Nuclear (garden creatures) Power To Combat Climate Change
No commentsBy Dominic Donaldson
Nuclear power has been heralded as the way to combat global warming whilst meeting the increasing energy demands of the world. The technologies currently in use are considered just as clean, if not cleaner than renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. But with concerns over the long term problems of disposing of nuclear waste, is nuclear power really the best fuel for the future. The development of small scale nuclear reactors in the USA could be an answer to the problem, enabling nuclear power to be a cleaner and safer option than ever before.
The only part of producing power from a nuclear reactor that creates carbon dioxide emissions is uranium enrichment. It has long been considered a dirty process, but some reactors in France have begun to use power generated by the plant itself to enrich the uranium on site. In doing this, the usual emission of 3.3 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour, already much better than the 400 of coal powered stations, essentially eradicates carbon dioxide emissions from the process altogether.
Nuclear power currently produces somewhere in the region of fifteen per cent of the world’s electricity, but in the bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there is a call for more fossil fuelled power plants to be replaced by nuclear technology. It is not only the affect on climate change that is spurring the call to action, it is the depletion of fossil fuel reserves too. Uranium is in plentiful supply and has the added advantage of not being connected to the volatile price changes associated with oil, gas and coal supplies. The result of this is that nuclear power has the potential to be a continuous source of electricity at a stable price.
The drawbacks associated with nuclear power are in the volatile nature of the process and in the disposal of the highly toxic waste. Disasters such as Chernobyl have made the general public wary of the introduction of new plants, but the creation of mini nuclear fission reactors could eliminate such risks, and cut the amount and toxicity of the waste produced. Originally, the design of the mini reactors was to find a solution for supplying hot water and electricity to remote locations and therefore had to adapt more traditional nuclear reaction to fit in a smaller unit.
Standard nuclear reactors use rods to slow down neutrons, and unless these are properly managed they can become unstable and become a hazard. The mini reactors do not contain rods, instead they rely on hydrogen atoms to control neutron behaviour. The reactor, which is no bigger than a garden shed is therefore transformed into a battery; with no moving parts and encased in concrete, a stable platform for providing heat and hot water has been achieved.
The waste from the reactors is just a fraction of the amount generated by fossil fuelled power stations, and in such small amounts is easier to store safely. Unfortunately there is some debate over whether the mini nuclear reactors are actually an efficient way of producing energy. With a life span of around 8 years, and a unit price of ten cents per kilowatt hour, some experts feel the technology needs to be developed further to be a viable competitor for energy production.
Undoubtedly the mini reactors are an ideal solution for providing energy to remote areas, but in the race to tackle carbon dioxide emissions to prevent global warming, the technology needs to be developed at a much faster pace
Dom Donaldson is an energy expert.
Find out more about Nuclear Power and the current projects underway in the energy utility sector at URS Corp.
Make your home office green
By Annie Deakin
Electronic equipment
Maximise natural lighting by using the sun’s energy to brighten your office. You don’t need any building permissions to install this Solar Mate panel (239.99) from Nigel’s Eco Store. Even in dreary old Blighty, it will store between 8-11 hours of light for its bulb. Screensavers save the screen, not energy, so switch off your monitor (which uses twice the energy of your PC) altogether when you go for lunch, as well as the PC itself. British Eco make it easy with these Bye bye standby plugs (19.99 for intrdouctory pack), which allow you to control your equipment wirelessly from up to 30 metres away. Handy for those forgetful days.
Make business calls on this Siemens Gigaset digital cordless phone (49.95) from John Lewis, which claims to use up to 60% less energy than regular cordless phones. For more ideas, read the Eco-design handbook for homes and offices (16.95) from the Design Museum shop and get up to speed with what else you can do.
Junk Mail
Almost 50% of all catalogues sent by post are never opened, yet nearly 62 million trees and 28 billion gallons of water are used every year to produce them. Get yourself removed from junk-mailing lists by registering with the Mailing Preference Service.
Printing and paper
Print only the information you really need from a document, and also print double-sided, using the smallest font you can and switching your printer to draft output to save ink. Make sure you recycle your print cartridges using one of the many post-it-back schemes, and use chlorine-free recycled paper. For every tonne of paper that is recycled, we save 17 trees, 42,000 kilowatts of electricity, 26,000 litres of water and 27 kilograms of air pollutants. Do your filing and store documents in these award-winning recycled lever arch files (2.45 each) from the Natural Collection.
Meetings and communication
Install video-conferencing facilities (easily achieved via the use of a webcam), so you can keep in touch with clients and the office without having to travel.
