1.
World energy consumption
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World energy consumption is the total energy used by all of human civilization. It does not include energy from food, and the extent to which direct biomass burning has been accounted for is poorly documented, being the power source metric of civilization, World Energy Consumption has deep implications for humanitys social-economic-political sphere. Institutions such as the International Energy Agency, the U. S. Energy Information Administration, and the European Environment Agency record and publish energy data periodically. The IEA estimates that, in 2013, total energy consumption was 9,301 Mtoe, or 3.89 ×1020 joules. From 2000–2012 coal was the source of energy with the largest growth, the use of oil and natural gas also had considerable growth, followed by hydro power and renewable energy. Renewable energy grew at a faster than any other time in history during this period. The demand for nuclear energy decreased, possibly due to the accidents at Chernobyl, in 2011, expenditures on energy totalled over 6 trillion USD, or about 10% of the world gross domestic product. Europe spends close to one-quarter of the worlds energy expenditures, North America close to 20%, World final energy consumption refers to the fraction of the worlds primary energy that is used in its final form by humanity. In 2012, world energy supply amounted to 155,505 terawatt-hour or 13,371 Mtoe. World final energy consumption includes products as lubricants, asphalt and petrochemicals which have chemical energy content but are not used as fuel and this non-energy use amounted to 9,404 TWh in 2012. The worlds electricity consumption was 18,608 TWh in 2012 and this figure is about 18% smaller than the generated electricity, due to grid losses, storage losses, and self-consumption from power plants. Cogeneration power stations use some of the energy that is wasted for heating buildings or in industrial processes. The United States Energy Information Administration regularly publishes a report on world consumption for most types of energy resources. The most recent estimate of the energy consumption was 5.67 ×1020 joules, or 157,481 TWh. According to the IEA the total energy consumption was 143,851 TWh in 2008,133,602 TWh in 2005,117,687 TWh in 2000. Total world electricity consumption was 19,504 TWh in 2013,16,503 TWh in 2008,15,105 TWh in 2005, and 12,116 TWh in 2000. In 2013, world consumption by power source was oil 31. 1%, coal 28. 9%, natural gas 21. 4%, biofuels and waste 10. 2%, nuclear 4. 8%, hydro 2. 4%. Oil, coal, and natural gas were the most popular energy fuels, from 2000–2012 renewable energy grew at a rate higher than any other point in history, with a consumption increase of 176.5 million tonnes of oil
2.
Electricity generation
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Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For electric utilities, it is the first process in the delivery of electricity to consumers, the other processes as transmission, distribution, energy storage and recovery using pumped-storage methods are normally carried out by the electric power industry. Other energy sources include solar photovoltaics and geothermal power, the fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday. This method is used today, electricity is generated by the movement of a loop of wire. Central power stations became practical with the development of alternating current power transmission, using power transformers to transmit power at high voltage. Electricity has been generated at central stations since 1882, the use of power-lines and power-poles have been significantly important in the distribution of electricity. There are seven fundamental methods of transforming other forms of energy into electrical energy. Static electricity, form the physical separation and transport of charge and it was the first form discovered and investigated, and the electrostatic generator is still used even in modern devices such as the Van de Graaff generator and MHD generators. In Electromagnetic induction, a generator, dynamo or alternator transforms kinetic energy into electricity. This is the most used form for generating electricity and is based on Faradays law and it can be experimented by rotating a magnet within closed loops of a conducting material. Almost all commercial electrical generation is done using electromagnetic induction, in mechanical energy forces a generator to rotate. Almost all electrical power on Earth is generated with a turbine, driven by wind, water, there are many different methods of developing mechanical energy, including heat engines, hydro, wind and tidal power. Most electric generation is driven by heat engines, the combustion of fossil fuels supplies most of the heat to these engines, with a significant fraction from nuclear fission and some from renewable sources. The modern steam turbine currently generates about 80% of the power in the world using a variety of heat sources. Power sources include, Steam Water is boiled by coal burned in a power plant. Nuclear fission heat created in a nuclear reactor creates steam, less than 15% of electricity is generated this way. Natural gas, turbines are directly by gases produced by combustion. Combined cycle are driven by steam and natural gas
3.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
4.
