Our modern life is built on energy
we use it to heat to cool
to light up our cities
you can powers are cars
and flies are planes.
It fills our stores and keeps us switched
on and plugged-in in the
average home in America in 1980.
There were 3 electronic devices.
Today,
there are over 25.
But most of that energy comes
from burning coal,
oil and gas.
I don't think people understand when
they flipped the light switch
were that energy comes from.
Is there a better way.
We need a miracle in energy technology.
Around the globe.
There was a race on to find a solution.
Tapping the power of the sun this
tablespoon of fuel is going to
change the world.
We need to innovate and we need to
innovate faster and in the wake
of Japan's tsunami re-examining nuclear.
Nuclear keeps looking pretty good,
even with the Fukushima might.
Kent technology help us fuel our future.
The current problem is actually
easily solved.
And are we ready for it.
Everybody wants it somewhere other
than their own backyard.
Guess what.
If you don't,
solve the problem,
your backyard isn't going
look the same anyway.
Most programs about climate
change start on a noted.
With images like this.
But this is a program about fixing.
So it starts in a place where it is
hard to imagine that there are
any problems at all.
Sir Richard Branson's private
Caribbean island.
And I first saw it this island.
I've never seen a more beautiful
jewel in my life and completely
fell in love with it.
The challenge was to make sure
that you actually enhance the
beauty rather than destroy it.
Branson.
The airline mogul has even upgraded
his little Caribbean jewel
with some pretty spectacular flyers.
About a hundred years ago.
I think the last from India got
eaten so with embarked on a
program of reintroducing
them to the islands.
The thing I think the island is a
more perfect island today than
it was before we arrived and I think
you know that's what we've
got to try to do with the world.
But fixing the world is an easy
even for billionaires in fact
Branson's love of nature has created
a big personal dilemma.
He's become super rich well bringing
stylish air travel to the
masses.
And yet he is also worried
about climate change.
Those 2 passions are like the oil
it takes to run his planes.
And water.
They do not mix.
Branson's dilemma while a bit
more high-flying than most.
Is ultimately the same that we all face.
How can we get the energy our world
needs in a way that want
threatening.
Climate change is one of the
greatest threats relevant.
Branson solution is to use
his entrepreneurial must.
And profits to attack climate change
an idea inspired by another
famous brand Winston Churchill.
The threat of carbon could be worse
than you know who won World
War II pretty careless if that's the case.
Churchill would get a warm set up
he would rally industry he'd
rally the troops and try
to be carbon the enemy.
And so we set up the top.
Branson is not alone.
Right now in laboratories
around the globe.
There is a race on to find a solution.
The outcome is uncertain.
But ultimately,
the question is can technology
save us from climate change.
There is no better place to start
than deep in this West Virginia
coal mine.
Which generates half of all US electricity
tells a story millions
of years old.
35 million years ago Earth's atmosphere
was awash in carbon
dioxide.
But this is what look like.
This.
Alligators and South Dakota.
Palm trees in the Rocky Mountains.
And instead of being covered by ice
they were forecasts in an art
. Over millions of years those trees
pulled the carbon out of the
air to grow and when they died.
Much of that carbon got
buried underground.
The same process created the coal
we see here in West Virginia.
Cole is up to 86% car.
Yes.
A gallon of gasoline and other fossil
fuel represents 100 tons of
ancient plans.
That's why gas,
coal and oil are called fossil fuels.
With the advent of the industrial
age that carbon rich coal and
oil was dug up and burned as fuel.
Burning anything releases car.
But carbon dense coal and
oil release a lot.
That carbon long-buried combines
with oxygen in the Earth's
atmosphere and acts like a blank.
This NASA map shows global temperatures
rising over the last
center.
No one is sure precisely how much
the temperature will rise or how
quickly.
But the atmosphere carbon predicted
for the end of this century is
approaching the level from
35 million years ago.
When those alligators
swam in South Dakota.
The task ahead is to cut carbon emissions.
And that is exactly what Steven put
cholera has figured out how to
do.
The caller is an environmental biologist
at Princeton University
and a serious would worker.
He has used both skills to demonstrate
how we can solve our carbon
problem he calls it the wedge theory.
It's easy to say all the energy
problem is so big that we can't
possibly build enough wind
turbines to solve it.
We can't possibly do enough
conservation to solve it.
So you break the problem
into pieces and say,
what are the technological
options across the board,
that we have to throw at it.
