Lecture 15

Question 1

How many gigawatts is in the plan for nuclear by 2050

Answer 1

25 gigawatts

Question 2

Postives of moving away from coal to gas

Answer 2

Less SO4 produced meaning less acid rain
Gas power is easily turned on and off to meet the demands of the consumer - dispatchable

Question 3

Negatives of moving from coal to gas

Answer 3

Burning gas still releases CO2

Question 4

What are the plans within gas fuel to make it slightly better

Answer 4

Split the methane into hydrogen which can then be burned off or better, can be pushed through a fuel cell to produce energy

Question 5

Fracking results in cheaper gas prices, what are the arguements against it

Answer 5

Earthquake risk
Contamination of groundwater
Release of methane in the the atmosphere (you cant always control where the gas will come of from and some will usually escape into the atm)

Question 6

What is the method of carbon capture being used by coal, and what are the negatives

Answer 6

Capturing the CO2, liquifying it via cyrogenic freezing or pressurisation, pumping back into the old reservoirs underground
Negative - very energy intensive (50% of output)

Question 7

What temperature do solar panels not work above

Answer 7

Around 35 degrees celcius

Question 8

Why is the trasport of energy over long distances not desirable

Answer 8

Although the cables are low resistivity, there is still some resistivity and over long distances this amounts to large losses

Question 8

What is a negative of solar that is similar to nuclear

Answer 8

Waste products that are environmentally unfriendly

Question 9

How does space solar work

Answer 9

Its cold and there is nothing to block the sun so the collection is efficient, the energy is then beamed as RF (effectively) to a reciever array on the Earth’s surface to be converted to AC

Question 10

What is one of the draw backs of space solar

Answer 10

Assets in space and hard to protect

Question 11

What is the problem with wind turbines and why

Answer 11

They breakdown relatively often because they are so big and the disparity in windspeeds across the total span of the blades, the differential force unevenly wears the mechanisms
Meaning that the turbines only work below a certain wind speed and lots of potential energy is wasted

Question 12

What makes the construction of wind turbines difficult (geopolitically)

Answer 12

They are constructed using rare earth elements, which China has a monopoly on and could easily withold

Question 13

What is solar thermal

Answer 13

Generating heat using the sun usually using mirrors