Fossil fuel
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Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, containing energy originating in ancient photosynthesis. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, Fossil fuels contain high percentages of carbon and include petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Other commonly used derivatives include kerosene and propane, Fossil fuels range from volatile materials with low carbon, hydrogen ratios like methane, to liquids like petroleum, to nonvolatile materials composed of almost pure carbon, like anthracite coal. Methane can be found in hydrocarbon fields either alone, associated with oil, non-fossil sources in 2006 included nuclear 8. 5%, hydroelectric 6. 3%, and others amounting to 0. 9%. World energy consumption was growing about 2. 3% per year, the use of fossil fuels raises serious environmental concerns. The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and it is estimated that natural processes can only absorb about half of that amount, so there is a net increase of 10.65 billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year. Carbon dioxide is a gas that increases radiative forcing and contributes to global warming. A global movement towards the generation of energy is underway to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Over geological time, this matter, mixed with mud. Despite these heat driven transformations, the energy is still photosynthetic in origin. There is a range of organic, or hydrocarbon, compounds in any given fuel mixture. The specific mixture of hydrocarbons gives a fuel its characteristic properties, such as boiling point, melting point, density, viscosity, some fuels like natural gas, for instance, contain only very low boiling, gaseous components. Others such as gasoline or diesel contain much higher boiling components, terrestrial plants, on the other hand, tend to form coal and methane. Many of the coal fields date to the Carboniferous period of Earths history, terrestrial plants also form type III kerogen, a source of natural gas. Fossil fuels are of importance because they can be burned. The use of coal as a fuel predates recorded history, coal was used to run furnaces for the melting of metal ore. Semi-solid hydrocarbons from seeps were also burned in ancient times, commercial exploitation of petroleum, largely as a replacement for oils from animal sources, for use in oil lamps began in the 19th century. Natural gas, once flared-off as an byproduct of petroleum production, is now considered a very valuable resource
5.
Coal
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Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure. Coal is composed primarily of carbon, along with quantities of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen. A fossil fuel, coal forms when plant matter is converted into peat, which in turn is converted into lignite, then sub-bituminous coal, after that bituminous coal. This involves biological and geological processes that take place over time, throughout history, coal has been used as an energy resource, primarily burned for the production of electricity and heat, and is also used for industrial purposes, such as refining metals. Coal is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide, the extraction of coal, its use in energy production and its byproducts are all associated with environmental and health effects including climate change. Coal is extracted from the ground by coal mining, since 1983, the worlds top coal producer has been China. In 2015 China produced 3,747 million tonnes of coal –47. 7% of 7,861 million tonnes world coal production, in 2015 other large producers were United States, India, European Union and Australia. The word originally took the col in Old English, from Proto-Germanic *kula. In Old Turkic languages, kül is ash, cinders, öčür is quench, the compound charcoal in Turkic is öčür kül, literally quenched ashes, cinders, coals with elided anlaut ö- and inflection affixes -ülmüş. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests in low-lying wetland areas, due to natural processes such as flooding, these forests were buried underneath soil. As more and more soil deposited over them, they were compressed, the temperature also rose as they sank deeper and deeper. As the process continued the plant matter was protected from biodegradation and oxidation and this trapped the carbon in immense peat bogs that were eventually covered and deeply buried by sediments. Under high pressure and high temperature, dead vegetation was slowly converted to coal, as coal contains mainly carbon, the conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called carbonization. The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period provided ideal conditions for coal formation, the exception is the coal gap in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where coal is rare. Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants — this coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae, in its dehydrated form, peat is a highly effective absorbent for fuel and oil spills on land and water. It is also used as a conditioner for soil to make it able to retain. Lignite, or brown coal, is the lowest rank of coal, jet, a compact form of lignite, is sometimes polished and has been used as an ornamental stone since the Upper Palaeolithic
6.