But says the problem can
be easily visualize.
This is the amount of emissions
that humanity puts out annually
its carbon emissions greenhouse
gas emissions,
and this is,
and what happened for the first 10,000
years since the end of the
last Ice Age people admitted almost
nothing the Liberal cleared
albeit associated with funding.
But then the industrial revolution
happened an emissions started
increase because of the burning
of coal and oil.
And then in the natural gas,
but it increased and increased
increased and they're still
increase.
So instead of allowing them to climb.
We've got a freeze them to this triangle
here is the size of the
problem,
it's the gap between what we were
gonna do and what we must do.
Risks.
The caller says this triangle
represents the challenge.
Asked to do.
It is the carbon emissions that
we must somehow keep out of the
atmosphere.
To help make this easier to understand
and more fun Ocala decided
to turn it into a game literally one,
Chris.
At home,
and my kids were fight an inside-outside
and I was like that's
gonna go outside to build something.
He used his working skills
to build the game.
Here's how it works.
He turn the area that is the
problem into a triangle.
This represents the total amount
of carbon day we must avoid
putting into the atmosphere
in the next 50 years.
The ideal target is controversial
but Karla calculated it was 7
billion tons per year.
He divided that up into one
billion ton section.
He made wooden wedges that represent
technologies that could fill
in their Tri hang.
So it is there own technology
big enough to do a 7th of the
problem and he has he was
high on the whole,
there were 15 already in the marketplace
at an industrial scale.
These are not pie in the sky things
easy things you can go in
visit on a field trip.
Most of the 15 wedges can be grouped
into 4 simple categories.
This green,
which represents the easiest
and cheapest efficiency.
Like increasing the fuel mileage
of all cars from 30 to 60 miles
per gallon.
This yellow which represents tripling
the number of nuclear power
plants over 50 years.
This blue which represents cleaning
coal plants by burying their
carbon emissions.
And this red,
which represents the sun harnessing
its power with solar panels or
wind turbines.
This thing has 2 different wages
per in his Princeton colleague
Robert cycle though did the complicated
analysis behind this
simple game to prove that
it could be done.
The way you play the game to feel
the triangle with 7 of the 15
available technological wedges and
create your own solution to the
climate crisis.
Some people might use more solar energy.
Good evening.
Others more efficiency savings.
I'm got nominate a wedge.
Efficient and I think efficiency
one wedges modest and self
important more of these efficiency wedges.
The point is that there are
many possible solutions.
It all depends on our choices.
Drawing the blueprint for a solution
to this problem is deeply
challenging to help Nova has assembled
the panel of experts.
Leaders from business academia
and government,
who are all trying to find solutions.
And technology said this.
Yes you can.
And it should it must and that's to say,
it must save.
Technology save us from climate change
absolutely very convinced
that can and in fact beyond that
what I would says it's an
incredible opportunity for us to
create more kinds of new things,
no.
We can do things that we
can't dream alive today.
We can envision what it will look
like a hundred years from now.
I think the carbon problem
is actually easily solved:
what's hard is that we need
to make a lot of change.
You know we more last halved coming
forward at this to recreate a
green version of the revolution.
It's taken us under 50 years.
There are people right now.
If you go to work every day and
they can say to themselves.
You know if I got lucky.
Today I will arguably saved the
world and become not just the
richest person in it.
But the richest person ever.
Climate change solutions will create
more wealth than any other
sector over the next decade.
Richard Branson knows the power
of profits to spark innovation.
So he has started a$25
million contest for the best idea
to reduce carbon levels.
Is there some way that some of that
extra CO2 might be scavenge
officially out of the atmosphere.
One of the people working to do that
and hoping that Branson might
make his Christmas come a bit early
is Klaus if physicist at
Columbia University.
Wagner's idea is brilliantly simple
why not develop technologies
that work just like trees removing
the carbon pollution that our
cars and Branson's planes make.
Everybody knows it can be done every
submarine has to pull that
CO2 out of the people.
Preterm side.
Carbon capture is not a new idea.
The navy has relied on it for decades
deep underwater submarine
exhale carbon dioxide with every breath.
In such a small enclosed space
that CO2 builds up and becomes
talks.
In every submarine CO2 must be
removed from the air for the
sailors to survive.
That's done with some pretty basic
chemistry using a machine
called a scrap.
