How to Obtain Abundant Clean Energy

I. The Approaching Energy Disaster.- 1. What Is Energy?.- Energy Is That Which Makes Things Go.- Classification of Energy.- Potential Energy.- Turning Potential Energy to Useful Energy.- Kinetic Energy.- Potential Energy in Fuels.- How the Energy Got Inside the Fossil Fuels.- A Nasty Realization.- The Conversion of the Various Forms of Energy to Forms Which Can Be Used by People.- The Vital Importance of Having a Good Transducer (Converter).- Efficiency of Energy Conversion.- The Predominance of Cost.- The Importance of Compromise.- The Importance of the Time Left.- 2. What Part Does Energy Play in Our Lives?.- Energy Determines the Kind of Lives We Lead.- The Standard of Living.- Income, The Standard of Living, and Energy Per Person.- Energy, Comfort, and Efficiency.- The Divisions of Energy Use.- Household Energy.- Transportation Energy.- Industrial and Commercial Energy.- One (Avoidable) Negative Aspect of a High-Energy Life: Pollution.- Another Negative Aspect of the Present Energy System: The Coming Exhaustion of Our Present Sources.- 3. How Do We Get Our Energy Right Now?.- A Summary of Our Present Energy Sources.- Making Electricity.- Fossil Fuels.- How We Get Our Energy in Industry….- Problems of the Near Energy Future.- How Energy Is Transported Now.- Our Finite Energy Sources.- 4. Shall We Run Out of Energy in Our Time?.- Present Fuels Are Limited.- How Do We Estimate the Fossil Fuels Left?.- The French Farmer.- Resources Exhaust Suddenly.- The Date of the Maximum Production Rate-The Effective End.- When Will The Maximum Production Rate Be Reached?.- The Effect on the Exhaustion Date of Rising Living Standards and Population Growth.- How the Rate of Production of a Resource Will Vary with Time.- The Critical Year of the Maximum.- The Effect of Change in Price of a Resource on Its Use Rate.- How an Estimate of 1500 Years of Coal Can Be Revised to Less than 30 Years.- When Shall We Run Out of Oil and Natural Gas?.- Running Out of Coal, Too.- More Pollution?.- What Would Happen If We Stopped the Growth of Our Economies?.- Is Conservation the Answer?.- Shall We Run Out of Fossil Fuels in Our Time?.- 5. How Long Does It Take to Develop and Build Up a New Technology?.- Stages in Developing a New Technology.- The First Stage-Dreams.- The Second Stage-Fundamental Research.- The Third Stage-Developmental Research.- The Fourth Stage-Commercialization.- The Cost of the Various Stages of Developing Technology.- Historical Guidelines Tell Us How Long Technologies Take to Develop.- It is Likely to Take 25–50 Years (1–2 Generations) to Develop New Energy Sources.- Monetary Aspects of Building a New System.- A Near Thing?.- II. Alternatives: What Could Replace Our Exhausting Fuels?.- 6. The Dream of Cheap, Clean Atomic Energy.- The Beginning of the Dream.- The Dream Continues.- A Quantitative Comparison.- The Dream Fades?.- Types of Atomic Reactors.- The Fission Reactor.- Uranium-The Active and the Stable Forms.- How Fission Reactors Work.- The Difficulty with Nonbreeder Fission Reactors: Exhaustion.- Will the Breeder Reactor Save the Situation?.- The Drawbacks of Breeder Reactors.- 7. Fission Reactors-What Can Go Wrong.- Fission Reactor Accidents-A Few Close Calls.- What Can Go Wrong?.- The Brown Ferry Mishap-Human Error in Action.- Three Mile Island-“But No One Was Killed”.- Biological Hazards of Nuclear Radiation-“Where Does It Hurt?”.- What Increases in Background Radiation Are Expected if We Switch to Atomic Power?.- Cancer-Causing Cell Damage by Radioactive Substances.- The Dose Rate Affects the Extent of Biological Damage.- Dumping Radioactive Garbage in Whose Backyard?.- 8. Dreaming About the Future: Abundant Clean Energy from Atomic Fusion.- Fusion?.- Fusion: Another Atomic Alternative.- The Advantages of Fusion as an Energy Source.- The Diluteness of Deuterium.- Is the Fusion Concept Utopian?.- Atomic Fission and Atomic Fusion.- But Shall We Actually Be Able to Attain the Fusion Process?.- Difficulties in Realizing a Controlled Atomic Fusion Process.- Plasmas.- The Difficulty of Containing a Plasma in a Bottle Is That It Escapes.- Another Possible Method of Getting Energy from Fusion.- What Has Been the Progress of the Laser Method for Fusion?.- Time.- Is Fusion the Best Energy-Producing Prospect of Them All?.- Fusion Compared with Other Abundant Clean Energy Sources.- 9. The Most Available Energy Source: The Sun.- Energy from the Sun.- The Sun’s Expected Life.- How Much of the Solar Energy Radiated from the Sun Reaches the Earth?.- Solar Energy Reaching the Earth.