be a long-term burden on future generations. Only reactor structures close to the fusion plasma will become radioactive. Any radioactive waste generated will be small in volume and the radioactivity will decay over several decades with the possibility of reuse after about 100 years.
The transport of radioactive materials is not required in the day-to-day operation of a fusion power station. The radioactive tritium can be generated and consumed as needed within the reactor.
The system has inherent safety aspects. Only very small amounts of fuel are present in the reactor at any one time. Any malfunction results in a rapid shutdown: ‘runaway’ or ‘meltdown’ accidents are impossible as no chain reaction is involved
. Very low risk of radioactive emissions to the environment. Extensive safety studies have shown that a fusion power station can be operated without significant risk of radioactive emissions. Even in a ‘worst case’ accident scenario there would be no need to evacuate the local population.

link to wiki fusion

Part XI: Hydrogen

Part XI: Hydrogen, we will look at its' history and potential uses for our energy needs.

In 1766, hydrogen was detected for the first time as a new gas. Henry Cavendish had the idea to decompose vapor with a very hot iron bar. In this decompose process arose the so called Hydrogene (v. Gr. Hudoor=water, Gennaoo=generate) or waterforming material, which was translated as hydrogen.

In the world of chemistry, hydrogen is defined as H2. H2 means that a hydrogen molecule consists out of two hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen in the form of gas is very inflammable. When hydrogen comes into contact with fire, it reacts with a 'pop' with oxygen (O2) and transformes into vapour, that's why they call it waterforming material. The reaction-equation that comes with this process is that two hydrogen molecules react with one oxygen molecule and the atoms divide into two water molecules. 2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O. The water molecules can be divided again in hydrogen and oxygen. Under very high temperaturs, hydrogen can be fused into helium and there arises from this process a lot of energy. The same process takes place in the sun where the released energy disappears into space and heats the earth.

You can hardly find hydrogen in it's pure form. Mostly you find hydrogen in combination with oxygen (H2O - water), nitrogen (NH3 - ammonia) or carbon (CH4 - natural gas). For the winning of hydrogen out of these materials there is a process needed to separate the hydrogen-atoms from the other atoms. This is called a decomposition-reaction.


Hydrogen is a material which gives a lot of energy while burning. In principle, machines can work on hydrogen-energy, but you need hydrogen gas for this process. The problem is that you have to win hydrogen-gas out of a material containing hydrogen atoms. Another problem is that you cannot store the gas 'plain' in, for instance, your car because the gas is very inflammable, so you must burn it when the gas is created. The solution to this problem is the fuel-cell.. How the fuel-cell works you can read in the article about the fuelcell. More information about the kind of machinery in which hydrogen is employed in experimental form, you can read about in the article about applications.

Nowadays, hydrogen-gas is a fuel which is not used very often because the technique neccesary to generate energy out of hydrogen is very expensive.They already use hydrogen at space-travel, here the money is available. At this moment they are running tests with hydrogen-gas in vehicles. For the future, it is important to reduce te costs of this technique, maybe then it is possible to use hydrogen-gas more and more.

There are lots of applications for hydrogen as energy-source, if people really want to use it. The most important application for hydrogen is the car. Cars are very important for this new technique, because a lot of the carbondioxide (CO2) pollution is coming from the emmision of cars. If cars in the future are driving on hydrogen-gas instead of petrol, the emmision will be vapor instead of pollution with CO2. Some car companies are developing the so called 'hybrid'-vehicles. Hybrid-vehicles are cars which are driving on 'water'.

Here is a quick Timeline of Hydrogen Knowledge:
Introduction:
Hydrogen has received increased attention as a renewable and environmentally-friendly option to help meet today's energy needs. The road leading to an under­standing of hydrogen's energy potential presents a fascinating tour through scientific discovery and industrial ingenuity.
1766 Hydrogen was first identified as a distinct element by British scientist Henry Cavendish after he evolved hydrogen gas by reacting zinc metal with hydrochloric acid. In a demonstration to the Royal Society of London, Cavendish applied a spark to hydrogen gas yielding water. This discovery led to his later finding that water (H2O) is made of hydrogen and oxygen.
1783 Jacques Alexander Cesar Charles, a French physicist, launched the first hydrogen balloon flight. Known as “Charliere,” the unmanned balloon flew to an altitude of three kilometers. Only three months later, Charles himself flew in his first manned hydrogen balloon.
1788 Building on the discoveries of Cavendish, French chem­ist Antoine Lavoisier gave hydrogen its name, which was derived from the Greek words—“hydro” and “genes,” meaning “water” and “born of.”
1800 English scientists William Nicholson and Sir Anthony Carlisle discovered that apply­ing electric current to water produced hydrogen and oxygen gases. This process was later termed “electrolysis.”
1838 The fuel cell effect, combining hydrogen and oxygen gases to produce water and an electric current, was discovered by Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich Schoenbein.
1845 Sir William Grove, an English scientist and judge, demon­strated Schoenbeinʼs discovery on a practical scale by creating a “gas battery.” He earned the title “Father of the Fuel Cell” for his achievement
1874 Jules Verne, an English author, prophetically examined the potential use of hydrogen as a fuel in his popular work of fic­tion entitled The Mysterious Island.

Tomorrow Will Be Part XII: Fusion, with Part XIII To Follow With Conclusions The Day After!!

link to wikipedia information site

Part X: Nuclear

Today in the energy series we will look at one of my favorite "new", "old" technologies, in Part X: Nuclear
The science of atomic radiation, atomic change and nuclear fission was developed from 1895 to 1945, much of it in the last six of those years.
Over 1939-45, most development was focused on the atomic bomb.
From 1945 attention was given to harnessing this energy in a controlled fashion for naval propulsion and for making electricity.
Since 1956 the prime focus has been on the technological evolution of reliable nuclear power plants.
Uranium was discovered in 1789 by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist, and named after the planet Uranus.

Ionising radiation was discovered by Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895, by passing an electric current through an evacuated glass tube and producing continuous X-rays. Then in 1896 Henri Becquerel found that pitchblende (an ore containing radium and uranium) caused a photographic plate to darken. He went on to demonstrate that this was due to beta radiation (electrons) and alpha particles (helium nuclei) being emitted. Villard found a third type of radiation from pitchblende: gamma rays, which were much the same as X-rays. Then in 1896 Pierre and Marie Curie gave the name 'radioactivity' to this phenomenon, and in 1898 isolated polonium and radium from the pitchblende. Radium was later used in medical treatment. In 1898 Samuel Prescott showed that radiation destroyed bacteria in food.
In 1902 Ernest Rutherford showed that radioactivity as a spontaneous event emitting an alpha or beta particle from the nucleus created a different element. He went on to develop a fuller understanding of atoms and in 1919 he fired alpha particles from a radium source into nitrogen and found that nuclear rearrangement was occurring, with formation of oxygen. Niels Bohr was another scientist who advanced our understanding of the atom and the way electrons were arranged around its nucleus through to the 1940s.
By 1911 Frederick Soddy discovered that naturally-radioactive elements had a number of different isotopes (radionuclides), with the same chemistry. Also in 1911, George de Hevesy showed that such radionuclides were invaluable as tracers, because minute amounts could readily be detected with simple instruments.
In 1932 James Chadwick discovered the neutron. Also in 1932 Cockcroft and Walton produced nuclear transformations by bombarding atoms with accelerated protons, then in 1934 Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot found that some such transformations created artificial radionuclides. The next year Enrico Fermi found that a much greater variety of artificial radionuclides could be formed when neutrons were used instead of protons.
Fermi continued his experiments, mostly producing heavier elements from his targets, but also, with uranium, some much lighter ones. In 1939 Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman in Berlin showed that the new lighter elements were barium and others which were about half the mass of uranium, thereby demonstrating that atomic fission had occurred. Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch, working under Niels Bohr, then explained this by suggesting that the neutron was captured by the nucleus, causing severe vibration leading to the nucleus splitting into two not quite equal parts. They calculated the energy release from this fission as about 200 million electron volts. Frisch then confirmed this figure experimentally.
This was the first experimental confirmation of Albert Einstein's paper putting forward the equivalence between mass and energy, which had been published in 1905.