The carbon in a carbon dioxide molecule
has a slightly positive
charge.
If the chemical filter inside the
scrub has a special negative
charge the carbon dioxide will
be drawn would like a magnet.
In his lab Wagner found a resin based
material that acts just like
this submarine scrub attracting
carbon dioxide to stick to it.
The next challenge was how to capture
carbon naturally in the
breeze without using energy.
Well,
you know,
really.
Wagner experimented with various
shapes from Richard flat panels.
GE.
2 material draped like a flag.
He discovered that cutting the material
into very thin strips.
And putting them along a liar
would be most effective
the result a man made carbon collector
highly engineered at one of
America's top universities
that looks in the end,
like a branch of a Christmas tree.
These 2 branches look very much alike
because they finally trying
to do more or less the same thing
but these materials to know
about a thousand times better at
collecting CO2 from the air,
then a natural tree.
Wagner's vision is that one day there
would be a fleet of carbon
needing vehicles each about the size
of an 18-wheeler sucking up
the unwanted carbon from Richard
Branson's planes.
Or those New York City Cats.
Our modern world has an insatiable
appetite for energy.
It is tight economic growth
and prosperity.
Hardly fossil fuels feed
85% of that demand.
Fossil fuels are still used and we
are taking the CO2 and capture
it and store it safely and permanently.
Is really critical.
Not just for calls 50% electricity
comes from coal in the US but
80% of electricity in China
comes from coal.
Jim Rogers,
the CEO of one of America's largest
electric utilities says
figuring out how to clean up coal
must be part of the solution.
The issue for Congress can we clean it up.
That is the technology challenge we have,
because you just can't wake up and
tomorrow morning and saying no
more coal.
Rogers says we need to be finding
ways to capture and store carbon
. Like Wagner's doing in his lab.
But on a very large scale we need
to do it with a sense of urgency
. We're not moving faster.
The process of capturing carbon
in burying it is happening on a
massive scale in a place where people
don't take taxis they take.
The Sahara desert.
Algeria.
Location so remote and difficult
to get through.
We had to fly there on British
Petroleum chartered flight.
In Salah was once an important trait
lake in the middle of the
Sahara desert.
It may be an important link
to our energy future.
North Africa is rich in natural gas.
At in that gas which might heat your home.
Comes out of the ground with up
to 10% carbon dioxide mixed in.
And in purity that would make your
stove burned less efficiently.
So the carbon dioxide is scrubbed
out like in a submarine.
Usually that carbon dioxide is just
released into the atmosphere.
But here at it is pressurized and
pumped through sewage pipes that
stretch across the desert.
5 miles away the gas makes
an unexpected turn.
Here at the K B 5-o 2 site the Algerian
national gas company and
BP are put in the car and outside
right back where they found
underground.
Geologist John Mitchell E is checking
up on the gas pressure.
This is the inject a wellhead for
KB fight both too in this pipe
is the carbon dioxide that's been
compressed the production
facility.
The noise you hear is the flow of gas.
The pressurized carbon outside is
then forced more than a mile.
Where it is pushed into a
porous rock formation.
And effectively trapped back underground.
That facility takes of power plants were.
In the wedges game capturing the
CO2 like this from 1600 natural
gas plants would provide one wedge
or one 7th of the needed
solution.
But doing this is expensive and
would increase the price.
So at present In Salah is one of
only 4 such facilities in the
world.
Operating at a large scale.
There are more of these right now
because there's no commercial
reason to do them.
Price of fossil fuel reflected the
damage that was caused by the
greenhouse gases that office and there
would be an economic reason
to store the carbon dioxide below ground.
Given that the gases invisible.
How do they know it is actually
staying underground.
Satellite measurements reveal the
surface of the earth at the site
. We can calculate how much movement
there is in the Earth's
surface under way in Baghdad now
cancellations all tight monetary
motion.
Fans of the Sahara are stretched up
to 12 millimeters to make room
for the carbon dioxide injected inside.
So if carbon dioxide from a single
natural gas plant can literally
move the surface of the earth.
What is the impact of all of the
carbon are modern life creates.
We produce 9 billion tons
of carbon a year.
A number,
so hard to that,
we decided to break it down
into something more manage.
What is your contribution
to climate change.
When you look around your home and
there are some obvious places
where we use live energy and for
most people during not occur
again.
Dan Kaufman,
of the University of California
at Berkeley has tried to figure
out the carbon footprint
of the average America.
