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Chapter 10
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 evaluat
or the benefits and costs
The environmental costs of hydroelectricity are
much
Important Nonrenewable Energy
Sources
North American Energy Resources
US has only
2.4% of world’s
oil reserves
Advantages Disadvantages
• Running out
• Relatively
• 42-93 years
low cost • Low prices
• High net encourage
energy yield waste
• Efficient • Air pollution and
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
ar Sand: Oil Shale:
Mixture of clay, sand Oily rocks that
water and bitumen - contain a solid
thick and sticky mix of hydro-
eavy oil. carbons.
itumen heated to
onvert to synthetic
rude oil.
Natural Gas
• 50-90% methane
• Cleanest of fossil
fuels
• Approximate 200
year supply
• Advantages and
disadvantages
Coal – What is it?
ost over-runs
igh operating costs
hree Mile Island
hernobyl
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