Petroleum
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Petroleum is a naturally occurring, yellow-to-black liquid found in geological formations beneath the Earths surface, which is commonly refined into various types of fuels. Components of petroleum are separated using a technique called fractional distillation and it consists of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other organic compounds. The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that are made up of refined crude oil. A fossil fuel, petroleum is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, usually zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock, Petroleum has mostly been recovered by oil drilling. Drilling is carried out studies of structural geology, sedimentary basin analysis. Petroleum is used in manufacturing a variety of materials. Concern over the depletion of the earths finite reserves of oil, the burning of fossil fuels plays the major role in the current episode of global warming. The word petroleum comes from Greek, πέτρα for rocks and Greek, the term was found in 10th-century Old English sources. It was used in the treatise De Natura Fossilium, published in 1546 by the German mineralogist Georg Bauer, Petroleum, in one form or another, has been used since ancient times, and is now important across society, including in economy, politics and technology. Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, ancient Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper levels of their society. By 347 AD, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China, early British explorers to Myanmar documented a flourishing oil extraction industry based in Yenangyaung that, in 1795, had hundreds of hand-dug wells under production. The mythological origins of the oil fields at Yenangyaung, and its hereditary monopoly control by 24 families, Pechelbronn is said to be the first European site where petroleum has been explored and used. The still active Erdpechquelle, a spring where petroleum appears mixed with water has been used since 1498, Oil sands have been mined since the 18th century. In Wietze in lower Saxony, natural asphalt/bitumen has been explored since the 18th century, both in Pechelbronn as in Wietze, the coal industry dominated the petroleum technologies. In 1848 Young set up a small business refining the crude oil, Young eventually succeeded, by distilling cannel coal at a low heat, in creating a fluid resembling petroleum, which when treated in the same way as the seep oil gave similar products. The production of oils and solid paraffin wax from coal formed the subject of his patent dated 17 October 1850. In 1850 Young & Meldrum and Edward William Binney entered into partnership under the title of E. W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate in West Lothian, the worlds first oil refinery was built in 1856 by Ignacy Łukasiewicz. The demand for petroleum as a fuel for lighting in North America, edwin Drakes 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered the first modern well
7.
Natural gas
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It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal matter are exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years. The energy that the plants originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of bonds in the gas. Natural gas is a fuel used as a source of energy for heating, cooking. It is also used as fuel for vehicles and as a feedstock in the manufacture of plastics. Natural gas is found in underground rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal beds. Petroleum is another resource and fossil fuel found in proximity to. Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms, biogenic and thermogenic, biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. In petroleum production gas is burnt as flare gas. The World Bank estimates that over 150 cubic kilometers of gas are flared or vented annually. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, most, Natural gas is often informally referred to simply as gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal. However, it is not to be confused with gasoline, especially in North America, Natural gas was used by the Chinese in about 500 BCE. They discovered a way to transport gas seeping from the ground in crude pipelines of bamboo to where it was used to salt water to extract the salt. The worlds first industrial extraction of gas started at Fredonia, New York. By 2009,66000 km³ had been used out of the total 850000 km³ of estimated remaining reserves of natural gas. An annual increase in usage of 2–3% could result in currently recoverable reserves lasting significantly less, unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields. If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was expensive to pipe to the end user. In the 19th century and early 20th century, unwanted gas was burned off at oil fields
8.
Uranium
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Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons, Uranium is weakly radioactive because all its isotopes are unstable. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 and uranium-235, Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and it occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite. In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238, uranium-235, Uranium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years, many contemporary uses of uranium exploit its unique nuclear properties. Uranium-235 is the naturally occurring fissile isotope, which makes it widely used in nuclear power plants. However, because of the amounts found in nature, uranium needs to undergo enrichment so that enough uranium-235 is present. Uranium-238 is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239 in a nuclear reactor, another fissile isotope, uranium-233, can be produced from natural thorium and is also important in nuclear technology. In sufficient concentration, these maintain a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This generates the heat in nuclear reactors, and produces the fissile material for nuclear weapons. Depleted uranium is used in kinetic energy penetrators and armor plating, Uranium is used as a colorant in uranium glass, producing lemon yellow to green colors. Uranium glass fluoresces green in ultraviolet light and it was also used for tinting and shading in early photography. The 1789 discovery of uranium in the mineral pitchblende is credited to Martin Heinrich Klaproth, eugène-Melchior Péligot was the first person to isolate the metal and its radioactive properties were discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. An ensuing arms race during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union produced tens of thousands of weapons that used uranium metal. The security of those weapons and their fissile material following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 is a concern for public health. When refined, uranium is a white, weakly radioactive metal
9.