Heating our homes.
Driving our cars.
Growing and shipping our food.
We know how much carbon associated
with each year of energy we use
in our house.
Adding those things up basic counting.
But it will depend on obvious.
Developed a Web site where you can
calculate your carbon footprint
. But we wanted to make
it a bit more graphic.
So we asked him to imagine it as
a solid white garden compost
which is mostly carbon anyway.
One pound of carbon limited as an
invisible gas can be represented
as a pound of this rich black dirt.
20 mile trip to the store and back.
That's about 6 pounds of carbon.
One short trip.
The 6 pounds.
But in one year.
The average American drives
about 10,000 miles.
This is the average American driver
through the year 2 tons of car
. All those car trips 2 tons.
And all that driving flying buying
and heating we do in a year.
6 times.
I show you the average family's carbon
footprint I've invited like
kids to join.
And this is the average American
families Norfolk just one here.
Your average families 14 tons of
carbon waste combines in the
atmosphere with oxygen to create
50 tons of carbon dioxide gas.
That gas floating in the atmosphere
sunlight enter to warm earth.
But it blocks.
Much of the heat from escaping.
It's like an invisible cortex
blanket warm you know are.
So how can we get energy with the
least amount of carbon emissions
. Mean.
The first stop on everyone's
green energy list the sun.
Solar power is the poster child for
transforming our energy system
. There's huge potential.
If you look at the numbers,
the amount of solar energy reaching
the surface of the is 100,000
terror laws.
The amount of energy that civilization
is using for all of its
purposes today 17 or 18 Caroline's.
This makes solar energy
enormously attractive.
You know we need a few square meters
of solar panels for every
person in the world they actually
generate all the energy will be
and we don't do that is it's still
too expensive solar panels cost
a lot of money.
The question is can we make
photovoltaic stitching.
And if.
Making solar power cheaply
is now the goal.
And with billions at stake.
There is a race on to do.
There is no better place to see
the intensity of that race then
here in Chai.
China leads the world in the manufacture
of solar panels and it's
not just because of cheap labor,
a big part of it is down of this
man Jung wrong she the CEO of
suntan and a remarkable
rags to riches story.
Well safety the fortune overnight,
but I never believed that and
he's not sure for anybody.
Yes,
he's not sure unless you
have the rich a father,
you know me,
that's different,
you know.
She's family was far from rich.
In fact,
his father was so poor that she
was put up for adoption.
Now he's known as the Sun King and
is ranked among the richest men
in the world.
I'm a very aggressive personality.
So when I saw as opportunity
during I've just.
Before hitting the jackpot,
she was a solar scientist in
Australia but felt the best.
Way to get solar out to the world
was not through publishing
papers but through combining
science with this.
The initial reaction from his university
colleague and teacher
Stewart went and was not encouraging.
Well,
to be honest when he first mentioned
to me his idea why didn't
actually think it was a good idea,
and I told you so.
Today,
she's former teacher is his
chief technology officer.
Amazing.
Instead of perfecting technology
in the lab,
they are using their science
to cut the cost of solar.
The basic science of photovoltaic
technology is pretty
straightforward.
And has been around since the 1950s.
Photo means light.
Pictures.
And so,
when a photon of light.
It's a silicon atom its
energy Knox an electron
which is then directed
through the silicon.
To the thin wires on this
that stream of electrons is
electricity back in power.
Anything from your toaster to your TV.
During the manufacturing process
metal lines that workers wires
are put on the surface of the silly.
The problem is these metal lines
cannot be made very narrow that
shines quite a bit of the
solar cell surface.
One way when I mean she working
to improve their cells is by
making the wires thinner
and closer together.
So the electrons don't
have to travel so far.
Look at the solar still here on
my left Castaneda lines were
locked place up.
The new design increases efficiency
which drives down the costs
its innovations like these
that has led she.
The dominant world production in
2001 it would take Sun Tech a
whole year to produce what Mao rolls
out of the factory in 2 days
that.
Kind of growth can be seen across China,
where they are adding the equivalent
of a city the size of Chicago
every 3 months.
Nowhere is the enthusiasm for solar
power more celebrated than
into June,
3 hours south of Beijing.
And the improvement
and at night.
The city is alike.
With me on that is powered by batteries
that charged in the day by
an enormous array of solar panels.
The man behind this showcase city
is how long me another of
China's solar millionaires.