Electrical efficiency
Use energy-efficient, compact fluorescent bulbs, which use 75 per cent less energy and last 10 times longer than traditional bulbs. For desk lamps, choose miniature compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs). This Ocean energy saving lamp (95) from Hidden Art not only looks stylish enough to impress clients. Choosing electrical equipment with an energy-star label could cut your electricity bill by up to 80 per cent. The Energy Star logo means that the energy consumption of an appliance is below an agreed level in stand-by mode.
Don’t leave chargers running
Switch off the charger for your mobile phone, batteries, camera and other equipment when you’ve finished charging. If you don’t it will draw almost as much energy as when it is charging, and you will generate 35-70 kilograms of avoidable carbon dioxide each year. It’s estimated that 95% of the energy used by mobile-phone chargers in the UK is energy wasted in this way. Charge mobile phones instead with this Trevor Bayliss eco-pro charger (21.95) from Ethical Superstore. Environmentally-friendly laptop chargers are currently in development watch this space for Samsung’s fuel-cell dock, which promises to power a laptop running eight hours a day for an entire month without recharging.
Cut heating costs
Working from home might seem like a good, green idea, but extra carbon emissions created by heating and powering your home office may outweigh the savings you make by not commuting. Research suggests that a full-time home-worker emits 2.3 tonnes of CO2 annually, compared to 1.7 tonnes for the average office worker, partly due to the additional use of electricity and heating. So in those months where you can’t enjoy working in the garden, make sure you only have lights switched on in the room you are using, and use a portable heater rather than keeping radiators on all over the house.
Love gadgets? Don’t let them spoil the environment. Read our guide to buying the latest tech toys that happen to be green too. Get a stylish office with classic Florence Knoll furniture she revolutionised the post-war coporate look in the US.
Annie Deakin is a fashion expert and editor at mydeco.com and is currently very impressed by the great range of cutlery, bedding and diy.
Solar Energy - The Future of Generating Energy For The Home
By Josef Tate
Solar energy for residential houses is nothing new. It has just been relegated to the background in lieu of rising cost of real estate; newer more advanced building materials, design and the limitation of resources.
Since man started building homes, sunlight played a major influence in the design. In fact, even in the more advanced urban planning method of the Ancient Chinese and Greeks, the orientation of the buildings is as much as possible directed towards where it could capture the most sunlight.
The ancients might not be as intellectually sophisticated then to use catch phrases as passive solar and thermal mass but when they build, they were building in compact proportion, employing overhangs, producing insulations and building in manners that direct the airflow within the structure and producing well lit, well ventilated spaces using the relative position of the sun to the orientation of their structures.
Lately, as the conventional sources of energy became more expensive, homeowners were once again turning to the sun for energy requirements.
Since the 1950s, harnessing the suns rays has been developing and today the solar cell technology has achieved very efficient levels that modern (so-called green house) designs apply the suns power to provide energy for the home.
While solar energy is free, the device that will convert it to run our appliances is not. To provide solar energy for the home, solar cells called photovoltaic made from semi-conducting materials, are grouped into modules. These solar panels are mounted on rooftops, yards or open spaces where it can capture the maximum amount of sunlight.
Whenever possible, the panels will be installed facing south to get the most out of the sunlight but tracking systems are also used to follow the direction of the sun. The solar panels collect the energy from the sunlight. The process basically is that when the panels are exposed to sunlight, the electrons are separated form the atoms. This movement of the electrons creates electricity.
To store power, pumps are often used - circulating water in the cells. The water goes into a storage tank where the power is stored, ready for use. Sometimes, the use of gravity is employed if it will just the same store the heated water in to the tank.
In spite of all the development in solar energy though, the use of this technology is not enough to provide power to the whole house. The best method so far can only fulfill about 80% of a households power needs. The employment of solar energy for the home will still require the use of the conventional power distribution method.
Powering the homes by solar means will still, for a while be augmented by a local power distribution agency. To many, this is already a good starting point. Homeowners that feel that the high cost of powering their houses through solar power, is justified when compared to the price that is now being paid for conventional electrification method where horrendous amounts of CO2 are being dumped into the atmosphere just to generate a pitiful amount of electricity.
However, due in part to the rising costs of energy, the technology for solar energy has been undergoing rapid phases of development. Experts are confident that within five years, powering the home through the solar method will be made widely available for those who prefer it as its sole energy source.
Using solar energy is also great for the environment.
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Learn About Outdoor Creatures In Wildlife
Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under environmental. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