Coal mining
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Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its content, and, since the 1880s, has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore, in the United Kingdom and South Africa a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine a pit, the above-ground structures the pit head. In Australia, colliery generally refers to a coal mine. In the United States colliery has been used to describe a coal mine operation, Coal mining has had many developments over the recent years, from the early days of men tunnelling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts, to large open cut and long wall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of draglines, trucks, conveyors, hydraulic jacks, small-scale mining of surface deposits dates back thousands of years. For example, in Roman Britain, the Romans were exploiting most of the major coalfields by the late 2nd century AD. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 18th century and later spread to continental Europe, international trade expanded rapidly when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships. Until the late nineteenth century coal was mined using a pick and shovel. Coal-cutting machines were introduced in the 1880s, by 1912, surface mining was conducted with steam shovels designed for coal mining. The most economical method of extraction from coal seams depends on the depth and quality of the seams. Coal mining processes are differentiated by whether they operate on the surface or underground, many coals extracted from both surface and underground mines require washing in a coal preparation plant. Surface mining and deep underground mining are the two methods of mining. Coal that occurs at depths of 180 to 300 ft are usually deep mined, for example, some western U. S. coal that occur at depths in excess of 200 ft are mined by the open pit methods, due to thickness of the seam 60–90 feet. Coals occurring below 300 ft are usually deep mined, However, there are open pit mining operations working on coal seams up to 1000–1500 feet below ground level, for instance Tagebau Hambach in Germany. When coal seams are near the surface, it may be economical to extract the coal using open cut mining methods, open cast coal mining recovers a greater proportion of the coal deposit than underground methods, as more of the coal seams in the strata may be exploited. In this mining method, explosives are first used in order to break through the surface or overburden, the overburden is then removed by draglines or by shovel and truck. Once the coal seam is exposed, it is drilled, fractured, the coal is then loaded onto large trucks or conveyors for transport to either the coal preparation plant or directly to where it will be used
10.
Megatonne
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The SI symbol for the tonne is t, adopted at the same time as the unit itself in 1879. Its use is also official, for the metric ton, within the United States, having been adopted by the US National Institute of Standards and it is a symbol, not an abbreviation, and should not be followed by a period. Informal and non-approved symbols or abbreviations include T, mT, MT, in French and all English-speaking countries that are predominantly metric, tonne is the correct spelling. Before metrication in the UK the unit used for most purposes was the Imperial ton of 2,240 pounds avoirdupois, equivalent to 1,016 kg, differing by just 1. 6% from the tonne. Ton and tonne are both derived from a Germanic word in use in the North Sea area since the Middle Ages to designate a large cask. A full tun, standing about a high, could easily weigh a tonne. An English tun of wine weighs roughly a tonne,954 kg if full of water, in the United States, the unit was originally referred to using the French words millier or tonneau, but these terms are now obsolete. The Imperial and US customary units comparable to the tonne are both spelled ton in English, though they differ in mass, one tonne is equivalent to, Metric/SI,1 megagram. Equal to 1000000 grams or 1000 kilograms, megagram, Mg, is the official SI unit. Mg is distinct from mg, milligram, pounds, Exactly 1000/0. 453 592 37 lb, or approximately 2204.622622 lb. US/Short tons, Exactly 1/0. 907 184 74 short tons, or approximately 1.102311311 ST. One short ton is exactly 0.90718474 t, imperial/Long tons, Exactly 1/1. 016 046 9088 long tons, or approximately 0.9842065276 LT. One long ton is exactly 1.0160469088 t, for multiples of the tonne, it is more usual to speak of thousands or millions of tonnes. Kilotonne, megatonne, and gigatonne are more used for the energy of nuclear explosions and other events. When used in context, there is little need to distinguish between metric and other tons, and the unit is spelt either as ton or tonne with the relevant prefix attached. *The equivalent units columns use the short scale large-number naming system used in most English-language countries. †Values in the equivalent short and long tons columns are rounded to five significant figures, ǂThough non-standard, the symbol kt is also sometimes used for knot, a unit of speed for sea-going vessels, and should not be confused with kilotonne. A metric ton unit can mean 10 kilograms within metal trading and it traditionally referred to a metric ton of ore containing 1% of metal. In the case of uranium, the acronym MTU is sometimes considered to be metric ton of uranium, in the petroleum industry the tonne of oil equivalent is a unit of energy, the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of crude oil, approximately 42 GJ
11.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
