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Unit 8
How Can The World’s
Resources Best Be
Managed?
Energy Resources
• Renewable
• Future availability
• Net energy yield
• It takes energy to get energy
• Habitat degradation
• Cost (initial and ongoing)
• Community disruption
• Political or international issues
• Suitability in different locations
• Polluting (air, water, noise, visual)
Each type of power project needs to be evaluated
for the benefits and costs
The environmental costs of hydroelectricity are much
different than windpower, for example
Important Nonrenewable Energy
Sources
North American Energy Resources
US has only
2.4% of world’s
oil reserves
Advantages Disadvantages
• Relatively low • Running out
cost • 42-93 years
• Low prices
• High net energy
encourage waste
yield
• Air pollution and
• Efficient greenhouse
distribution gases
system • Water pollution
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Controversy: Trade-offs
• Would create jobs
• Oil resources are uncertain
• US supply 7-24 months
• Uncertain environmental impacts
Oil Shale and Tar Sands
Tar Sand: Oil Shale:
Mixture of clay, sand Oily rocks that
water and bitumen - contain a solid
a thick and sticky mix of hydro-
heavy oil. carbons.
Bitumen heated to
convert to synthetic
crude oil.
Natural Gas
• 50-90% methane
• Cleanest of fossil fuels
• Approximate 200 year
supply
• Advantages and
disadvantages
Coal – What is it?
Cost over-runs
High operating costs
Three Mile Island
Chernobyl
Three Mile Island - Pennsylvania
• March 28, 1979 - Partial Core
Melt-Down.
• No Deaths.
• Very Little Radiation Vented.
• Public Relations Disaster.
Chernobyl – Ukraine (Former USSR)
• April 26, 1986
• One of four reactors explodes.
• 31 immediate deaths.
• 116,000 people evacuated.
• 24,000 evacuees received high doses of radiation.
• Thyroid cancer in children.
• Damaged reactor entombed in concrete, other
reactors returned to service within months.
• Eventually, remaining reactors out of service.
Dealing with Nuclear Waste
Fuel rod
Primary canister
Ground Level
Personnel Overpack
Unloaded from train container
elevator
sealed
Air shaft
Nuclear waste
shaft Underground
Buried and capped
Lowered down shaft
Low - Level Waste – (materials other
than the radioactive isotopes)
• Includes cooling water from nuclear reactors,
material from decommissioned reactors,
protective clothing, and like materials.
– Prior to 1970, US alone placed 50,000
barrels of low-level radioactive waste on
the ocean floor.
– Moratorium in 1970, Ban in 1983.
Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy
• Solar
• Flowing water
• Wind
• Biomass
• Geothermal
• Hydrogen
Using Solar Energy to Provide Heat
• Environmentally friendly
• Extracting hydrogen efficiently
• Storing hydrogen
• Fuel cells
Hydrogen
Trade-offs
Entering the Age of Decentralized
Micropower
• Decentralized power systems
• Micropower systems
Solutions: A Sustainable Energy
Strategy
Renewable Energy
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Energy from Fossil Fuels
The Fossil Fuels
• What are the main fossil fuels?
– Coal, oil (petroleum), natural gas
Global OECD