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