These 1939 developments sparked activity in many laboratories. Hahn and Strassman showed that fission not only released a lot of energy but that it also released additional neutrons which could cause fission in other uranium nuclei and possibly a self-sustaining chain reaction leading to an enormous release of energy. This suggestion was soon confirmed experimentally by Joliot and his co-workers in Paris, and Leo Szilard working with Fermi in New York.
Bohr soon proposed that fission was much more likely to occur in the uranium-235 isotope than in U-238 and that fission would occur more effectively with slow-moving neutrons than with fast neutrons, the latter point being confirmed by Szilard and Fermi, who proposed using a 'moderator' to slow down the emitted neutrons. Bohr and Wheeler extended these ideas into what became the classical analysis of the fission process, and their paper was published only two days before war broke out in 1939.
Another important factor was that U-235 was then known to comprise only 0.7% of natural uranium, with the other 99.3% being U-238, with similar chemical properties. Hence the separation of the two to obtain pure U-235 would be difficult and would require the use of their very slightly different physical properties. This increase in the proportion of the U-235 isotope became known as 'enrichment'.
The remaining piece of the fission/atomic bomb concept was provided in 1939 by Francis Perrin who introduced the concept of the critical mass of uranium required to produce a self-sustaining release of energy. His theories were extended by Professor Peierls at Birmingham University and the resulting calculations were of considerable importance in the development of the atomic bomb. Perrin's group in Paris continued their studies and demonstrated that a chain reaction could be sustained in a uranium-water mixture (the water being used to slow down the neutrons) provided external neutrons were injected into the system. They also demonstrated the idea of introducing neutron-absorbing material to limit the multiplication of neutrons and thus control the nuclear reaction (which is the basis for the operation of a nuclear power station).

British scientists had kept pressure on their government. The refugee physicists Peierls and Frisch (who had stayed in England with Peierls after the outbreak of war), gave a major impetus to the concept of the atomic bomb in a three-page document known as the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum. In this they predicted that an amount of about 5kg of pure U-235 could make a very powerful atomic bomb equivalent to several thousand tonnes of dynamite. They also suggested how such a bomb could be detonated, how the U-235 could be produced, and what the radiation effects might be in addition to the explosive effects. They proposed thermal diffusion as a suitable method for separating the U-235 from the natural uranium. This memorandum stimulated a considerable response in Britain at a time when there was little interest in the USA.
A group of eminent scientists known as the MAUD Committee was set up in Britain and supervised research at the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool and Oxford. The chemical problems of producing gaseous compounds of uranium and pure uranium metal were studied at Birmingham University and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Dr Philip Baxter at ICI made the first small batch of gaseous uranium hexafluoride for Professor James Chadwick in 1940. ICI received a formal contract later in 1940 to make 3kg of this vital material for the future work. Most of the other research was funded by the universities themselves.
Two important developments came from the work at Cambridge. The first was experimental proof that a chain reaction could be sustained with slow neutrons in a mixture of uranium oxide and heavy water, ie. the output of neutrons was greater than the input. The second was by Bretscher and Feather based on earlier work by Halban and Kowarski soon after they arrived in Britain from Paris. When U-235 and U-238 absorb slow neutrons, the probability of fission in U-235 is much greater than in U-238. The U-238 is more likely to form a new isotope U-239, and this isotope rapidly emits an electron to become a new element with a mass of 239 and an Atomic Number of 93. This element also emits an electron and becomes a new element of mass 239 and Atomic Number 94, which has a much greater half-life. Bretscher and Feather argued on theoretical grounds that element 94 would be readily fissionable by slow and fast neutrons, and had the added advantages that it was chemically different to uranium and therefore could easily be separated from it.
This new development was also confirmed in independent work by McMillan and Abelson in the USA in 1940. Dr Kemmer of the Cambridge team proposed the names neptunium for the new element # 93 and plutonium for # 94 by analogy with the outer planets Neptune and Pluto beyond Uranus (uranium, element # 92). The Americans fortuitously suggested the same names, and the identification of plutonium in 1941 is generally credited to Glenn Seaborg.



By the end of 1940 remarkable progress had been made by the several groups of scientists coordinated by the MAUD Committee and for the expenditure of a relatively small amount of money. All of this work was kept secret, whereas in the USA several publications continued to appear in 1940 and there was also little sense of urgency.
By March 1941 one of the most uncertain pieces of information was confirmed - the fission cross-section of U-235. Peierls and Frisch had initially predicted in 1940 that almost every collision of a neutron with a U-235 atom would result in fission, and that both slow and fast neutrons would be equally effective. It was later discerned that slow neutrons were very much more effective, which was of enormous significance for nuclear reactors but fairly academic in the bomb context. Peierls then stated that there was now no doubt that the whole scheme for a bomb was feasible provided highly enriched U-235 could be obtained. The predicted critical size for a sphere of U-235 metal was about 8kg, which might be reduced by use of an appropriate material for reflecting neutrons. However, direct measurements on U-235 were still necessary and the British pushed for urgent production of a few micrograms.
The final outcome of the MAUD Committee was two summary reports in July 1941. One was on 'Use of Uranium for a Bomb' and the other was on 'Use of Uranium as a Source of Power'. The first report concluded that a bomb was feasible and that one containing some 12 kg of active material would be equivalent to 1,800 tons of TNT and would release large quantities of radioactive substances which would make places near the explosion site dangerous to humans for a long period. It estimated that a plant to produce 1kg of U-235 per day would cost ?5 million and would require a large skilled labour force that was also needed for other parts of the war effort. Suggesting that the Germans could also be working on the bomb, it recommended that the work should be continued with high priority in cooperation with the Americans, even though they seemed to be concentrating on the future use of uranium for power and naval propulsion.
The second MAUD Report concluded that the controlled fission of uranium could be used to provide energy in the form of heat for use in machines, as well as providing large quantities of radioisotopes which could be used as substitutes for radium. It referred to the use of heavy water and possibly graphite as moderators for the fast neutrons, and that even ordinary water could be used if the uranium was enriched in the U-235 isotope. It concluded that the 'uranium boiler' had considerable promise for future peaceful uses but that it was not worth considering during the present war. The Committee recommended that Halban and Kowarski should move to the USA where there were plans to make heavy water on a large scale. The possibility that the new element plutonium might be more suitable than U-235 was mentioned, so that the work in this area by Bretscher and Feather should be continued in Britain.
The two reports led to a complete reorganisation of work on the bomb and the 'boiler'. It was claimed that the work of the committee had put the British in the lead and that "in its fifteen months' existence it had proved itself one of the most effective scientific committees that ever existed". The basic decision that the bomb project would be pursued urgently was taken by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, with the agreement of the Chiefs of Staff.
The reports also led to high level reviews in the USA, particularly by a Committee of the National Academy of Sciences, initially concentrating on the nuclear power aspect. Little emphasis was given to the bomb concept until 7 December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and the Americans entered the war directly. The huge resources of the USA were then applied without reservation to developing atomic bombs.


