Ten questions science must answer
November 30, 2010 by drjohnmcgowan
Filed under Green Energy
For 350 years, the Royal Society has called on the world’s biggest brains to unravel the mysteries of science. Its president, Martin Rees, considers today’s big issues, while leading thinkers describe the puzzles they would love to see solved
Today we celebrate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society. It signalled the emergence of a new breed of people – described by Francis Bacon as “merchants of light”. They sought to understand the world by experiment and observation, rather than by reading ancient texts. They were motivated by curiosity, but also engaged with the practical problems of their time – improving navigation, cultivating forests, rebuilding London after the Great Fire, and so forth.
Over the last 350 years our lives have been changed beyond recognition by the application of science. In 1660, vast areas were terra incognita; today, rapid communication and travel makes the world seem connected, even constricted. Some of the changes have been less benign: this is the first century when one species – ours – risks irreversibly degrading the entire planet’s environment.
We are now in a time of challenges and adversity but it is also a time for scientific opportunity.
Issues relating to global health and sustainability must stay high on the agenda if we are to cope with an ageing and ever-increasing population, with growing pressure on resources, and with rising global temperatures. The risks and dangers need to be assessed and then confronted. The need to develop “clean” energy, new vaccines and better resources means science has a critical role to play over the coming years.
Helping to meet the challenges of the 21st century demands technological advancement – and an optimal use of existing knowledge. From the growth of the internet through to the mapping of the human genome and our understanding of the human brain, the more we understand, the more there seems to be for us to explore.
We have learned so much over the last 350 years, but with every answer comes more questions. From a personal perspective I am disappointed that we have yet to really achieve a full understanding of the origins of life on Earth. What was the spark that, billions of years ago, kickstarted the process of evolution that has brought us life as we know it today? I hope that we will get some answers to that in my lifetime.
Looking further ahead is notoriously difficult, but whatever breakthroughs are in store in the coming decades and beyond, we can be sure of one thing: there will be an ever-widening gulf between what science allows us to do, and what it is prudent or ethical actually to do. In respect of (for instance) human reproductive cloning, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology, robotics and geoengineering, regulation will be called for, on ethical as well as prudential grounds.
In terms of what we should be looking to achieve, a huge priority must be to decarbonise our energy needs. Whether it is to reduce our carbon-dioxide emissions or to prepare for when the coal and oil run out, we have to continue to seek out new energy sources.
Science has a huge part to play in the development, and the very survival, of humankind in both the near and distant future. Some of the challenges are obvious and some of the solutions are already being worked on by scientists. New challenges will emerge and in science we have seen again and again that some of the greatest breakthroughs are the unpredictable outcomes of pure curiosity. As we look to the next 350 years of the Royal Society we have no crystal ball that allows us to predict the detailed course of scientific discovery. However, we can be sure that today’s young people will live their lives in a world where science – and the way it is applied – will play a greater role than ever before.
Martin Rees is the Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society.
Kathy Sykes
What is consciousness?
Most of us have a feel for what we mean by it. But science hasn’t managed to define or understand it. There are various theories; Roger Penrose suggests that quantum mechanics plays a key role, while Susan Greenfield postulates that it is similar to the “wetness of water”, a property that emerges from the actions of individual molecules. But, even with advances in brain-scanning techniques, such as fMRI, we are really only beginning to fathom how our brains work, let alone understand what consciousness is.
In the future, as we get better at synthesising organisms, or making empathetic robots, we may be challenged harder about what actually counts as “conscious”. Even now, can we say with confidence which animals are “conscious”? Is your dog conscious? And what happens to our consciousness if we get progressive Alzheimer’s, or if we become psychotic?
And what about those “coincidences” or “unscientific” claims you hear about two conscious minds communicating at a distance? When someone “knows” that something awful is happening to someone they love? One day, could we have a tested understanding of consciousness that provides a viable mechanism? Maybe not, but it’s a delightful thought that we might be connected to people we love – in a way we can’t yet explain.
Will we ever understand consciousness fully? Perhaps not. We are having to use the human brain to understand its own workings. But I hope in my lifetime that we will get closer to having some inkling about what and who we really are.
Kathy Sykes is professor of sciences and society at the University of Bristol and co-director of the Cheltenham science festival.
