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Cutting-edge energy By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist Readers with a keen eye may call me out and say: ”Brenden! You’ve already written about energy! I know what joules are, I know how much energy is in a bolt of lightning. You’re getting lazy!” Wrong. I’ve always been lazy, but that’s beside the point. I’m actually going to talk about some cutting-edge energy concepts that could impact you within the next decade — or even right now. You’ve heard me talk about fusion energy in several articles, and there’s a big reason for that. As far as we can tell, the sun will produce more energy than 10,000 civilizations could ever use before it reaches the final stages of its life cycle. Can you imagine what we could do with even a sliver of that? As development into artificial intelligence and quantum computing brings us closer to previously unsolvable problems, human beings are racing toward an energy future we thought was science fiction as recently as 20 years ago. Let’s take a look at how evolving energy affects your daily life. Wireless charging is a concept many of us are already using in our homes. Have you ever had to replace your entire phone after the delicate charging pins eroded or came loose from plugging in a charger a few hundred times? Wireless charging pads work on select devices that have a built-in receiver. These pads feature a transmitter that converts electricity into an electromagnetic field (EMF), while your phone has a receiver that converts the EMF back into 10 /
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/ October 24, 2019
an alternating current or direct current (AC/DC, like the band), which charges the battery of your phone. A lot of energy is lost this way, but it can also save you from having to buy a new phone every year. You see this happen often with radio-frequency identification tags (RFID), and those fancy keycards at hotels that unlock your door without having to swipe or insert anything. Another type of wireless charging is when you have a device such as a specialized laser or a device that utilizes microwaves pointed at a receiver, beaming energy remotely to power that device in a similar fashion. This is a pretty cutting-edge application so I don’t have a lot of examples for this, but a microwave-powered helicopter took flight briefly during World War II, without the aid of a combustion engine. One of the most cutting-edge applications of energy generation is actually one of the oldest forms on the planet. Plants have been utilizing photosynthesis, using photons from the sun to split CO2 into carbon and oxygen molecules, for at least a billion years. Scientists have been experimenting with extremely efficient artificial photosynthesis, claiming some experiments have been up to 10 times more efficient at creating and storing energy than plants. Unfortunately, it’s not without its drawbacks. Most artificial photosynthesis devices use hydrogen as a catalyst, which will bond with oxygen to create water and damage the device. Plants also have the ability to reconfigure carbon atoms into building blocks for growth, while artificial devices lack that so far. However, as
fossil fuel costs are going up, the costs for creating and using these devices are going down. Another form of cutting-edge energy generation may not be as flashy as fusion or as sexy as artificial photosynthesis, but has some really cool side-effects and applications. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) facilities allow warm surface seawater to flow into a low-pressure chamber, where it boils to create steam. This steam cranks a turbine to create electrical energy and is then vented into a condenser pipe running alongside cold, nutrient-rich seawater pulled in from the deep ocean. The steam condenses back into desalinated water, which can be used to harvest hydrogen or be made into potable drinking water. It doesn’t create nearly as much energy as other methods — a large OTEC power plant can only sustain about 100 homes — but the nutrients it brings to the surface can be repurposed to feed fisheries or algae that are also used for energy production. Given the right circumstances, a generating station like this could be used to power and hydrate an early settlement on an icy ocean moon like Europa, should humans ever colonize it. It’s also worth mentioning that nuclear reactors are still developing. Nuclear reactors have been categorized into generations, where Generation I reactors, built in the 1950s and ’60s, have been decommissioned. Most Generation II reactors are either currently powering portions of the U.S. grid or are shutting down. Generation III reactors are starting to pop up now, with a fourth generation on the way. Generation IV reactors
are expected to be 100 times as efficient as current reactors, with some even designed to reuse their radioactive waste, ideally making nuclear energy a form of sustainable, renewable energy. Energy production is a vast and complicated subject. Rather
than argue about it on Facebook, go ask your local librarian about the pages and pages of math I conveniently omitted from this article. They’ll shake their fist at the sky, curse my name, but diligently help you to find everything you need.
Random Corner ic Don’t know much about atom • A Japanese man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. In total, 70 people are believed to have survived both blasts, but Yamaguchi is the only one recognized by the Japanese government. • Shigeki Tanaka, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, went on to win the Boston Marathon in 1951. • The city of Kokura was the original target of Fat Man — the codenamed atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki. • 10% of U.S. electricity is made from dismantled atomic bombs. • In 1962, the U.S. detonated a hydrogen bomb in space that was 100 times more powerful than Hiroshima. • Atomic bomb tests were a major tourist attraction in Las Vegas during the 1950s. • During the Cold War, the U.S. seriously considered dropping an atomic bomb on the moon to
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demonstrate its military superiority. • The atomic bomb explosion at Hiroshima was generated by matter weighing no more than a paperclip. • There are eight countries that have claimed to have successfully detonated nuclear weapons: the U.S., Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. • There’s a nuclear bomb lost somewhere off the coast of Savannah, Ga., after a mid-air collision involving U.S. Air Force planes near Tybee Island. • The Trinity Site atomic bomb museum in New Mexico — where the first A-bomb was detonated — is only open 12 hours per year. • Barack Obama was the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, 71 years after the bombing. • The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, was 1,400 times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.