The Americans increased their effort rapidly and soon outstripped the British. Research continued in each country with some exchange of information. Several of the key British scientists visited the USA early in 1942 and were given full access to all of the information available. The Americans were pursuing three enrichment processes in parallel: Professor Lawrence was studying electromagnetic separation at Berkeley (University of California), E. V. Murphree of Standard Oil was studying the centrifuge method developed by Professor Beams, and Professor Urey was coordinating the gaseous diffusion work at Columbia University. Responsibility for building a reactor to produce fissile plutonium was given to Arthur Compton at the University of Chicago. The British were only examining gaseous diffusion.
In June 1942 the US Army took over process development, engineering design, procurement of materials and site selection for pilot plants for four methods of making fissionable material (because none of the four had been shown to be clearly superior at that point) as well as the production of heavy water. With this change, information flow to Britain dried up. This was a major setback to the British and the Canadians who had been collaborating on heavy water production and on several aspects of the research program. Thereafter, Churchill sought information on the cost of building a diffusion plant, a heavy water plant and an atomic reactor in Britain.
After many months of negotiations an agreement was finally signed by Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt in Quebec in August 1943, according to which the British handed over all of their reports to the Americans and in return received copies of General Groves' progress reports to the President. The latter showed that the entire US program would cost over $1,000 million, all for the bomb, as no work was being done on other applications of nuclear energy.
Construction of production plants for electromagnetic separation (in calutrons) and gaseous diffusion was well under way. An experimental graphite pile constructed by Fermi had operated at the University of Chicago in December 1942 ?the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.
A full-scale production reactor for plutonium was being constructed at Argonne, with further ones at Oak Ridge and then Hanford, plus a reprocessing plant to extract the plutonium. Four plants for heavy water production were being built, one in Canada and three in the USA. A team under Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos in New Mexico was working on the design and construction of both U-235 and Pu-239 bombs. The outcome of the huge effort, with assistance from the British teams, was that sufficient Pu-239 and highly enriched U-235 (from calutrons and diffusion at Oak Ridge) was produced by mid-1945. The uranium mostly originated from the Belgian Congo.
The first atomic device tested successfully at Alamagordo in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. It used plutonium made in a nuclear pile. The teams did not consider that it was necessary to test a simpler U-235 device. The first atomic bomb, which contained U-235, was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The second bomb, containing Pu-239, was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August. That same day, the USSR declared war on Japan. On 10 August 1945 the Japanese Government surrendered.

By the end of World War II, the project predicted and described in detail only five and a half years before in the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum had been brought to partial fruition, and attention could turn to the peaceful and directly beneficial application of nuclear energy. Post-war, weapons development continued on both sides of the "iron curtain", but a new focus was on harnessing the great atomic power, now dramatically (if tragically) demonstrated, for making steam and electricity.
In the course of developing nuclear weapons the Soviet Union and the West had acquired a range of new technologies and scientists realised that the tremendous heat produced in the process could be tapped either for direct use or for generating electricity. It was also clear that this new form of energy would allow development of compact long-lasting power sources which could have various applications, not least for shipping, and especially in submarines.
The first nuclear reactor to produce electricity (albeit a trivial amount) was the small Experimental Breeder reactor (EBR-1) in Idaho, in the USA, which started up in December 1951.
In 1953 President Eisenhower proposed his "Atoms for Peace" program, which reoriented significant research effort towards electricity generation and set the course for civil nuclear energy development in the USA.
In the Soviet Union, work was under way at various centres to refine existing reactor designs and develop new ones. The existing graphite-moderated channel-type plutonium production reactor was modified for heat and electricity generation and in 1954 the world's first nuclear powered electricity generator began operation in the then closed city of Obninsk at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (FEI). The AM-1 (Atom Mirny -- peaceful atom) reactor is water-cooled and graphite-moderated, with a design capacity of 30 MWt or 5 MWe. It was similar in principle to the plutonium production reactors in the closed military cities and served as a prototype for other graphite channel reactor designs including the Chernobyl-type RBMK (reaktor bolshoi moshchnosty kanalny -- high power channel reactor) reactors. AM-1 produced electricity until 1959 and was used until 2000 as a research facility and for the production of isotopes.
Also in the 1950s Obninsk was developing fast breeder reactors (FBRs). In 1955 the BR-1 (bystry reaktor -- fast reactor) fast neutron reactor began operating. It produced no power but led directly to the BR-5 which started up in 1959 with a capacity of 5MWt which was used to do the basic research necessary for designing sodium-cooled FBRs. It was upgraded and modernised in 1973 and then underwent major reconstruction in 1983 to become the BR-10 with a capacity of 8 MWt which is now used to investigate fuel endurance, to study materials and to produce isotopes.
The main US effort was under Admiral Hyman Rickover, which developed the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) for naval (particularly submarine) use. The PWR used enriched uranium oxide fuel and was moderated and cooled by ordinary (light) water. The Mark 1 prototype naval reactor started up in March 1953 in Idaho, and the first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, was launched in 1954. In 1959 both USA and USSR launched their first nuclear-powered surface vessels.
The Mark 1 reactor led to the US Atomic Energy Commission building the 90 MWe Shippingport demonstration PWR reactor in Pennsylvania, which started up in 1957 and operated until 1982.
Since the USA had a virtual monopoly on uranium enrichment in the West, British development took a different tack and resulted in a series of reactors fuelled by natural uranium metal, moderated by graphite, and gas-cooled. The first of these 50 MWe Magnox types, Calder Hall-1, started up in 1956 and ran until 2003. However, after 1963 (and 26 units) no more were commenced. Britain next embraced the Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor (using enriched oxide fuel) before conceding the pragmatic virtues of the PWR design.

In the USA, Westinghouse designed the first fully commercial PWR of 250 MWe, Yankee Rowe, which started up in 1960 and operated to 1992. Meanwhile the boiling water reactor (BWR) was developed by the Argonne National Laboratory, and the first one, Dresden-1 of 250 MWe, designed by General Electric, was started up earlier in 1960. A prototype BWR, Vallecitos, ran from 1957 to 1963. By the end of the 1960s, orders were being placed for PWR and BWR reactor units of more than 1000 MWe.
Canadian reactor development headed down a quite different track, using natural uranium fuel and heavy water as a moderator and coolant. The first unit started up in 1962. This CANDU design continues to be refined.
France started out with a gas-graphite design similar to Magnox and the first reactor started up in 1956. Commercial models operated from 1959. It then settled on three successive generations of standardised PWRs, which was a very cost-effective strategy.
In 1964 the first two Soviet nuclear power plants were commissioned. A 100 MW boiling water graphite channel reactor began operating in Beloyarsk (Urals). In Novovoronezh (Volga region) a new design -- a small (210 MW) pressurised water reactor (PWR) known as a VVER (veda-vodyanoi energetichesky reaktor -- water cooled power reactor) was built.
The first large RBMK (1,000 MW - high-power channel reactor) started up at Sosnovy Bor near Leningrad in 1973 and the same year saw the commissioning of the first of four small (12 MW) boiling water channel-type units in the eastern Arctic town of Bilibino for the production of both power and heat.
In the Arctic northwest a slightly bigger VVER with a rated capacity of 440 MW began operating and this became a standard design.
In Shevchenko in Kazakhstan the world's first commercial prototype FBR started up in 1972, the BN-350 (bystry neutron -- fast neutron) producing 120 MW electricity and heat to desalinate Caspian seawater. A prototype, BOR-60, had started at Obninsk in 1959, generating 12 MWe of electricity.
Around the world, with few exceptions, other countries have chosen light-water designs for their nuclear power programs, so that today 65% of the world capacity is PWR and 23% BWR.