Joan Bakewell
What happened before the big bang?
To simply declare – as some scientists do – there was no space or time before the big bang and that the question is therefore meaningless is hard to accept, as it suggests matter was created out of nothing. But then if there was some kind of pre-existing primordial chaos that was fashioned into the universe by the hand of God, then where did the chaos come from?
At the other end of the timescale, I’d like to know whether robots will ever supercede humans. We are told scientists have already created artificial intelligence that can respond to emotion, but will they be able to go beyond getting robots to affect responses and generate feelings spontaneously – such as falling in love? And will robots overcome their inability to physically reproduce by finding a way of replicating their components into newer models? Or will the same robots keep on regenerating themselves?
Joan Bakewell is a broadcaster and writer.
Mark Miodownik
Will science and engineering give us back our individuality?
If you do a quick inventory of what you own, you will find that most of it is mass produced. This is a result of the industrial revolution, during which we gave up the individually crafted object in return for factories, and in the process got extremely rich. The price was the acceptance of uniformity in every aspect of our lives: our pens, our clothes, our cars, even our homes are all mass produced. It is a dominant influence in our lives, and it shapes global capitalism. But now there is a technology coming out of university science labs that could change all this and set in motion a second industrial revolution that may reverse the whole process.
The technology is called a 3D printer. What it does is this: it takes a design from your computer and makes it into a physical object. In other words, you press “print” and out comes a thing; this can be a functioning pen, a pair of glasses, or a hip replacement. This is not science fiction: I have a 3D printer in my lab and it works. At the moment the technology is in its early stages, but already hospitals are using it to make tailor-made implants for patients. Think what might happen if we perfect this technology. Why buy a phone, when you can design and print your own? Why buy a ring when you can express exactly how you feel by making one for your lover, or new cutlery for your mother? The possibilities are literally endless.
But it has political and economic implications too. As soon as our desire for material wealth is no longer linked to mass production, factories may become redundant, and shops too. This technology is currently at the state that computers were in the 1980s. Will science and engineering deliver another industrial revolution by perfecting the 3D printer as it did the computer?
Mark Miodownik is a physicist at King’s College London and will give this year’s Royal Institution Christmas lectures.
Tracy Chevalier
How are we going to cope with the world’s burgeoning population?
We can talk all we like about renewable energies, recycling and sustainable agriculture, but population is the issue that really matters. Yet it is the one on which so many people are silent. We have made the human right to reproduce unchallengeable: to do so is either to be eugenicist or – as with China’s one-child policy – repressively authoritarian. But sooner or later we have to do something. No matter how much recycling we do, how much renewable energy we create and how much better we become at producing food, there has to come a time when the world’s population makes the planet unsustainable. What’s more, the pressure on resources is being maintained at both ends of the population spectrum; not only are more babies being born, people are living longer and longer. There are even suggestions some people may soon live to 200-300. This may be a triumph for medicine but it may be a disaster for the world. So I’d like to see scientists create a working model of population growth that can predict the planet’s breaking point and for global policy to be framed around it.
Tracy Chevalier is a novelist.
Marcus du Sautoy
Is there a pattern to the prime numbers?
For 2,000 years mathematicians have been struggling to unlock the secret of the primes, numbers such as seven and 17 that can’t be divided. Is there a pattern to these numbers that can help us predict where to find the next one, as we count higher and higher through the universe of numbers? Each generation has contributed another chapter in our odyssey to understand these fundamental numbers. There is a feeling that the answer to the enigma of the primes might finally be close. But the fun thing about mathematics is that you can never be sure when and from where the great breakthrough will come.
I think many people believe that we must have solved all the big problems of mathematics, that Fermat’s Last Theorem was precisely that: the last theorem. But that is far from true. Mathematics is a living, breathing subject because of the many problems we still can’t solve. Numbers still retain many of their mysteries, none more so than the primes.
Given all the problems that face the world – cancer, climate change, sustainability, energy alternatives – the problem of the primes sounds something of an esoteric, arcane place to be channelling one’s scientific efforts over the coming decades. History tells us otherwise. The great technological breakthroughs, the science that has changed society, all have their roots in fundamental science pursued for its own sake. The primes are the atoms of arithmetic; from numbers you get mathematics; and from mathematics flow all the other sciences. It’s answering the fundamental questions of science that has the greatest potential to transform society.