Sort of me.
It is my dream of a new kind of
landscape although lifestyle.
Now 4 main wants to spread his
wealth and passion for solar.
Among the England has been possessed
by this vision to design a
community which in this case I think
it was 88% solar reliant.
Orville shell the China scholar
has been to do here.
Well,
it may be flashy he says it's
emblematic of China's growing
prosperity.
You know China today,
you see the most amazing
thing springing up
in some sense,
they're very impressive and involving
allowed a very innovative
technology and their these
weirdness other aspects of
but there is this extraordinary
dynamic energy the sort of
bursting forth.
And it's not just China.
The energy problem is seen
as an opportunity.
All over the world.
China is moving very aggressively.
India's biggest move in this western
Europe is going to move on.
This even some oil exporting
countries OPEC countries are
beginning to realize that you need
to develop cleaner energy
sources.
Since coming to the Department of
Energy Secretary Steven Chu has
increased spending on developing
clean energy bike$40
billion.
And.
We need technologies solar power
wind power carbon capture who's
gonna supply the world with
those technologies.
I would hope it's you know it's not.
The US once was enthusiastic about solar.
At the height of the oil
crisis in the 1970s.
By the end of this century.
I want our nation to derive 20% of
all the energy we use from the
sun.
To great fanfare President Jimmy
Carter even installed solar
heaters on the roof of the White House.
This is accustomed to stock specific risk.
But a few years later after oil prices
drop Ronald Reagan took the
panel's down.
Today,
America is trying to get back
into the solar gain.
I mean,
the bottom line is we roughly what
to double the amount of Queen.
The goal for Secretary Chu is
to double the amount of non
carbon-emitting energy in the US by
2035 comeback here and a large
chunk of that this solar.
Along comes a need and we need clear,
this is a problem that science can
solve that opportunity issue.
The idea is to invest in science
that will pay off in practical
solutions.
One of the major challenges we
face is transportation which
accounts for about a 3rd
of total energy use.
There are several different approaches
including electric cars.
Transport fuels represent
a special problem.
The most likely avenue they're currently
in the people pursuing
biofuels.
Yes.
Biofuels or form of solar because
they come from plants which
capture the sun's energy to grow.
One promising approach is being developed
at the joint bioenergy
Institute in Emeryville,
California.
Where Jake easily is using plant
biology to come up with the fuel
of the future that will work
with our current system.
We've got about$3
trillion worth of transportation
infrastructure in this country
with the gas stations pipelines
the refineries
automobiles trains planes.
We don't have the money to repay all.
He's idea is to exploit the
way plants make food.
Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
And use that carbon and oxygen
and hydrogen from water,
plus the sun's energy to make nutrients
in the form of a simple
sugar.
Ling is working to put that
Sugar to use for our.
One way to think about how he's doing
that is he is super charging
an age old process.
The basic recipe of beer is to take
borrowing a plant that is rich
in those stored sugars
and mix it with yeast.
Yeast is a microbe that feeds on those
plant sugars and turns them
into alcohol that process
is called fermentation.
Lars Larson the brew master explains.
This is instrumental to
the brewing processed,
it is the yeast that turns the sugar
render Halka hole and create
a beard was with us away in every
animal's life cycle or something
. Those in the front something comes
out the back alcohol to come
out the back so these to
but instead of alcohol that you drink.
Keesler wants to make diesel fuel
by genetically altering the east
. We have an enormous amount of power
to change biology manipulate
biology.
Instead of Barley the plant.
He uses his switch grass,
it's an agricultural waste material
but it sugars work easy to
access.
We have to go to great lengths to
extract the and turn them into
this.
Then he feeds the sugar to genetically
altered yeast like at the
brewery but what comes out of
the back side of this yeast.
You can put directly into
your car or your plane.
This is not your grandmother's east
this is has been souped up to
produce an advanced biofuel you
all that is nearly identical to
what we had today.
You know.
There is just one care.
If Richard Branson came here today,
I could give him a tablespoon of
jet fuel that we've made here in
the laboratory.
That tablespoon would cost about$100,000
. If if if if
well I would Al Absi love
to meet up with 5th.
It's just fantastic to have all
these people trying to come up
with the big breakthroughs.
I think the breakthroughs will happen
it needs money resources
time and energy.
Great,
great people to put their minds.