From the late 1970s to about 2002 the nuclear power industry suffered some decline and stagnation. Few new reactors were ordered, the number coming on line from mid 1980s little more than matched retirements, though capacity increased by nearly one third and output increased 60% due to capacity plus improved load factors. The share of nuclear in world electricity from mid 1980s was fairly constant at 16-17%. Many reactor orders from the 1970s were cancelled. The uranium price dropped accordingly, and also because of an increase in secondary supplies. Oil companies which had entered the uranium field bailed out, and there was a consolidation of uranium producers.
However, by the late 1990s the first of the third-generation reactors was commissioned - Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 6 - a 1350 MWe Advanced BWR, in Japan. This was a sign of the recovery to come.

In the new century several factors have combined to revive the prospects for nuclear power. First is realisation of the scale of projected increased electricity demand worldwide, but particularly in rapidly-developing countries. Secondly is awareness of the importance of energy security, and thirdly is the need to limit carbon emissions due to concern about global warming.
These factors coincide with the availability of a new generation of nuclear power reactors, and in 2004 the first of the late third-generation units was ordered for Finland - a 1600 MWe European PWR (EPR). A similar unit is planned for France as the first of a full fleet replacement there. In the USA the 2005 Energy Policy Act provided incentives for establishing new-generation power reactors there.

link to doe history of nuclear energy

Part IX: Natural Gas

In Part IX: we take a look at Natural Gas:
Natural gas is nothing new. In fact, most of the natural gas that is brought out from under the ground is millions and millions of years old. However, it was not until recently that methods for obtaining this gas, bringing it to the surface, and putting it to use were developed.
Before there was an understanding of what natural gas was, it posed somewhat of a mystery to man. Sometimes, such things as lightning strikes would ignite natural gas that was escaping from under the earth's crust. This would create a fire coming from the earth, burning the natural gas as it seeped out from underground. These fires puzzled most early civilizations, and were the root of much myth and superstition. One of the most famous of these types of flames was found in ancient Greece, on Mount Parnassus approximately 1,000 B.C. A goat herdsman came across what looked like a 'burning spring', a flame rising from a fissure in the rock. The Greeks, believing it to be of divine origin, built a temple on the flame. This temple housed a priestess who was known as the Oracle of Delphi, giving out prophecies she claimed were inspired by the flame.
These types of springs became prominent in the religions of India, Greece, and Persia. Unable to explain where these fires came from, they were often regarded as divine, or supernatural. It wasn't until about 500 B.C. that the Chinese discovered the potential to use these fires to their advantage. Finding places where gas was seeping to the surface, the Chinese formed crude pipelines out of bamboo shoots to transport the gas, where it was used to boil sea water, separating the salt and making it drinkable.

Britain was the first country to commercialize the use of natural gas. Around 1785, natural gas produced from coal was used to light houses, as well as streetlights.
Manufactured natural gas of this type (as opposed to naturally occurring gas) was first brought to the United States in 1816, when it was used to light the streets of Baltimore, Maryland. However, this manufactured gas was much less efficient and environmentally friendly, than modern natural gas that comes from underground.
Naturally occurring natural gas was discovered and identified in America as early as 1626, when French explorers discovered natives igniting gases that were seeping into and around Lake Erie. The American natural gas industry got its beginnings in this area. In 1859, Colonel Edwin Drake (a former railroad conductor who adopted the title 'Colonel' to impress the townspeople) dug the first well. Drake hit oil and natural gas at 69 feet below the surface of the earth.
Most in the industry characterise this well as the beginning of the natural gas industry in America. A two-inch diameter pipeline was built, running 5 and ½ miles from the well to the village of Titusville, Pennsylvania. The construction of this pipeline proved that natural gas could be brought safely and relatively easily from its underground source to be used for practical purposes.
In 1821, the first well specifically intended to obtain natural gas was dug in Fredonia, New York, by William Hart. After noticing gas bubbles rising to the surface of a creek, Hart dug a 27 foot well to try and obtain a larger flow of gas to the surface. Hart is regarded by many as the 'father of natural gas' in America. Expanding on Hart's work, the Fredonia Gas Light Company was eventually formed, becoming the first American natural gas company.

During most of the 19th century, natural gas was used almost exclusively as a source of light. Without a pipeline infrastructure, it was difficult to transport the gas very far, or into homes to be used for heating or cooking. Most of the natural gas produced in this era was manufactured from coal, as opposed to transported from a well. Near the end of the 19th century, with the rise of electricity, natural gas lights were converted to electric lights. This led producers of natural gas to look for new uses for their product.
In 1885, Robert Bunsen invented what is now known as the Bunsen burner. He managed to create a device that mixed natural gas with air in the right proportions, creating a flame that could be safely used for cooking and heating. The invention of the Bunsen burner opened up new opportunities for the use of natural gas in America, and throughout the world. The invention of temperature-regulating thermostatic devices allowed for better use of the heating potential of natural gas, allowing the temperature of the flame to be adjusted and monitored.

Without any way to transport it effectively, natural gas discovered pre-WWII was usually just allowed to vent into the atmosphere, or burnt, when found alongside coal and oil, or simply left in the ground when found alone.
One of the first lengthy pipelines was constructed in 1891. This pipeline was 120 miles long, and carried natural gas from wells in central Indiana to the city of Chicago. However, this early pipeline was very rudimentary, and did not transport natural gas efficiently. It wasn't until the 1920's that any significant effort was put into building a pipeline infrastructure. After World War II welding techniques, pipe rolling, and metallurgical advances allowed for the construction of reliable pipelines. This led to a post-war pipeline construction boom lasting well into the 60's, creating thousands of miles of pipeline in America.
Once the transportation of natural gas was possible, new uses for natural gas were discovered. These included using natural gas to heat homes and operate appliances such as water heaters and oven ranges. Industry began to use natural gas in manufacturing and processing plants. Also, natural gas was used to heat boilers used to generate electricity. The transportation infrastructure made natural gas easier to obtain, and as a result expanded its uses.