Marcus du Sautoy is the Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science at the University of Oxford and author of The Number Mysteries.
Brian Cox
Can we make a scientific way of thinking all pervasive?
This would be the greatest achievement for science over the coming centuries. I say this because I do not believe that we currently run our world according to evidence-based principles. If we did, we would be investing in an energy Manhattan project to quickly develop and deploy clean energy technologies. We would be investing far larger amounts of our GDP in the eradication of diseases such as malaria, and we would be learning to live and work in space – not as an interesting and extravagant sideline, but as an essential part of our long-term survival strategy.
One only has to look at the so-called controversies in areas such as climate science or the vaccination of our children to see that the rationalist project is far from triumphant at the turn of the 21st century – indeed, it is possible to argue that it is under threat. I believe that we will only be able to build a safer, fairer, more prosperous and more peaceful world when a majority of the population understand the methods of science and accept the guidance offered by an evidence-based investigation of the challenges ahead. Scientific education must therefore be the foundation upon which our future rests.
Brian Cox is a physicist at the University of Manchester and Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva.
John Sulston
How do we ensure humanity survives and flourishes?
This is the context in which all the exciting discoveries and explorations are going to happen. We certainly can survive but we can only do it by thinking in a rather larger and more collective way than we’re accustomed to at the moment. The natural sciences will need to work in conjunction with the social sciences and governance if we are to ensure we will address challenges in an effective way. The challenges lie not so much in the natural sciences but in the social sciences and governance.
Why might we not survive? We are hitting a number of very obvious resource limitations in terms of consumption and emissions. Some prefer to deny the importance or existence of anthropogenic climate change but I think there’s no doubt at all. It’s very clear that the framework is solid; we are heading for a warmer Earth and it is going to have a lot of consequences, among which will be increasing conflict and dangers of us not collectively surviving in the end. We need to head off the thing happening at all, if we can, and we need to head off the consequences in terms of conflict and ultimate conflagration.
Underlying all our problems is that we are over-running the Earth. That’s not to say that we should panic about it, but it is something we should discuss openly and manage. This is a challenge we can meet if we think more collectively. We’re not good at doing that, especially in our current ethos. In the last 50 years, we have moved away from collective thinking: people are set up and educated more and more in the western style to compete. This is not a good way of solving these problems. On the small scale, and on a level playing field, the free-market structures are great; they’re exactly what we need to flourish. But they don’t work at all on the global scale, and it is there where we have to address the best way of going about it.
We need a democracy that recognises that these large things matter. That’s the conundrum, really, to see how we can use the security and individual freedom that comes out of the ballot box with sensible collective behaviour. That’s something that is not been solved and it is a problem for social science and natural science working together.
John Sulston is chairing the Royal Society’s study on people and the planet.
Andrew Motion
Can someone explain adequately the meaning of infinite space?
The idea of there being no end to space seems logically impossible. How can there be no limits to space? We know the universe is expanding, but what is it expanding into? Is it squeezing into something else and making that contract, or is the universe just venturing into nothingness? In which case, nothingness and somethingness appear to be much the same. We are also told the universe may contract in time; this raises similar questions. What replaces the space that was the something of the universe?
On a more frivolous level, I’d also like to know whether my cat is fully evolved as a species. She certainly gives every impression of having pretty much everything she needs. Following on from this, I’d also like to know whether humans are the final step in the primate evolutionary ladder, or whether there will be another species running the world one day while we get locked up in zoos and forced to smoke cigarettes in laboratories. I’d die a happy man with answers to these questions.
Andrew Motion is a former poet laureate.
Lionel Shriver
Will I be able to record my brain like I can record a programme on television?
I would like to be able to re-experience something significant in my life, such as falling in love. (Think how much safer it would be to take a hallucinogen once and then just replay it when you were in the mood.) I would especially like to be able to record my dreams – and I do not mean the sad little journal jottings of what I barely remember. I want to see those images again, rewind, and contemplate where I got those amazing stories from. I would never run dry on fiction ideas again.