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The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was an energy accident at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima, initiated primarily by the tsunami following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011. Immediately after the earthquake, the reactors automatically shut down their sustained fission reactions. However, the disabled the emergency generators that would have provided power to control. The insufficient cooling led to three nuclear meltdowns, hydrogen-air chemical explosions, and the release of material in Units 1,2 and 3 from 12 March to 15 March. Loss of cooling also caused the pool for storing spent fuel from Reactor 4 to overheat on 15 March due to the heat from the fuel rods. On 12 October 2012, TEPCO admitted for the first time that it had failed to take measures for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants. However, an estimated 1,600 deaths are believed to have occurred due to the resultant evacuation conditions, There are no clear plans for decommissioning the plant, but the plant management estimate is 30 or 40 years. Radiation levels of about 650 sieverts per hour have been detected in the containment vessel of reactor No.2, the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant comprised six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric and maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. At the time of the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011, however, their spent fuel pools still required cooling. As the reactors were unable to power to run their own coolant pumps, emergency diesel generators came online, as designed, to power electronics. These operated nominally until the destroyed the generators for reactors 1–5. The largest tsunami wave was 13 meters high and hit 50 minutes after the earthquake, overwhelming the plants seawall. The moment of impact was recorded by a camera, water quickly flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed. The flooded diesel generators failed soon afterwards, resulting in a loss of power to the coolant water pumps. The fuel rods would become hot enough to melt during the decay time period if an adequate heat sink was not available. After the secondary emergency pumps ran out, one day after the tsunami,12 March, the pumps stopped. The insufficient cooling led to meltdowns in reactors 1,2, and 3. It is estimated that the hot zirconium fuel cladding-water reaction in reactors 1–3 produced 800 to 1000 kilograms of hydrogen gas each
12.
Sendai Nuclear Power Plant
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The Sendai Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located in the city of Satsumasendai in Kagoshima Prefecture. The two 846 MW net reactors are owned and operated by the Kyūshū Electric Power Company, Sendai is the first of Japans nuclear power plants to be restarted. The plant is on a site of 1.45 km2, employs 277 workers, the reactors are of the 3-loop M type pressurized water reactor, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The reports were sent to the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, the papers were also sent to the local authorities of the prefectures where the plants were located, because the reactors are not allowed to be restarted without their consent. According to the test, the reactors could withstand a seismic shock of 945 to 1,020 gals, Nuclear power generation did account for about 40 percent of the total output of the company, according to company official Akira Nakamura. He said that restarting reactors was crucial for them, and that the company will do all it can do to win back public-trust, however, Hideo Kishimoto, the mayor of Genkai said that it would be difficult to resume operations. He asked Kyushu Electric to disclose their practices in full, besides their efforts to prevent future accidents. Tests on 19 reactors at 12 nuclear power based on the new standards began the following month and were expected to take six months. The two-reactor Sendai plant was given priority and was approved by the NRA as meeting both its earthquake and tsunami assumptions in March 2014, an effective safety test pass certificate was issued on July 16 and the draft safety test report was opened to public comments until August 15. Furthermore, a 10-meter-high protection wall was built, design standards were further enhanced to take into account all other natural disasters, in particular volcanic eruptions and tornadoes, along with plans to address terrorist attacks. Further details on the tests may be found in the Special Bulletin, on 10 September 2014 the NRA declared that the plant was safe to be operated. In April 2015, a Japanese court rejected a complaint against the restart, on May 28,2015, The Nuclear Regulation Authority approved the station’s emergency plans, which was the last regulatory hurdle remaining before restarts could happen. Owner Kyushu Electric Power Company then had all necessary for restart. On July 7,2015, fuel loading of Sendai unit #1 began, the NRA completed its pre-operational examinations and gave Kyushu Electric Company the green light to place fuel inside the reactor vessel. Sendais reactor no.1 was restarted on August 11,2015, naoto Kan, former Prime Minister, was among the protesters who were demonstrating in front of the Sendai plant when the reactor was restarted. On November 1,2015, followed reactor n.2, at full-capacity the same day, with its thermal output reaching the maximum level, no major problems occurred in the process. The utility first restarted reactor n.2, removing the control rods on October,15, the unit 1 was shut down for maintenance from October to December 2016, Kagoshima governor Satoshi Mitazono approved the restarting of the reactor despite his personal opposition to nuclear power. On 7 January 2017 unit 1 resumed commercial operation, Kyushu Electric Webpage 九州電力 Sendai NPP c/o Kyushu Electric 九州電力・川内原子力発電所
13.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
14.