In 1938, the U.S. government first regulated the natural gas industry. At the time, members of the government believed the natural gas industry to be a 'natural monopoly'. Because of the fear of possible abuses, such as charging unreasonably high prices, and given the rising importance of natural gas to all consumers, the Natural Gas Act was passed. This Act imposed regulations and restrictions on the price of natural gas to protect consumers. In the 1970's and 1980's, a number of gas shortages and price irregularities indicated that a regulated market was not best for consumers, or the natural gas industry. Into the 1980's and early 90's, the industry gradually moved towards deregulation, allowing for healthy competition and market based prices. These moves led to a strengthening of the natural gas market, lower prices for consumers and the discovery of more natural gas.
Today, the natural gas industry is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). While FERC does not deal exclusively with natural gas issues, it is the primary rule making body with respect to the minimal regulation of the natural gas industry.
Competition characterizes the natural gas industry as it is known today. The opening up of the industry, and the move away from strict regulation, has allowed for increased efficiency and technological improvements. Natural gas is now being obtained more efficiently, cheaply, and easily than ever before. However, the search for more natural gas to serve our ever growing demand requires new techniques and knowledge to obtain it from hard-to-reach places.
Today, the natural gas industry has existed in this country for over 100 years, and it continues to grow. Deregulation and the move toward cleaner burning fuels have created an enormous market for natural gas across the country. New technologies are continually developed that allow Americans to use natural gas in new and exciting ways. With all of the advantages of natural gas, it is no wonder it has become the fuel of choice in this country, and throughout the world.

link to doe natural gas site

Part VIII: Geothermal

Part VIII: Geothermal looks at one of the oldest forms of energy on this planet. Geothermal heat sources are used in a variety of ways across our world today, from geothermal power plants, to geothermal hot water systems, we shall now attempt to understand what this geothermal energy is, and where it comes from. Thanks to Wikipedia, EERE of the Department of Energy, and clean-energy.com.
What geothermal energy is, can essentially be described with the sentence; heat contained and produced by the heating of the earth in two different ways. The more powerful geothermal energy comes from deep within the earth, where the temperature is hot enough to melt the surrounding rocks. The second source of geothermal energy is as a results of the suns rays beating down on the land surface. We shall now look into these two main sources.
The center of the earth is approximately 4000 degrees Celsius, as described in the above sentence, this tremendous amount of heat is capable of turning rocks into liquid. This heat is able to warm the earth right up to surface. The reason you do not burn your feet when they touch the ground is because there is a great distance between our feet and this molten rock, and only a very small, but significant fraction of this heat is transferred to the surface.
You may find molten rock very close to surface along fault lines and around volcanoes, and this enables a volcanic area to be a very significant source of geothermal power. So we have now discovered the most powerful source of geothermal energy comes from the core of the earth, and if you are planning to harness geothermal energy, you are best doing so where molten rock is closest to the surface.
The history of geothermal power can be traced back to over 10,000 years ago to the American Paleo-Indians at their settlement in hot springs. This history has been uncovered through the use of archeology and shows the Indians used the hot springs for activities including, bathing and heating. It is also believed the springs were seen as a healing source.
It is believed that the first geothermal energy use in industry was during the late 18th century near Pisa, Italy. This history of geothermal shows energy been used to extract boric acid from the Larderello Fields through the use of steam.
A history of the first geothermal power plant relates to the Larderello Fields, when in 1904 the steam was successfully used to generate power for the first time. This geothermal energy was seen as the power of the future.
More history: In 1922 the U.S.A's first geothermal power plant went down in history in producing 250 kilowatts which could light the streets and buildings in the area. This plant didn't last very long however, due to the little power output compared to other sites across the globe.
During the 1960's, the first large scale industrial geothermal energy power plant was constructed in the U.S.A and produces 11 megawatts of environmentally friendly, renewable, geothermal electricity. This was seen as a big step towards power of the future.
From the 1960's onwards, many organizations and governing bodies are set up to manage, research, and develop new and improved geothermal energy sites and technologies.
Today, there are more than 60 important geothermal power plants, in working order in the U.S.A, and many more across the globe. The history of geothermal power is just the very basis of what we can expect from the future. The geothermal energy and power advancements of the past can show how through this geothermal history, we can predict, newer and much greater capacity power stations could be developed in the future.
The second source is more commonly overlooked as an alternative to the earths geothermal heat source, yet this method is installed in a significant amount of homes in areas such as Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, and is becoming more popular in the U.K.
The great advantage of the suns geothermal effect, is you are able to harness the power in most areas unlike the earths geothermal heat source, where the location of, lets say a geothermal power plant can be the deciding factor in it's efficiency. So, geothermal energy from the sun is essentially a solar energy idea, in that the original source of "ground source heat energy" is from the sun.
All through the day, the suns rays shine down on the earths surface, and this heats the first couple of meters of our earth quite significantly. To understand this more, think about when it's been snowing, and sun then comes out. Do you notice how there is always snow left in shaded areas a long time after the rest of the snow has melted? This isn't to do with the general temperature increasing, it is the heat contained within the suns rays. This shows you how powerful our sun is, in that it is able to melt snow on our surface.
A very good, proven method of extracting this geothermal energy from the sun is though the use of geothermal heat pumps, which enable a low cost hot water heating system that is very environmentally friendly for your home.

Tomorrow we will look at Natural Gas, in Part IX of the energy series. Thanks and Have A Great Day!!

link to eere geothermal

Part VII: Hydropower

Part VII: Hydropower, is actually the current number one renewable resource being used in America, and with new techniques for better efficiency, it will remain number one for some time to come. The sources in this post were my always "used" Wikipedia, as well as the Foundation for Water & Energy, The United States Bureau of Reclamation, and The EERE of the United States Department of Energy with a link to their website at the bottom of this post.

Hydropower first started as early back as 100 B.C. when the Greeks and Romans used a waterwheel, which was vertical and placed a long a stream or river, for grinding corn with its gears. Running water in the stream would turn the wheel, therefore operating the mill. Milling was the main task performed with hydropower back then, and soon it traveled through Asia and the rest of Europe by 4 A.D.
As the waterwheel spread to different parts of the world, people began to try ideas to improve on it. Change in wheel orientation was one important development. The horizontal wheel laid on its side and the wheel turned from left to right. The vertical wheel stood up, turning from top to bottom. In the beginning, "millers mounted the wheel so that the center was above the water surface and the running water would turn the bottom of the wheel. Later, they would dip the wheel below water level in an "overshot" orientation." In the 18th century, John Smeaton tested both orientations and found that the overshot worked more efficiently. "In the next century, engineers perfected the waterwheel and found two improvements: curved paddles worked better and that the breasted position (where the center of the wheel lies on the water surface) made the wheel more efficient (Brit. p.334)." These developments helped people apply the waterwheel to more tasks, such as a mill where gears, shafts, and conveyors would not only grind grain but also transport the grain up, down, and sideways within a mill. In the 19th century, the water turbine slowly replaced the waterwheel due to its higher efficiency. However, waterwheels still exist throughout the world to this day.
Following the waterwheel came the water turbine, which used gravity to turn the wheel. James Francis perfected Samuel Howd's turbine by curving its blades, and today it is known as the Francis turbine. This was used for a long time in mills, but eventually steam engines took the turbines place as it's source of power. However, the Francis turbine would make a comeback as a different source of energy; hydropower.
In effort to control streams and rivers, people began to create dams much like those that a beaver makes. These structures were used to divert the water flow, or obstruct it. To store water in a reservoir, engineers constructed a gravity dam, whose weight would stop the river flow. They made these dams initially with soil and rock, but as time progressed, concrete and brick became more popular. This is because of to their ability to trap water without allowing any flow within them. At first, dams were made straight, but later they became curved to transfer the force of the water pressure to the land it gripped. The Hoover Dam is an example of this arched dam. Bracing the land on each side, it can withstand the tremendous force of the Colorado River"
When the idea of creating electric energy from water arose, the turbine was back. In 1882, the world's first hydropower station in Wisconsin produced 12.5 kilowatts of power. In the 1930's, these stations developed dramatically. A hydropower plant was established at the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in 1936, and it contained multiple Francis turbines (which were taken over by steam engines in mills) that produced 130,000 kilowatts of power. These stations provided electricity to major cities through high-voltage power lines. Countries all over the world have followed the lead of the United States by building stations and supplying their citizens with electricity.
As one can see, the transition of hydropower as a source of mechanical energy to electric took some time, but in the end has been worth it. With hydropower expanding throughout the world, governments and environmental organizations have been trying to find common ground on the pros and cons of using hydropower.