Assuming that other people could also play your tapes in their brains, the technology would be rife with problems, providing the ultimate in invasion of privacy. Secrets of any sort could become impossible. Worst of all, other people could get their hands on how tawdry and dreary most of your thought processes really are. On the other hand, it would also make it possible to truly experience what it is like to be someone else – though that might put fiction writers out of business.
Lionel Shriver is a novelist.
Piers Sellers
Can humanity get to the stars?
In the next 100 years, we will have explored right to the limits of our solar system with people and thoroughly explored every nook and cranny with robots. I don’t know when humans will start spreading out towards the stars after that; when someone can put a starship drive together – robots first and then people. We know there are planets out there and we know some of them live in the habitable zone.
Robots will go out first to other stars and you will be able to see them in your living room. Humans will follow, though I don’t know yet how they will keep people alive or frozen or whatever for the times and distances required.
Even if humans creep around at 1% of the speed of light (and I’m sure we could do better than that over time), we will have spread out over the galaxy in 10m years. It’s not hard to do. With 10% of the speed of light, we will have gone around the whole galaxy in 1m years. There will be people everywhere.
Every advance in science has changed the human perspective, the way we see ourselves. The idea that the Earth isn’t the centre of the universe and the theory of evolution both changed things. I’m pretty sure there is life out there somewhere and bumping into other lifeforms, intelligent or not, will be interesting.
The descendants of the human race, whatever they are, will have to move away from this rock and this solar system to survive – stars have finite lifetimes. But that’s a long way off: I wouldn’t worry about selling your stocks and shares just yet.
Piers Sellers is a British-born astronaut at Nasa.
Scientists answer Guardian readers’ toughest energy questions
November 3, 2010 by drjohnmcgowan
Filed under Green Energy
Nine of the world’s top energy scientists answer your questions on topics from peak oil to nuclear fusion
• See the questions other readers have submitted
Last week we asked you to put your toughest energy questions to nine world-leading energy scientists. You responded with more than 350 serious and searching questions on everything from renewable energy to nuclear power. Here are 10 of the best questions, answered by the awards committee of nine scientists on the Global Energy prize.
1. Could we support our current western lifestyle with only “renewable” energy? Asked by Jim Burks
José Goldemberg answers: Presently “renewable” energy accounts for approximately 10% of the energy consumed in Europe. The impressive growth of energy produce from windmills, biomass and other renewables indicates that renewables as a whole could account for “circa” 50% of all energy consumed by 2050.
The present western lifestyle requires the energy equivalent of three tonnes of petroleum per year. Improving the efficiency of energy use (with more efficient automobiles, refrigerators and other end-use appliances as well as better home insulation) could reduce that amount by at least 30%. As is well known considerable efficiency gains have already been achieved in the OECD countries since 1973. Present energy consumption would be 50% higher than it is actually without them. That reduction could give renewables a better chance to replace fossil fuels.
2. Do you agree with the US Joint Forces Command (JFC) that spare capacity in global oil production may very well disappear in 2012 and a shortfall of 10m barrels per day develop by 2015? NoSurrenderMonkey (and others)
Clement Bowman: The word ‘may’ in the question, and the multiple use of the word “could” in the energy summary statement of the US JFC document, obliges one to accept the possibility that “yes it could”. However, I believe that it is highly unlikely that there will be significant oil shortages over the next few decades. Once there is a perceived gap, forces come into play that cause the gap to be filled.
Here are some of the likely forces. Even modest increases in oil prices will convert unproven resources into recoverable reserves. Action on energy efficiency has finally taken hold in response to the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. New pipelines are under construction or planned in North America that will bring crude oil to refineries that have unused capacity. The enormous quantities of shale gas that have been discovered will provide part of the energy mix. The Canadian oil sands are just starting to ramp up with new more environmentally acceptable insitu recovery technology. China and India will use a combination of more efficient coal technology, nuclear energy and renewables to help meet their accelerating demand for energy. When I entered the oil industry in the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that there was only 10 years of oil supply left. Predictions have a habit of failing.