I firmly believe that technology
can save us from climate change,
but the changes that we're talking
about our heroic in scale,
they're not without precedent.
But they are still heroic in scale.
One challenge is to figure out which
advances in the laboratory
could be increased to an industrial scale.
Not all promising science is practical.
But in the wedges game there is
an immediate way to reduce the
size of the problem.
The potential is huge and
it's called efficiency.
The very word efficiency says you
get the same bang for a less
buck.
Efficiency is a car that gets
better MP chief in them.
The we in the house,
said we keep,
and so you had the same award inside
houses with less natural gas
currently on that.
Not using energy in the first place
is the easiest way to earn a
wedge.
It's like the old Benjamin Franklin
quote a penny saved is a penny
. Ben Franklin himself would be proud
of what is going on here at
the national archives in Washington DC.
The archives is all about saving
America's most important
documents like the US Constitution,
which Franklin signing.
But it paid very little attention
to saving energy.
Today,
that's all changed.
James Garvin was once just
the buildings engineered,
but now he's also become a detective
using a thermal imaging camera Garvin
is tracking down an urgent
leaks.
We're looking for leaks to see areas
where we're losing a lot of
the Kerry.
Red means hot which is wasted energy.
Obviously and the problems start
right at the front door.
We don't need a special camera
to see problems here.
You can feel the heat through
the 3 quarter inch.
Hemscott.
That escaping in heat may help
this guy outside state.
But the point is to keep all the
heat inside the building so the
archives was pulled in efficiency
experts to reduce its carbon
foot.
They installed new efficient radiators.
And lights that are 20% brighter
yet use a 3rd less energy and
motion sensors to shut them
off when employees don't.
But the biggest ticket items were
installing efficient boilers
left and plugging in those leaky gas.
The archives is on track to reduce
its emissions by more than
1,000 tons of carbon a year.
That reduction doesn't just show
up and garments camera is good
news,
blue,
it's also save in the archives,
a lot of green.
Its energy bill will be reduced by$1.2
million every year which will pay
for the upgrade in only 5 years
. Well you know.
Everybody loves efficiency,
efficiency saves you money
it doesn't cost you money.
Efficiency savings aren't just limited
to grand old government
built.
About a quarter of the energy an
average American uses is at home
. Increasing home efficiency can
save a 3rd on your energy bill.
And we know our cars can go
farther on a gallon of gas.
They.
If you took all the cars that are
going to exist in the world 50
years from now and made them
have 60 miles per gallon.
Instead,
a 30 miles per gallon that creates
a wedge it affects one billion
metric tons of carbon atoms.
That would have been emitted to
the atmosphere while still
providing us with the trap we want.
That won't change is the equivalent
of replacing 800 coal plants.
And that's just the beginning of
what efficiency improvements can
do.
In the 1970s energy efficiency,
got a lot of attention,
but for many it was symbolic of a
counter cultural lifestyle and
making uncomfortable sacrifices.
But,
as Stewart Brand,
a leader of the environmental
movement back then points out
efficiency changes in California
have kept energy use the same
while still allowing the
economy to double.
Brand became famous for writing the
whole earth catalog a resource
guide for a sustainable lifestyle.
Today,
he says.
It's important to develop a whole
new catalog of tools to fight
climate change.
From harnessing wave energy.
To use the Earth's geothermal heat.
I think it's encouraging to hear
that were not there and
everything on one particular thing
is somehow win is gonna save us
with a somehow nuclear is gonna
save us there is such a full
spectrum problem is going to take
a full spectrum set of solutions
. Brand has surprised many by his
willingness to consider this
full spectrum.
In the 1970s he fought nuclear energy.
Today he has done an about face the
shift was starting to really
take climate change seriously enough
to challenge by assumption
that I knew enough about nuclear.
But the senior army in Fukushima,
Japan has revived old fears
about nuclear energy.
When this tsunami struck this 1970s
style reactor was flooded and
it's diesel generators didn't work,
causing the cooling system to fail.
That led to releases of radiation.
Does this disaster change brands mind.
And as in Fukushima change my support.
I think a question we're asking
now is comparing the risks of
nuclear to the risks of climate
change and we do that risk
analysis nuclear keeps
looking pretty good,
even with Fukushima my.
According to the game,
replacing 800 coal plants with nuclear
power would solve one wedge
of the needed carbon solution but
can nuclear be made safer.
Nuclear power plants require massive
cooling systems to keep the
reactor core say.