Hydropower is currently America's number one renewable resource:
About 20% of the world's electricity is generated by using hydropower. In the United States, this resource accounts for up to 10% of the nation's supply of electricity. This 10% can be thought of in the following ways:
Hydropower produces more than 90,000 megawatts of electricity annually, which is enough to meet the needs of 28.3 million consumers.
Hydropower accounts for over 90% of all electricity that comes from renewable resources (e.g., solar, geothermal, wind, biomass).
Hydropower is generated at only 3% of the nation's 80,000 dams.
In the Northwest, hydropower is an even larger part of each person's daily life. Up to 80% of the electricity in the Northwest is produced by hydropower each year. That's enough electricity to meet the needs of 13.6 million homes. And because hydropower is one of the lowest cost forms of energy, most Northwest residents have a significantly lower electric bill than residents in other parts of the country.

Rivers, lakes and streams are nature's way of collecting water from the hydrologic cycle and carrying it back to the ocean for the cycle to begin again. Plants and animals depend on both this cycle and the rivers for survival. As human interaction with rivers increases, maintaining a balance with the plants and wildlife that also depend on the river system becomes more complex and diverse.
Throughout history, people have hunted and fished along rivers. For centuries, rivers have been used to irrigate land for crops. And for generations, paddle wheels used hydropower to harness the force of falling water. With the advent of hydropower, man could operate mills for such things as grinding grain and cutting timber. In harmony with the current, rivers also serve as arteries for passage of fish beneath the surface and all manner of boats above the surface. All of these interactions and shifting balances began before the advent of hydroelectric power production.
Hydropower came of age at the turn of the century when many technological advances were being put in place to further tap the ability of the hydrologic cycle and rivers to help meet the needs of society. Technology became available to build larger dams that could better control flooding and irrigate more land. For instance the Grand Coulee Dam, which has the capacity to generate more electricity than any other dam in North America, was built with the primary purpose of turning the Northwest into another bread basket for the nation. Along with other irrigation projects, six percent of the Columbia River Basin's yearly runoff is now diverted to irrigate about 7.6 million acres of land annually. And with the development of locks and other technologies larger and larger cargo vessels were able to navigate rivers. In the Northwest, the result is that each year about 17 million tons of cargo are carried along the Columbia and Snake rivers from the Pacific Ocean.
Using hydropower to generate electricity is part of this technological leap. The best known hydroelectric projects are associated with the large dams that have large reservoirs which generate thousands of megawatts of electricity on demand. In fact, the six largest dams in Oregon, Washington and Idaho account for 50% of available hydroelectric power in these states.
For the Northwest as a whole, there are about 160 hydroelectric projects. For the projects which use reservoirs, there are also new recreational opportunities that many people have come to enjoy. Many hydroelectric projects, however, do not use a reservoir. These are called "run-of-river" projects because they do not store significant amounts of water. Instead, they rely on the normal river flow.
Previous generations successfully harnessed this renewable resource in a manner that has developed a standard of living in a way few would consider giving up. Using rivers to meet so many needs, however, also results in significant environmental and cultural impacts. Addressing these impacts and maintaining a balance with the plants, fish and wildlife that also depend on the river has never been more difficult. This and future generations are being asked to meet this challenge.

As mentioned, dams that are part a hydroelectric project also help control flooding. And by using this renewable resource, up to 249 tons of carbon dioxide are not released into the earth's atmosphere each year since fossil fuels like oil and coal are not burned to generate electricity. Because the release of carbon dioxide contributes to environmental concerns related to ozone depletion and global warming, hydropower represents an important environmental benefit in this regard.
Hydroelectric projects, like any energy resource, do have environmental impacts. In the Northwest, the most serious concerns often relate to fish passage. The 1992 listing of sockeye salmon and three other stocks of chinook salmon (spring, summer and fall) as endangered species intensified historic and continuing debates over restoring fish runs. Releasing water to speed up downstream fish migration has been one of many measures taken to preserve fish runs. In 1994, for instance, nearly 11 million acre feet of water was made available to help juvenile salmon and steelhead migrate downstream.
Measures such as water releases, however, are being taken within the context of scientific inquiry and research that is the subject of much debate. For these reasons, the hydro industry and others continue to explore and implement several mitigation strategies that address hatchery, habitat, harvesting, and hydro operation practices. Examples of such strategies include fish screens, surface collection and bypass systems, fish ladders, strobe lights, the catching of squawfish that prey on juvenile salmon, and new turbine designs. In fact, since the 1980s over two billion dollars has been spent on salmon recovery measures by Northwest ratepayers. As these efforts continue, scientific inquiry and research findings will continue to play a central role in guiding efforts.
The hydroelectric industry, however, cannot address environmental issues, e.g., fish migration or preserving wildlife habitats, in isolation from other industries and individuals that use the rivers. Every action and every user of a river is part of the overall balance. As a result, any search for balance that considers the Northwest's interests as a whole also needs to calculate and mitigate the effects of multiple impacts. Examples include irrigation, timber, mining and the building of homes and industries near the river system. In the case of salmon, for instance, ocean fishing that captures salmon returning to the river system is part of the overall balance.

Most hydroelectric projects across the United States are licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Many of these licenses, which are required to operate a hydroelectric project, are coming up for renewal during the next ten years. A central piece of receiving a new license is to examine environmental impacts and include the public in both reviewing and considering mitigation and enhancement strategies regarding these impacts. For anyone interested in the river system, becoming informed and heard in these debates is vitally important.
The process for being heard, however, extends well beyond engaging with those who generate hydropower and FERC. Numerous federal and state agencies can become involved in the process. Examples include the National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Parks Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, state fish and wildlife agencies, state water resource agencies and the state agency with Clean Water Act authority. Beyond this crisscrossing of government authority are many tribal governments and non-profit groups with significant interests and concerns. Examples of non-profit groups include American Rivers, the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, fishing and hunting associations, and boating groups.
With so many interests participating, and because the issues being addressed are often quite complex, the relicensing process often takes between five to ten years to complete. Regardless of length, becoming an early and informed participant is of benefit to all.

Tomorrow will be Part VIII: Geothermal. Have A Great Day!!

link to eere hydropower

Part VI: Biomass And Biofuels

Part VI: Biomass And Biofuels, is interesting as I live in Iowa, which is becoming huge in the Ethanol production business, and even though we need to use all of our resources, I think this is one with a potential for great harm,as more and more land is used for "fuel" needs instead of for food production. There is already shortages in many places on this planet, and when we put "our" energy needs ahead people who are starving, we may quickly slide down the "slippery slope" to our own destruction. So while this is another resource we need to exploit, we should do so with some trepidation, and not rely on it as a "long" term energy source~~The crop part of it anyway.
So we begin with an introduction to Biomass. Biomass is all plant and animal matter on the Earth's surface. Harvesting biomass such as crops, trees or dung and using it to generate energy such as heat, electricity or motion, is bioenergy.
Biomass is a very broad term which is used to describe material of recent biological origin that can be used either as a source of energy or for its chemical components. As such, it includes trees, crops, algae and other plants, as well as agricultural and forest residues. It also includes many materials that are considered as wastes by our society including food and drink manufacturing effluents, sludges, manures, industrial (organic) by-products and the organic fraction of household waste.
Farm waste such as cow manure is processed into biomass to form biogas. It can be used in bottled gas for gas cooking appliances. Crops such as switch-grass, corn and sugarcane are produced to form ethanol which can be used to fuel vehicles and presently are so, to great success. Waste heat harnessed by waste-to-energy plants can generate electricity for heating buildings. Among energy sources referred to as biofuels is domestic rubbish. About 15% of municipal solid waste is burned.
One of the major advantages of Biomass Energy as a source of fuels is its renewable. With approximately 140 billion metric tons of biomass produced every year and growing, we could see biomass fuels replacing fossil fuels in the near future as they deplete even further increasingthe demand for a cheap, efficient renewable fuel source.