3. The world’s population is due to rise to 9 billion people. Can the planet supply the energy needed to achieve that end? ken brookes
Tom Blees: Widespread predictions that energy demand will double by mid-century to meet the needs of an expected 9-10 billion humans are, I believe, too conservative. Billions of people rely on now-shrinking glaciers for much of their water supply, with many areas of the world already lacking adequate water. Increasing human numbers by 50% means that we will have to provide most of the water for some billions of people primarily with desalination, an energy-intensive process. Add to that the fact that the majority of people in the world today use a fraction of the energy used by those in developed countries, and one could easily anticipate at least a tripling of demand in developing countries as they strive strive to improve their standard of living.
In the book Prescription for the Planet, I explained how a doubling of energy supply could easily be accomplished by 2050 at a rate of deployment even less ambitious than the French employed as they converted to nuclear power in the 1970s and 80s. Given the ability to factory-produce fast reactors of the type described here, a concerted global effort to meet mid-century energy demands should be quite within reach. The fuel is already available and – for all intents and purposes – virtually free.
4. I’m 25 years old. What’s your best case scenario for the world’s energy supply mix when I’m 75? What’s your worst case scenario? And where you you think we’ll actually be? Ian Bullock
Tom Blees: While there’s widespread agreement that fossil fuels must eventually be abandoned, there seems to be no consensus on which technologies can be expected to take their place. The contenders already available run the gamut from some of the most diffuse energy sources (wind, sunlight) to the most energy-dense. While nearly all of the latter systems currently in use consist of light-water nuclear reactors, fast reactors can extract well over 100 times more energy from uranium, and are seen by most nuclear prognosticators as being the inevitable successors to light-water reactors and the solution to the looming global energy crisis.
All of the energy a person in a developed country today can be expected to use in a lifetime – for electricity, transportation, heating and cooling, and the energy that goes into producing all that they will consume – could be supplied by a single piece of depleted uranium the size of half a ping-pong ball. Despite all the controversy over competing technologies today, this amazing fact – plus the fact that it can supply all that energy safely and without harm to the environment – should eventually carry the day, leaving other energy sources as bit players on the world stage.
5. Is energy storage – ie battery technology – one of the biggest things holding back renewables and widespread energy efficiency? Look at the intermittancy of wind power, the requirements of a “smart grid city”, electric cards etc – surely decent energy storage could transform the economics of these industries. And when might/how the problem be solved? Mago Salas (and others)
Alvin Trivelpiece: An excellent source of technical information regarding batteries is the Wikipedia site.
Even so, it does not answer the implicit theme of the question. Namely, why not large-scale energy storage in batteries to capture energy from intermittent sources such as wind or solar for use at times when the energy is required by a consumer?
The use of batteries for energy storage is a matter of the application and its need for a source of energy. Standard small batteries for toys and other convenience devices such as flashlights are examples where the cost per kilowatt-hour is irrelevant. The consumer pays the asking price and discards them without additional cost. Some solar applications using battery storage make great sense. Remote applications in the middle of desert where the cost of transmission lines is greater than the cost of a solar panel with some battery storage system. Same reasoning applies for spacecraft applications.
For other applications, the three laws of thermodynamics and the rules of economics must be taken into account. A simplified version of thermodynamics is: (1) You can’t win, (2) You can’t even break even, and (3) You can’t get out of the game.
This means that you have to take all costs from cradle to grave into account and see if you make money selling the energy at competitive price. If you can do this without any subsidy, then you don’t have a sustainable situation.
Unfortunately, when this is done for batteries, with all factors taken into account, it doesn’t seem to come out favorably. That is, taking into account the cost of the raw materials including whatever environmental remediation might be needed, the transport of these materials to the location where fabrication takes place, cost of fabrication and distribution, the cost of disposing of the batteries, including the cost of maintenance during their useful life, etc.
Any energy storage or distribution scheme that doesn’t make net energy, without subsidies, is not likely to be sustainable. Subsidies are a good way to get some products developed and deployed, but at some point it is usually assumed that the subsidy can eventually be eliminated, or justified on some non-economic basis.
6. How far away is nuclear fusion? Is it a realistic goal? Mischa Hewitt (and others)
Robert Aymar: There is a popular view that fusion energy has been just over the horizon for decades and it has failed to deliver. This is false.