In the old style plants like those
in Japan that was done with a
vast array of pipes valves and back upon.
It was the failure of these backup
systems that led to the nuclear
crisis.
The latest designs for reactors
like this Westinghouse AP 1,000
are much simpler.
An example was the large tank of
cooling water that sits right on
top so that gravity will do the work
in the event of an emergency
. This tankers a 3 day supply of
cooling water and requires no
electricity.
This next generation of nuclear
plant is already in production.
But to see it.
We have to go back to China because
no nuclear plant has been
built in the US since the 1970s.
Kate Jackson,
chief technology officer for Westinghouse
says one key benefit of
the 81,000 is that it is bringing
standardized designs.
Sterilization is an old concept
just never been applied to the
nuclear industry before.
The old nuclear plants were custom
built with more moving parts to
go wrong
now.
Each plant is built in standardized
modules like a giant Lego set
. The majority are attached about
their and the high things in
staff they've been fresher
testing it's right again.
There are a total of 350 modules
for each power station.
Like here in san 4 hours outside
of Shanghai where Kate Jackson
has come to see the progress.
It's wonderful because you get to
see these building blocks being
moved and put into place.
Piece by piece.
The nuclear power station take shape.
Stepping inside Jackson finds the reactor.
This is where the nuclear reaction
will generate the heat that
drives the electrical generator.
Enough power for more
than a million homes.
The plant and men should come on
line in nearly half the usual
time only 4 years.
Over the next 30 years.
China plans to build 400 nuclear reactors.
Designs like the AP 1,000 could
address some of the safety
concerns that Japan's crisis exposed,
but there are still many old style
plans in operation 23 in the US
alone and all nuclear plants suffer
from the long-standing problem
of how to dispose of their nuclear waste
Nathan Miller vault thinks these
problems can be overcome.
Nuclear is one of the carbon free
emission technologies that
absolutely works at scale today.
In Seattle fault former chief technology
officer of Microsoft is
teaming up with his old friend Bill
Gates to work on designing a
future generation of nuclear technology
called Terra power.
We need a miracle in energy technology.
Think we need a miracle sounds extreme
but in fact miracles on the
mainland are flat.
The entire technology industry is about.
The miracles revolt predicts our
new designs that would more
safely and efficiently you
spent nuclear fuel,
which is creating the waste problem today.
He looks to technology not just
provide energy for us,
but to satisfy the aspirations for
growth in the rest of the world
. The energy task for the 21st century
is how can we get every
citizen the earth the kind of
energy use as you find in the
developed world.
It is a question of fairness and equity.
Some people say we in the United
States lot Wes and perhaps we
ought to,
I don't know way to force us to use less.
They and the Chinese art and not
use as much as we use now but
they're headed there.
I don't know how you start for them.
The demand for energy indeed
appears on stock.
Energy demand is predicted to triple
by the end of the century.
Which means there is probably a need
for all the solutions science
can come up with.
People always are looking for the
technological magic bullet,
though,
the one thing that if we just
get it right will say.
There probably is no silver bullet,
there may be a silver shotgun in
the sense of a white variety
advances,
which together will solve
a large part of this.
One big nuclear power plant is the
same as 3,000 big wind turbines
and the about 50 square mile.
The question is which do you want.
And the answer is everybody wanted
somewhere other than their own
backyard.
Well guess what,
if you don't,
solve the problem,
your backyard isn't gonna
look the same anyway.
And the energy problem is a moving target.
Every day as demand grows and carbon
accumulates in the atmosphere
, the problem increases.
This is the problem,
in which procrastination Kerry's
really serious penalties.
America has been down the past
of procrastination before.
Perhaps one of the most poignant places
to see the results of that
is back in China.
At a town pulled out of poverty
by solar manufacturing.
At the Joe Silva received.
There is a popular display.
One of the solar panels that Jimmy
Carter installed on the White
House back in 1979.
This solar heater.
You to be a curiosity.
The museum piece,
an example of a road not taken.
Well,
I can be just a small part of
one of the greatest and most
exciting adventures ever undertaken
by the American Pete.
30 years later,
the need to venture into new forms
of energy is even greater.
The challenge is huge.
The potential consequences
of an action are bigger.
Necessities mother of all inventions,
we got the biggest necessity and it's
going to be your mother many
encourage.
This Nova program is available on
DVD sugar PBS.org or call 100