Biomass can further be divided into more specific terminology, with different terms for different end uses: heating, power (electricity) generation or transportation. We tend to use the term 'bioenergy' for biomass energy systems that produce heat and/or electricity and 'biofuels' for liquid fuels for transportation. Bioenergy can also be used for cooling using absorption chillers that work on the same principle as your refrigerator.

In recent years, environmentalists and policymakers have struggled to evaluate the merits of various biomass resources. This has posed an enormous challenge, in part, because biomass brings together a host of environmental disciplines, including air, water, land-use, climate, and energy. Since few people have expertise in all of these areas, the full range of environmental impacts – both positive and negative – are not as readily apparent for biomass as they are for solar, wind, or traditional fossil resources. As a result, environmental groups, large and small, approach the topic of biomass with exceeding caution despite the fact that biomass has the potential to be one of the few carbon-neutral and renewable energy resources that is available on demand and has large-scale, commercially viable applications.
Biomass electricity generation, or biopower, is a multi-stage process that converts non-fossil fuel-derived organic material into electricity. Biomass can also be used to produce fuels – biofuels – that can be used in vehicles. Because the vegetation that is the base for all biomass can be regrown, biopower and biofuels can be renewable. This means that biopower and biofuels can help reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and nuclear power. If the biomass is regrown, then it will sequester all of the carbon dioxide released when the biomass is burned. This means that biopower and biofuels can help reduce the risks of climate change. Furthermore, since biomass can be stored and burned when needed, biopower can be available on demand, unlike wind and solar which are only available when the wind blows and the sun shines. A 1997 Energy Innovations report from a group of environmental organizations forecasts that by 2030 with proper incentives, biomass could provide more than half of all renewable energy in our economy and over 15% of all our energy needs.
However, in order for the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and create a sustainable energy industry, biomass companies must substantially increase their market share of electric generation. Unfortunately, the biomass industry operates under a dark cloud that seriously impairs its ability to meet this challenge. This is due, in large part, to the poor environmental record of the incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW), a highly suspect category of materials that can be laced with deadly toxins that are emitted into the air when burned. Unfortunately, MSW is often considered to be a form of biomass, a cause of great concern for environmental and public health interests who would prefer to focus the developmental potential of this technology on the many clean and renewable organic alternatives. In addition, the negative environmental impacts of factory farms, poor forest management, and large-scale agribusiness have compounded the pessimism surrounding America’s biomass industry. Biomass developers have done little to alleviate this problem, as many fail to adequately distinguish sustainable projects from their toxic siblings.
The greatest challenge to policies intended to promote biomass is targeting them toward the environmentally preferable forms of biomass. To shed light on this question, a coalition of major environmental groups have crafted and endorsed a statutory definition that maximizes the clean and renewable energy potential of biomass projects. By adopting this definition, states have an opportunity to help shape the future of America’s biomass industry and ensure that biomass technology is implemented in a way that maximizes its clean and renewable potential.
That is where SERC Comes in: The State Environmental Resource Center (SERC) researches state environmental policies and assembles information and tools to help legislators make important decisions on key environmental issues. SERC identifies the most innovative and effective state policies, and exposes anti-environmental legislative trends. They have much more information at their website (www.serconline.org) with links, talking points, etc. A very interesting site.

Tomorrow Part VII: Hydropower

link to educational website on biomass and biofuels

Part V: Waves

Part V: Wave energy is one of the more interesting resources that the United States could utilize if we have the desire. It is available for use by our country, and would be another "renewable" resource that is currently, NOT being taken advantage of, in any appreciable way.

The U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, A Consumer's Guide to Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: Ocean Wave Power, States:
Wave power devices extract energy directly from surface waves or from pressure fluctuations below the surface. Renewable energy analysts believe there is enough energy in the ocean waves to provide up to 2 terawatts of electricity. (A terawatt is equal to a trillion watts.)
Wave power can't be harnessed everywhere. Wave-power rich areas of the world include the western coasts of Scotland, northern Canada, southern Africa, Australia, and the northeastern and northwestern coasts of the United States. In the Pacific Northwest alone, it's feasible that wave energy could produce 40–70 kilowatts (kW) per meter (3.3 feet) of western coastline. The West Coast of the United States is more than a 1,000 miles long.
Technologies
Wave energy can be converted into electricity through both offshore and onshore systems.
Offshore Systems
Offshore systems are situated in deep water, typically of more than 40 meters (131 feet). Sophisticated mechanisms—like the Salter Duck—use the bobbing motion of the waves to power a pump that creates electricity. Other offshore devices use hoses connected to floats that ride the waves. The rise and fall of the float stretches and relaxes the hose, which pressurizes the water, which, in turn, rotates a turbine.
Specially built seagoing vessels can also capture the energy of offshore waves. These floating platforms create electricity by funneling waves through internal turbines and then back into the sea.
Onshore Systems
Built along shorelines, onshore wave power systems extract the energy in breaking waves. Onshore system technologies include the following:
Oscillating water column
The oscillating water column consists of a partially submerged concrete or steel structure that has an opening to the sea below the waterline. It encloses a column of air above a column of water. As waves enter the air column, they cause the water column to rise and fall. This alternately compresses and depressurizes the air column. As the wave retreats, the air is drawn back through the turbine as a result of the reduced air pressure on the ocean side of the turbine.
Tapchan
The tapchan, or tapered channel system, consists of a tapered channel, which feeds into a reservoir constructed on cliffs above sea level. The narrowing of the channel causes the waves to increase in height as they move toward the cliff face. The waves spill over the walls of the channel into the reservoir and the stored water is then fed through a turbine.
Pendulor device
The pendulor wave-power device consists of a rectangular box, which is open to the sea at one end. A flap is hinged over the opening and the action of the waves causes the flap to swing back and forth. The motion powers a hydraulic pump and a generator.
Environmental and Economic Challenges
In general, careful site selection is the key to keeping the environmental impacts of wave power systems to a minimum. Wave energy system planners can choose sites that preserve scenic shorefronts. They also can avoid areas where wave energy systems can significantly alter flow patterns of sediment on the ocean floor.
Economically, wave power systems have a hard time competing with traditional power sources. However, the costs to produce wave energy are coming down. Some European experts predict that wave power devices will find lucrative niche markets. Once built, they have low operation and maintenance costs because the fuel they use, seawater,is free.
There is much more information available from at the link below, which takes you to the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) Alternative Energy And Alternate Use Programmatic EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) Information Center. It is very cool, with much more information, as well as illustrations, and photos, of the "devices" this post mentions. There is also a link to a PDF document at the bottom of the main page, which describes the "potential" available for "our" use: Titled~~technology White Paper On Wave Energy Potential on The U.S.Outer Continental Shelf. Please stop by and take a look at what is available. Thanks and Have A Great Day!!


link to OCS Alternative Energy Information Center

Part IV: Solar

Part IV of our energy series, takes a look at solar energy throughout history to the present. There is also a link to the United States Department of Energy~~Renewable Resources Site which has everything you would ever want to know about solar energy, and the big part it can play in providing energy independence for our Nation. There is also a great deal of information available from Wikipedia, ASES (American Solar Energy Society), www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar.html (which is a great resource for children, who may want to learn about solar energy), and SEIA (Solar Energy Industries Association), which is a National trade association for all solar businesses and enterprises in the fields of photovoltaics. They all have easy to understand information available, some of which is in this post, so my thanks to them all.