- Solar Energy per Person.- How Much Energy Does the Average Person Consume?.- Trying to Allow for the Future: How Much Energy Will Be Needed by the Years 2000 and 20507.- Solar Energy is Dilute.- How Much of the Earth’s Surface Can Be Used for Solar Collectors?.- What Will Be the Efficiency of Collection of Solar Energy?.- Will the Amount of Solar Energy Which We Could Collect Be Enough to Supply Our Total Energy Needs?.- Shall We Need More Energy than We Have Calculated Above in the Further Future?.- To What Medium Shall We Convert Solar Energy for Use?.- How Will We Get Solar Energy from the Places Where It Is Easily Available to Where It Is Needed?.- How Much Time Will Be Needed to Make the Solar Collectors?.- If Solar Energy Is Readily Available, Why Wasn’t Its Collection Developed Many Years Ago?.- The Strange Situation of Countries with Solar Energy That Do Not Collect the Solar Energy.- 10. Converting Solar Energy to Useful Fuel.- The Solar Spectrum.- The Photovoltaic Method of Converting the Sun’s Energy to Usable Energy on Earth.- Is the Photovoltaic Method of Collecting Solar Energy Too Expensive?.- Thin Film Photovoltaics.- Photovoltaic Collectors in Orbit.- The Mirror Concentrator Method.- Ocean Thermal Energy Collectors (OTEC).- To What Extent Have the Methods Described in this Chapter Actually Been Built and Used?.- 11. Household Energy from the Sun.- The Production of Hot Water.- Space Heating of Houses.- Space Cooling.- Household Electricity.- What Do We Do When the Sun Goes Down?.- Will Solar Energy for Households Be Commercially Available Before Oil Runs Out?.- 12. Transport and Industry Run On Electricity and Hydrogen.- Running Cars in the Post-Fossil-Fuel World.- Could We Run Cars on Batteries, Charged by Electicity7.- Cars Run on Batteries Which Work with Lead Electrodes.- The Sodium-Sulfur Battery.- A Source of Energy to Charge Batteries for Electric Cars.- Hydrogen-Driven Cars.- Hydrogen-Driven Planes.- Fuel Cells: How to Get Back Electricity from Hydrogen Derived from the Energy of Solar Radiation.- The Poor Efficiency of Ordinary Engines.- The Better Efficiency of Electrochemical Engines.- Running Industry on Hydrogen.- Foods from Hydrogen.- Metallurgy.- 13. Tides, Geothermal Heat, and the Big Winds.- The Big Winds: How They Could Be Used to Give Hydrogen Fuel and Electrical Energy for Cities.- Could Wind Be a Reliable Source of Energy on a Large Scale?.- Could Wind Generators Produce Household Electricity?.- More Wind Energy Estimates.- The Big Winds.- Winds at Sea Are Stronger.- How Would Wind Energy Be Stored on a Massive Scale?.- Would Massive Wind Power Be a Practical Proposition?.- It Is Always the Cost that Counts.- Energy from the Tides?.- Energy Beneath Our Feet.- How Hot Rock Geothermal Energy Might Become Practical.- Difficulties in the Attainment of Hot Rock Geothermal Energy.- Low-Grade Geothermal Energy.- Summary of the Prospects of Geothermal Energy.- 14. Energy Storage and Transmission.- Energy Carriers: A Choice Among Three.- Sources and Media.- What Are the Possible Media (Carriers of Energy)?.- Pros and Cons of the Various Media.- Transmitting Energy Over Long Distances.- Why Long Distance Electric Transmission Is Not Acceptable.- Hydrogen Could Help Reduce the Cost of Sending Energy Over Long Distances.- Very Long-Distance Transmission of Energy.- III. The Hydrogen Economy.- 15. Methods of Mass-Producing Hydrogen.- The Cyclical Chemical Method for Producing Hydrogen.- Disadvantages of the Cyclical Thermal Method.- The Electrochemical Method of Obtaining Hydrogen.- Getting the Energy Back from Gaseous Hydrogen at the User Terminal.- What of Homes and the Electricity We Now Use in Them?.- The Advantages of Using Fuel Cells.- 16. The Storage of Abundant Clean Energy.- Methods of Storing Energy.- Storage of Energy in the Form of Heat.- Storing Energy in Its Electrical Form.- The Pros and Cons of Heat and Electrochemical Storage.- Storing Gaseous Energy Underground.- What Methods Will Be Most Used in Our Time for Energy Storage?.- 17. Beyond the Hydrogen Economy: Some Futuristic Ideas.- Concepts for the Next Few Hundred Years.- Concepts of the Next Few Thousand Years.- IV. Extrascientific Considerations.- 18. The Politics of Survival.- The Direction of Major Research Funding Depends upon Politicians.- What Does Survival Mean?.- The Idea of Vested Capital.- The Tobacconist.- The Politician’s Dilemma.- Economies Cannot Expand Forever-When Will Growth Stop?.- Energy Disaster?-People, Politics, Government Funds, and Research.- 19. Answers.