Hydroelectricity
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Hydroelectricity is electricity produced from hydropower. In 2015 hydropower generated 16. 6% of the total electricity and 70% of all renewable electricity. Hydropower is produced in 150 countries, with the Asia-Pacific region generating 33 percent of global hydropower in 2013, China is the largest hydroelectricity producer, with 920 TWh of production in 2013, representing 16.9 percent of domestic electricity use. The cost of hydroelectricity is relatively low, making it a source of renewable electricity. The hydro station consumes no water, unlike coal or gas plants, the average cost of electricity from a hydro station larger than 10 megawatts is 3 to 5 U. S. cents per kilowatt-hour. With a dam and reservoir it is also a source of electricity since the amount produced by the station can be changed up or down very quickly to adapt to changing energy demands. Once a hydroelectric complex is constructed, the project produces no direct waste, Hydropower has been used since ancient times to grind flour and perform other tasks. In the mid-1770s, French engineer Bernard Forest de Bélidor published Architecture Hydraulique which described vertical-, by the late 19th century, the electrical generator was developed and could now be coupled with hydraulics. The growing demand for the Industrial Revolution would drive development as well, in 1878 the worlds first hydroelectric power scheme was developed at Cragside in Northumberland, England by William George Armstrong. It was used to power an arc lamp in his art gallery. The old Schoelkopf Power Station No.1 near Niagara Falls in the U. S. side began to produce electricity in 1881. The first Edison hydroelectric power station, the Vulcan Street Plant, began operating September 30,1882, in Appleton, Wisconsin, by 1886 there were 45 hydroelectric power stations in the U. S. and Canada. By 1889 there were 200 in the U. S. alone, at the beginning of the 20th century, many small hydroelectric power stations were being constructed by commercial companies in mountains near metropolitan areas. Grenoble, France held the International Exhibition of Hydropower and Tourism with over one million visitors, by 1920 as 40% of the power produced in the United States was hydroelectric, the Federal Power Act was enacted into law. The Act created the Federal Power Commission to regulate hydroelectric power stations on federal land, as the power stations became larger, their associated dams developed additional purposes to include flood control, irrigation and navigation. Federal funding became necessary for development and federally owned corporations, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority. Hydroelectric power stations continued to become larger throughout the 20th century, Hydropower was referred to as white coal for its power and plenty. Hoover Dams initial 1,345 MW power station was the worlds largest hydroelectric station in 1936
15.
1973 oil crisis
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The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo occurred in response to United States support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, by the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally, US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis, or shock, with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and it was later called the first oil shock, followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the second oil shock. The embargo was a response to American involvement in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, six days after Egypt and Syria launched a surprise military campaign against Israel, the US supplied Israel with arms. In response to this, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced an oil embargo against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the crisis had a major impact on international relations and created a rift within NATO. Some European nations and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from United States foreign policy in the Middle East to avoid being targeted by the boycott, Arab oil producers linked any future policy changes to peace between the belligerents. To address this, the Nixon Administration began multilateral negotiations with the combatants and they arranged for Israel to pull back from the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. By January 18,1974, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had negotiated an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the Sinai Peninsula, the promise of a negotiated settlement between Israel and Syria was enough to convince Arab oil producers to lift the embargo in March 1974. The embargo occurred at a time of rising petroleum consumption by industrialized countries and coincided with an increase in oil imports by the worlds largest oil consumer. In the aftermath, targeted countries initiated a variety of policies to contain their future dependency. The 1973 oil price shock, with the accompanying 1973–74 stock market crash, was regarded as the first discrete event since the Great Depression to have a persistent effect on the US economy, the embargos success demonstrated Saudi Arabias diplomatic and economic power. It was the largest oil exporter and a politically and religiously conservative kingdom, in 1970, US oil production started to decline, exacerbating the embargos impact. Following this, Nixon named James E. Akins as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia to audit US production capacity, the confidential results were alarming—no spare capacity was available and production could only decrease. The oil embargo had little effect on supply, according to Akins. OPEC was organized to resist pressure by the Seven Sisters to reduce oil prices, at first, OPEC operated as an informal bargaining unit for resource-rich third-world countries. OPEC confined its activities to gaining a share of the profits generated by oil companies. In the early 1970s it began to exert economic and political strength, on August 15,1971, the United States unilaterally pulled out of the Bretton Woods Accord. The US abandoned the Gold Exchange Standard whereby the value of the dollar had been pegged to the price of gold and all other currencies were pegged to the dollar, shortly thereafter, Britain followed, floating the pound sterling
16.