We shall begin with a little history:
We have always used the energy of the sun as far back as humans have existed on this planet. As far back as 5,000 years ago, people "worshipped" the sun. Ra, the sun-god, who was considered the first king of Egypt. In Mesopotamia, the sun-god Shamash was a major deity and was equated with justice. In Greece there were two sun deities, Apollo and Helios. The influence of the sun also appears in other religions - Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Roman religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Druids of England, the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, and many Native American tribes.
We know today, that the sun is simply our nearest star. Without it, life would not exist on our planet. We use the sun's energy every day in many different ways.
When we hang laundry outside to dry in the sun, we are using the sun's heat to do work -- drying our clothes.
Plants use the sun's light to make food. Animals eat plants for food. Decaying plants hundreds of millions of years ago produced the coal, oil and natural gas that we use today. So, fossil fuels is actually sunlight stored millions and millions of years ago.
Indirectly, the sun or other stars are responsible for ALL our energy. Even nuclear energy comes from a star because the uranium atoms used in nuclear energy were created in the fury of a nova - a star exploding.
Let's look at ways in which we can use the sun's energy.
In the 1890s solar water heaters were being used all over the United States. They proved to be a big improvement over wood and coal-burning stoves. Artificial gas made from coal was available too to heat water, but it cost 10 times the price we pay for natural gas today. And electricity was even more expensive if you even had any in your town!
Many homes used solar water heaters. In 1897, 30 percent of the homes in Pasadena, just east of Los Angeles, were equipped with solar water heaters. As mechanical improvements were made, solar systems were used in Arizona, Florida and many other sunny parts of the United States.
By 1920, ten of thousands of solar water heaters had been sold. By then, however, large deposits of oil and natural gas were discovered in the western United States. As these low cost fuels became available, solar water systems began to be replaced with heaters burning fossil fuels.
Today, solar water heaters are making a comeback. There are more than half a million of them in California alone! They heat water for use inside homes and businesses. They also heat swimming pools.
Panels on the roof of a building, contain water pipes. When the sun hits the panels and the pipes, the sunlight warms them.
That warmed water can then be used in a swimming pool.

Solar energy can also be used to make electricity.
Some solar power plants use a highly curved mirror called a parabolic trough to focus the sunlight on a pipe running down a central point above the curve of the mirror. The mirror focuses the sunlight to strike the pipe, and it gets so hot that it can boil water into steam. That steam can then be used to turn a turbine to make electricity.
In California's Mojave desert, there are huge rows of solar mirrors arranged in what's called "solar thermal power plants" that use this idea to make electricity for more than 350,000 homes. The problem with solar energy is that it works only when the sun is shining. So, on cloudy days and at night, the power plants can't create energy. Some solar plants, are a "hybrid" technology. During the daytime they use the sun. At night and on cloudy days they burn natural gas to boil the water so they can continue to make electricity.
Another form of solar power plants to make electricity is called a Central Tower Power Plant, sunlight is reflected off 1,800 mirrors circling the tall tower. The mirrors are called heliostats and move and turn to face the sun all day long.
The light is reflected back to the top of the tower in the center of the circle where a fluid is turned very hot by the sun's rays. That fluid can be used to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine and a generator.
This experimental power plant is called Solar II. It was re-built in California's desert using newer technologies than when it was first built in the early 1980s. Solar II will use the sunlight to change heat into mechanical energy in the turbine.
The power plant will make enough electricity to power about 10,000 homes. Scientists say larger central tower power plants can make electricity for 100,000 to 200,000 homes.

We can also change the sunlight directly to electricity using solar cells.
Solar cells are also called photovoltaic cells, or PV cells for short, and can be found on many small appliances, like calculators, and even on spacecraft. They were first developed in the 1950s for use on U.S. space satellites. They are made of silicon, a special type of melted sand.
When sunlight strikes the solar cell, electrons are knocked loose. They move toward the treated front surface. An electron imbalance is created between the front and back. When the two surfaces are joined by a connector, like a wire, a current of electricity occurs between the negative and positive sides.
These individual solar cells are arranged together in a PV module and the modules are grouped together in an array. Some of the arrays are set on special tracking devices to follow sunlight all day long.
The electrical energy from solar cells can then be used directly. It can be used in a home for lights and appliances. It can be used in a business. Solar energy can be stored in batteries to light a roadside billboard at night. Or the energy can be stored in a battery for an emergency roadside cellular telephone when no telephone wires are around.
Some experimental cars also use PV cells. They convert sunlight directly into energy to power electric motors on the car.
But when most of us think of solar energy, we think of satellites in outer space, and solar sails, like those on the space lab, hubble telescsope, and other satellites.
Here is just of the more promising "new" technologies to convert sunlight more efficiently.
On December 20, 2007 this article from gizmag stated: The inefficiency of solar cells in converting the sun’s rays into electricity is a key contributor to the high costs of solar energy, but new research into a novel shape of semiconductor nanostructures known as "nano flakes" may revolutionize the process and help improve the viability of clean energyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_energy derived from the sun.
Details of the research by Martin Aagesen, a PhD from the Nano-Science Centerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_center and the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Copenhagen were recently published in nature nanotechnology.
If his "future solar cells" meet expectations, they may be a huge step towards boosting the world’s exploitation of solar energy. Aagesen believes that the nano flakes have the potential to convert up to 30 per cent of the solar energy into electricity and that is roughly twice the amount that the average solar cell converts today.
The discovery was made during Aagesen’s work on his PhD thesishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissertation when he found a new and untried material. “I discovered a perfect crystalline structure. That is a very rare sight. While being a perfect crystalline structure we could see that it also absorbed all light. It could become the perfect solar cell,” he said. The technology has the potential to reduce the solar cell production costs which rely on expensive semiconducting silicium. At the same time, the "future solar cells" will exploit solar energy more effectively and lessen the loss of energy.
Aagesen is also director of the company Sunflake Inc. which is pursuing development of the new solar cell.
Other recent efforts to address the issue of solar cell efficiency include a breakthrough from SANYO in June this year which saw the company broke its own record for the world's highest energy conversion efficiency in practical size crystalline silicon-type solar cells by demonstrating an efficiency of 22%. In December last year Spectrolab achieved a world record in terrestrial concentrator solar cell efficiency, using a photovoltaichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics cell to convert 40.7 percent of the sun's energy into electricity. More recently, Global Warming Learning-to-Love-Global-Warming Solutions announced the development of new solar energy conversion technology based on a special coating that can be applied to existing solar cells.
There are many other companies working on this problem, trying to come up with better, more efficient designs, to utilize solar power, and more information in available at the United States Department of Energy Link Below.

Part V: Wave Energy is on tap for tomorrow. Have A Great Monday!!


link to usdoe solar resources page