Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The great advantage of electricity over combustion fuels is that it is rapidly and
efficiently transportable and can be converted to other forms of energy (mechanical,
thermal, light, etc.) at relatively high rates of efficiency. Moreover, it is clean, and can be
made available instantaneously - literally 'at the flick of a switch'.
Energy at War
The Battle of Mons was one of the first engagements of the First World War. It began in
late August 1914 when British cavalry happened upon their German counterparts on the
French-Belgianborder.TheBritishriderschasedtheGermansforseveralkilometresbefore
dismounting and engaging them in a gun battle.
Imagine muskets or swords in place of rifles, and a very similar battle could have taken
place several centuries, even millennia, before. Yet just thirty years later the technology of
warfare had been transformed, driven by enormous investment in military research through
two world wars, the second of which ended with the discovery and use of a vastly more
destructive weapon than any hitherto known. J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the scientists
who led the Manhattan Project, said of this new technology: “It has led us up those last few
steps to the mountain pass; and beyond, there is a different country” (Rhodes 2010, p 3).
Solar radiation is the result of the fusion of hydrogen atoms in the sun's core, producing
helium. However, the helium released has a slightly smaller mass than the sum of the
hydrogen atoms. The 'missing' mass has been released as energy. This reaction was
described in Einstein's famous formula E = mc
2
. What this means is that the energy
(E, expressed in joules) of any matter is equal to its mass (m, expressed in kilograms)
multiplied by the speed of light (c) squared. Since the speed of light is immense (300,000
kilometres per second), the amount of energy theoretically contained in any kilogram of
matter is similarly vast.
The discovery of nuclear energy opened up, as Oppenheimer foresaw, new horizons. Up
to that time, most energy conversion involved combustion - first of biomass, then of fossil
fuels. Nuclear energy represented a huge technological breakthrough: the ability to harness
the most primal energy source of all - that of atoms and stars. Initially, many believed
that this heralded an age of limitless energy. Lewis Strauss, chairman of the United States
Atomic Energy Commission, claimed in a 1954 speech, “Our children will enjoy in their
homes electrical energy too cheap to meter” (Smil
2010
, p. 31). Strauss's claim was not as
illusory as it may now appear. It was based not on the promise of nuclear fission, which
relies on the relatively rare metal uranium, but on the belief that humans would one day
harness the power of nuclear fusion, using the most abundant element on Earth, hydrogen.
