APES Nonrenewable Energy Questions

Describe how nuclear power works.

A nuclear power plant is a highly complex and costly system designed to perform a relatively simple task: to boil water to produce steam that spins a turbine and generates electricity. What makes is complex is the use of a controlled nuclear fission reaction to provide the heat. The reaction takes place in a reactor.

Explain how oil suppliers and sustainability are related by summarizing the effect of oil dependency on the four principles of sustainability. How does this relate to Goldsteib's quote at the end of the chapter.

A serious long-term problem is that, in using non renewable fossil fuels, we violate the four scientific principles of sustainability. We depend not on solar energy but on nonrenewable resources such as oil. The technologies we use to obtain energy disrupt the earth's chemical cycles by diverting huge amounts of water, disrupting land and aquatic systems, and emitting large quantities of pollutants and greenhouse gases.Using these technologies also destroys and degrades biodiversity and ecosystem services that help control species populations. This relates to Goldsteib's quote "Civilization as we know it will not survive unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels." because if we keep using oil in the way that we are today without applying the four principles of sustainability we will run out and not have a back up plan to live with because we will be unable to live without fossil fuels.

Relate the following terms as you support the statement "fossil fuels supply most of our commercial energy." a. Solar Capital b. Commercial energy c. Nonrenwable d. Renewable

A. Solar capital is the amount of inexhaustible solar energy. We use fossil fuels instead of solar energy to supply most of our commercial energy because fossil fuels are cheap and don't require further research to develop. B. Commercial energy comes from extracting and burning nonrenewable energy resources obtained from the earth's crust, primarily carbon-containing fossil fuels--oil, natural gas, and coal. Fossil fuels supply most of our commercial energy because they are cheap and safe to handle. C. Nonrenewable energy is energy that cannot be reproduced. Fossil fuels supply most of our commercial energy and since fossil fuels are a type of nonrenewable energy that means that most of the energy that supplies our commercial needs is nonrenewable. D. Renewable energy is energy that won't run out, some examples are biomass, hydropower, geothermal, wind, and solar energy. We do not use much renewable energy because it is expensive to purchase the equipment that harvests it and it requires research to further develop it's usage so we use fossil fuels to supply most of our commercial energy.

Briefly summarize the important milestones in the history of human energy use. Do think the total energy use by humans must keep growing as it has in the past?

About 275 years ago, we began inventing machines such as the steam engine. Renewable firewood provided about 91% of the energy we used for heating and for running steam engines. But in 1850, this began to change as many forests were depleted; because we used a potentially renewable resource unsustainably by harvesting it faster than nature replaced it. We survived this early energy crisis by learning how to burn coal for heating and running factories and trains. By 1900, wood provided only about 18% of our energy, and coal provided 73%. In 1859, we learned how to pump oil out of the ground and later invented ways to convert it to fuels such as gasoline and heating oil. By 1900, we got 40% of our energy from oil, 38% from coal, and 18% from natural gas- all nonrenewable sources. In the 1950s, we learned how to get enormous amounts of energy by splitting the nuclei of certain types of uranium atoms and to use this energy to produce electricity. Today we continue to live in a fossil fuel era with 82% of our energy coming from non renewable oil, natural gas, and coal resources.

How is China an important player in our look at coal.

China is an important player in our look at coal because China is the world's leading source of sulfur dioxide, which can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. And sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China's coal-burning power plants interact in the atmosphere to form harmful acidic compounds that fall as acid precipitation in parts of China and other countries. This pollution contributes to the air quality problems in cities such as Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan. It takes about 5 to 10 days for long-lived pollution from coal-burning plants in China to make its way to the west coast of United States. There it shows up as higher levels of ozone and other forms of air pollution in major California cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. Toxic mercury from China's emissions has been found in fish caught in Oregon's Willamette River. This already serious environmental and health problem is likely to get much worse if China continues to rely on coal to fuel its rapid economic growth, unless it spends the money to improve the efficiency and air pollution control systems of its new coal-fired power and industrial plants to retrofit older plants with such equipment.

Find and reference a figure in Supplement 10 that is either troubling or supports the above statement.

Figure 8 in supplement 10 shows the brief history of the age of oil and societies use throughout time. This figure supports the statement above because it shows the usage of oil and when the decline on our dependence on oil is expected.

How long will supplies of conventional oil last? Explain some of the complexities in trying to answer this question.

Geologists project that known and projected global reserves of conventional oil will be 80% depleted sometime between 2050 and 2100. It's hard to answer how long supplies will last because it all depends on consumption rates.

Describe the types and use of coal.

Lignite is a brown coal that has low heat content, low sulfur content, and limited supplies in most areas. Bituminous is a soft coal that is extensively used as a fuel because of its high heat content and large supplies, and normally has a high sulfur content. Anthracite is a hard coal that is a highly desirable fuel because of its high heat content and low sulfur content, and supplies are limited in most areas. Coal is burned in power plants to generate about 40% of the world's electricity.

Define and describe natural gas, including identifying conventional, unconventional, LPG, and LNG.