Fusion has always been a long-term project; scientific progress in magnetic confinement of plasmas has been impressive and quantitative performances, achieved in the successive experiments, have from 1975 done better than the well known Moore’s law of digital technologies.
On this ground, seven among the largest countries in the world ( China, Europe, India, Japan, Russia, South-Korea, US) have decided on the strategy to pursue the development of fusion through international collaboration and are building together the large facility, called “ITER”, the first burning plasma to produce after 2025 half a gigawatt of fusion power.
This device , a physics experiment and an experimental reactor, should demonstrate the scientific feasibility of fusion as an energy source; it should validate and optimise the parameters and develop the technologies for the following strategical step, an electricity generating demonstration reactor to evaluate economics of fusion, before a commercial power reactor can be designed. Each of these steps requires around 40 years for its design, construction and enough operation time to capitalise on its results. Unless there is an urgency to provide a faster track (and pay for more risk), it is unreasonable to assume a sensible amount of fusion generated electricity in the grid before the middle of this century.
The need for new energy sources by the end of the century is undisputed. Besides coal burning plants, with total sequestration of the CO2 produced, large electrical power plants will possibly rely only on nuclear fission or fusion. Magnetic fusion has many appealing features (unlimited fuel reserve, safety and environmental characteristics), and from present analysis, its potential for energy generation is real and ITER will bring an experimental confirmation.
7. Why has tidal energy not been employed on a large scale (similar to hydro) anywhere in the world ? Is it down to cost or lack of efficiency? The Doc (and others)
Klaus Riedle: Tidal power differs from other renewable sources, in that it offers predictable though still intermittent power with decent power densities at certain preferred locations like estuaries or tide channels. One of the main barriers to large scale use is the cost of the back-up needed due to the intermittency.
Tidal range technologies make use of large tide differences by blocking off an estuary or forming a tidal lagoon and using a conventional water turbine in the dam to generate power from the tides going in and out, much like in a river. A large plant in Brittany, La Rance, has been operating successfully since 1966. Specific cost can be taken from planned projects on the Severn, which have an estimated 120-year lifespan, with commercial discount rates to €0.1-0.2/kWh stated by the UK Sustainable Development Commission [Last month, the UK government scrapped the Severn barrage tidal project on financial grounds]. Environmental concerns, related to whether the barrage causes harm to the estuary, will be a significant obstacle to their implementation.
Slowly rotating, large axial turbines make use of tide stream velocities above 1 metre per second. Like offshore windmills, such turbines are fixed to the seabed or even to masts, to be lifted out of the water for maintenance. Several prototypes have being tested in recent years; some projects around the UK are under planning. Little information so far is available about generating cost; a UK Carbon Trust study gives a range of €0.12-0.18/kWh. Environmental concerns and the impact on fishing and sea transport have to be addressed, as for offshore windfarms.
As with the other renewables, public support for tidal power should go into further development and testing of prototypes allowing them to find their niche in the market, rather than continuously subsidising power generation.
8. What are the barriers in getting our reliance on oil and petrol transferred over to electricity/hydrogen? Matt Flynn
Marta Bonifert: Fossil fuel reserves – like oil, petrol and coal – have been depleted quite rapidly in the recent years. This fact and the need to reduce the green house gas emissions of anthropogenic origin (global climate change) drive the business and the governmental sector to utilise renewable energy resources on a much wider scale. The transfer is not easy – there are technical, political and last but not least economical barriers. The efficiency of the new technologies has to be improved, there is a need for moderating the costs and legislation should support these new energy resources. Further more we cannot forget that oil is not only an energy resource but we use it in various forms – even in the human heart as artificial plastic valve – when needed.
So it is a very complex question which has implication on the economy, the environment and the society at the same time. Electricity and hydrogen will most probably be used at larger increasing extent substituting traditional energy carriers but again the question is their resources: whether they will be produced from fossil or renewable.
But there is a much easier and available solution which immediately helps to combat climate change: energy saving and energy efficiency. Changing our way of life, taking actions perceived as difficult however with a simple move – eg switching off the lights when they are not needed – we together can do a lot for the environment and the future generation.
