Читать книгу Business Trends in Practice - Бернард Марр, Bernard Marr - Страница 39

As well as investing in energy storage projects, we also need other clean energy alternatives – solutions that are able to generate a consistent, reliable supply of clean electricity when supply from renewable sources dips. For now, that means nuclear. I understand people's nervousness around nuclear power, but the technology is one of the safest and cleanest ways of producing energy. In the 60-year history of civil nuclear power, there have been three major accidents at power plants, with Fukushima Daiichi being the most recent in 2011 (imagine if the aviation industry had such a record), and, overall, nuclear energy results in 99.7 percent fewer deaths than coal and 97.5 percent fewer than gas (the safety record for wind and solar is even more impressive).¹⁰ Modern nuclear reactors are much safer than the ones we build decades ago. Looking ahead, we also have nuclear fusion edging closer (see Chapter 2), with the world's largest nuclear fusion project beginning assembly in France.¹¹

We may also see advances in other alternative energy sources that could help to support wind and solar. These include:¹²

 Tidal power, captured from wave energy. Portugal established the world's first commercial-scale wave farm in 2008.

 Space-based solar power, which has already been proven viable by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

 Human power, where we generate power through our own bodies. For example, UK researchers have developed a knee brace that can produce electricity as the wearer walks.

 Embeddable solar power, where potentially any window or sheet of glass can be turned into a photovoltaic solar cell. Researchers at Michigan State University are already working on scaling this technology.