Natural gas is a mixture of gases of which 50-90% is methane. They also contain smaller amounts or heavier gaseous hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, and butane, and small amounts of highly toxic hydrogen sulfide. Conventional natural gas lies above most reservoirs of crude oil. Unconventional natural gas is found in underground sources. LPG is liquefied petroleum gas; it is stored in pressurized tanks for use mostly in rural areas not served by natural gas pipelines. LNG is liquified natural gas; an economically viable alternative to conventional natural gas unless its price is kept artificially low by government subsidies.

Describe heavy oils and its sources.

Oil sand, or tar sand, is a mixture of clay, sand, water, and bitumen- a thick and sticky heavy oil with a high sulfur content that makes up about 10% of the gooey mixture. These heavy oils come from Northeastern Alberta in Canada (has three-fourths of the world's oil sand resources). Other deposits are in Venezuela, Colombia, Russia, and Utah. Together the oil sands of Canada and Venezuela contain more oil than is found in Saudi Arabia.

Describe three advantages of oil, including descriptions of OPEC, US use, and ANWR as they apply to the disadvantages.

Since most of the world's oil supply is controlled by the OPEC they have a monopoly because controlling the world's greatest energy supply is the single greatest economic and political power. Another disadvantage of oil is that it causes water and air pollution. Lastly, oil destroys and degrades natural habitats and exposes parts of the fragile tundra ecosystem due to oil spills and toxic chemicals.

Describe how coal can be converted into gas and liquid fuels and the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.

Solid coal can be converted into synthetic natural gas by a process called coal gasification and into a liquid fuel such as methanol or synthetic gasoline by coal liquefaction. Compared to conventional uses of coal, producing these gaseous and liquid fuels requires mining 50% more coal. Producing and burning them could add 50% more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. As a result, these synthetic fuels have a low net energy yield and cost more to produce per unit of energy than conventional coal costs.

Describe the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power. Reference one of the two case studies in your answer.

Some advantages of a nuclear power are that it has a low environmental impact, requires moderate land use, large fuel supply, emits ⅙ as much CO2 as coal, moderate land disruption and water pollution, and low risk accidents because of multiple safety systems. However, accidents are still possible and have happened like when one of the two reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, lost its coolant water because of a series of mechanical failures and human operator errors. This led to the most serious commercial nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history.

Describe the advantages and disadvantages of coal.

Some advantages of coal are that there is ample supplies, high net energy yield, low cost, well-developed technology, and air pollution can be reduced with improved technology. Some disadvantages are severe land disturbance, air pollution, and water pollution, severe threat to human health when burned, environmental costs not included in market price, large government subsidies, high CO2 emissions when produced and burned, and radioactive particle and toxic mercury emissions.

Explain the advantages and disadvantages to heavy oils.

Some advantages of heavy oils are that they have a moderate cost (oil sand), large potential supplies, especially oil sands in Canada, are easily transported within and between countries, have an efficient distribution system in place, and the technology is well developed. However, some disadvantages are that there is a high cost (oil shale), have a low energy yield, the environmental costs are not included in the marked price, there are large amounts of water needed for processing, extracting causes severe land disruption and water pollution, air pollution and CO2 emissions when produced and burned.

Describe the advantages and disadvantages of natural gas.

Some advantages of natural gas are ample supplies, high net energy yield, low cost, less air pollution than other fossil fuels, lower CO2 emissions than other fossil fuels, easily transported by pipeline, low land use, and good fuel for fuel cells, gas turbines, and motor vehicles. Some disadvantages of natural gas are that it is a nonrenewable source, releases CO2 when burned, government subsidies, environmental costs not included in market price, methane can leak from pipelines, difficult to transfer from one country to another, and can be shipped across ocean only as highly explosive LNG.

Describe three advantages of oil, including descriptions of OPEC, US use, and ANWR as they apply to the advantages.

Some advantages of oil are an ample supply for 42-93 years, most of this supply is controlled by the OPEC, if they find oil in the ANWR then it will increase domestic oil supplies or reduce dependence on oil imports. The high net energy yield of oil, lots of energy is able to be used because of oil. Also, oil is also a low energy cost so since the US imports more than it exports, about 60% import oil, it cost less than producing it ourselves.

What is the nuclear fuel cycle.

The nuclear fuel cycle is a cycled that includes mining of uranium, processing and enriching the uranium to make fuel, using it in a reactor, and safely storing the resulting highly radioactive wastes until their radioactivity falls to safe levels.

Explain net energy and summarize its role in how we should evaluate all energy resources.

The usable amount of high-quality energy available from a given quantity of an energy resource is it's net energy. Net energy is the total amount of useful energy available from an energy resource minus the energy needed to find, extract, process, and get that energy to consumers. We should evaluate all energy resources as net energy so that we can accurately see how much each energy resource will yield over its lifetime. For example, if it takes 8 units of energy to produce 10 units of energy from a coal mine then the net useful energy yield is only 2 units.

Make an argument, based on sustainability, whether or not we should invest in second generation nuclear reactors.

We should invest in second generation nuclear reactors because we need to keep these potentially useful nuclear options available for use in the future, in case energy efficiency and renewable energy options fail to keep up with electricity demands while reducing CO2 emissions to acceptable levels.