9. Is it really possible to justify the legacy of nuclear waste for countless generations while we continue to waste electricity so carelessly, on things like flashy advertising and keeping buildings lit at night? Surely this should only be considered as a very last resort, when we have finally given up all such inessential useage of energy? greghaddock (and others)
Pius N’gwandu: Something must be done now. We cannot afford to add to our plight the luxury of the proliferation of nuclear waste. Yet the evidence of the threat from nuclear waste does not show that it comes from the generation of nuclear energy. The threat rather comes from the stockpile of the arsenal of nuclear weapons accummulated by nations with such weapons. Moreover the data on the utilisation of World Energy Resources nuclear energy accounts for only 16%.
With the development of nuclear science and advances in nuclear reactor technology and the international jurisprudence developed by the IAEA safeguards and safety measures have been developed for the peaceful use of nuclear power. In Africa we we have substantial uranium resources which are being mined and exported by large transnational corporations.
Yet Africa suffers chronic shortages of energy which factor is a serious constraint to her development. International cooperation through the IAEA could reduce the danger for nuclear proliferation and dumping of nuclear waste by offering the latest technology in mining and mangement of thentire nuclear fuel cycle. Depleted uranium could be used to produce clean and safe energy
Other uses of nuclear technology would include nuclear medicine, eradication of pests and vectors such as mosquitoes and tsetse flies which spread diseases such as malaria and tripanosomiasis (SIT).
With the ominous prospects of mutual terror and extermination nations have no other rational choice but to learn fast to cooperate for the survival of the human species. Time is running out. We must move away from the self inflicted fear of nuclear energy. Let us combine knowledge, technology and the collective will to survive. Fifty years after President Eisenhower’s speech on “atoms for peace”, we must build the will to tame these atoms for peace, development and development.
10. What exactly is the carbon footprint of nuclear power (including uranium refining)? Dr Tim (and others)
We are awaiting an answer from the panel on this question, and hope to update this article later today.
Top scientists answer your ‘toughest’ energy questions
October 27, 2010 by drjohnmcgowan
Filed under Green Energy
Post your questions on peak oil, wind power, nuclear power and more for our panel of seven of the world’s leading energy scientists
• See the questions other readers have submitted
Can the world shift entirely from fossil fuels to renewable sources such as wind, solar and marine power? Is nuclear power a good green alternative to coal and gas? When will the oil run out? And what should power the cars of tomorrow – oil, biofuels or electricity?
Here is your chance to get answers from a panel of seven of the world’s top energy scientists on today’s big energy questions.
Just post your questions in the form below. We will pick the ten best questions and then the awards committee of the 2011 Global Energy Prize will answer them here on environmentguardian.co.uk in a week (3 November).
The panel
• Klaus Riedle – a world specialist in the sphere of gas turbine energetics and head of the Scientific Developments Department for high-temperature energetic turbines at Siemens. He was awarded Global Energy Prize in 2005 for his extensive work in the development and creation of powerful high-temperature gas turbines for steam and gas power plants.
• Dr Alvin W. Trivelpiece – a physicist and former director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s world leading research and manufacturing park with approximately 13,000 employees. Dr Trivelpiece was head of the 1986 US Delegation on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy to the USSR and was an early supporter of the Human Genome Project.
• Dr Tom Sanders – the manager of the Global Nuclear Futures Program at Sandia National Laboratories, and president of the American Nuclear Society from 2009-2010. Dr Sanders is a member of the US Department of Commerce’s Civil Nuclear Trade Advisory Committee, and has advised numerous senior government officials on the development of nuclear energy in the USA.
• Dr Clement Bowman – founding chairman of the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA), and pioneered Canada’s oilsands extraction project. For his work in this field Dr Bowman was awarded a Global Energy Prize in 2008. He is also a former Chair of the Alberta Government’s Technology and Research Advisory Committee and President of the Alberta Research Council.
• Ambassador Pius Yasebasi Ng’wandu – holds a PhD from Stanford University and has held many political positions in Tanzania, including as the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, and as the Minister of Water. He is founder and managing director of consulting group Yaseconsult, and from 1998 to 2005 was the Chairperson of the National Commission of UNESCO.
• Dr Robert Aymar – former Director-General of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, one of the largest and most respective science research centres in the world. He held this role for five years, during which time he oversaw the completion and first experiments of the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator designed to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang.
Post your question