1979 energy crisis
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The 1979 oil crisis or oil shock occurred in the United States due to decreased oil output in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Despite the fact that global oil supply decreased by only ~4%, widespread panic resulted, driving the price far higher. The price of crude oil more than doubled to $39.50 per barrel over the next 12 months, in 1980, following the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War, oil production in Iran nearly stopped, and Iraqs oil production was severely cut as well. Economic recessions were triggered in the US and other countries, Oil prices did not subside to pre-crisis levels until the mid-1980s. After 1980, oil prices began a 20-year decline, eventually reaching a 60 percent fall-off during the 1990s, as with the 1973 crisis, global politics and power balance were impacted. Oil exporters such as Mexico, Nigeria, and Venezuela expanded production, the USSR became the top producer, North Sea and Alaskan oil flooded the market. Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979, protests severely disrupted the Iranian oil sector, with production being greatly curtailed and exports suspended. In November 1978, a strike by 37,000 workers at Irans nationalized oil refineries initially reduced production from 6 million barrels per day to about 1.5 million barrels. On January 16,1979, the Shah and his wife left Iran at the behest of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, the rise in oil price benefited other OPEC members, which made record profits. When oil exports were later resumed under the new Iranian government, they were inconsistent and at a lower volume, additionally, its own member nations were divided among themselves. The oil crisis had mixed effects in the United States, due to parts of the country being oil-producing regions. Richard Nixon had imposed price controls on domestic oil, gasoline controls were repealed, but controls on domestic US oil remained. The Jimmy Carter administration began a phased deregulation of oil prices on April 5,1979, and although not directly related, the near-disaster at Three Mile Island on March 28,1979, also increased anxiety about energy policy and availability. Due to memories of oil shortage in 1973, motorists soon began panic buying, during the period, many people believed the oil companies artificially created oil shortages to drive up prices, rather than factors beyond human control or the US own price controls. The amount of oil sold in the United States in 1979 was only 3.5 percent less than the set for oil sold the year previously. Many politicians proposed gas rationing, one such proponent was Harry Hughes, Governor of Maryland, several states actually implemented odd-even gas rationing, including California, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, and Texas. Coupons for gasoline rationing were printed but were never used during the 1979 crisis. On July 15,1979, President Carter outlined his plans to reduce oil imports and it is often said that during the speech, Carter wore a cardigan and encouraged citizens to do what they could to reduce their use of energy
17.
Energy security
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Energy security is the association between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption. Access to cheap energy has become essential to the functioning of modern economies, however, the uneven distribution of energy supplies among countries has led to significant vulnerabilities. Rapid deployment of energy and energy efficiency, and technological diversification of energy sources, would result in significant energy security. The modern world relies on a vast energy supply to fuel everything from transportation to communication, to security, Energy plays an important role in the national security of any given country as a fuel to power the economic engine. Some sectors rely on more heavily than others, for example. Foreign oil supplies are vulnerable to disruptions from in-state conflict, exporters interests. The political and economic instability caused by war or other such as strike action can also prevent the proper functioning of the energy industry in a supplier country. For example, the nationalization of oil in Venezuela has triggered strikes, exporters may have political or economic incentive to limit their foreign sales or cause disruptions in the supply chain. Since Venezuelas nationalization of oil, anti-American Hugo Chávez threatened to cut off supplies to the United States more than once. The 1973 oil embargo against the United States is an example in which oil supplies were cut off to the United States due to U. S. support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This has been done to apply pressure during economic negotiations—such as during the 2007 Russia–Belarus energy dispute, terrorist attacks targeting oil facilities, pipelines, tankers, refineries, and oil fields are so common they are referred to as industry risks. Infrastructure for producing the resource is extremely vulnerable to sabotage, one of the worst risks to oil transportation is the exposure of the five ocean chokepoints, like the Iranian-controlled Strait of Hormuz. Although still a minority concern, the possibility of price rises resulting from the peaking of oil production is also starting to attract the attention of at least the French government. Increased competition over resources may also lead to the formation of security compacts to enable an equitable distribution of oil. However, this may happen at the expense of less developed economies. The Group of Five, precursors to the G8, first met in 1975 to coordinate economic and energy policies in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, a rise in inflation and a global economic slowdown. NATO leaders meeting in Bucharest Romania, in April 2008, may discuss the possibility of using the alliance as an instrument of energy security. One of the possibilities include placing troops in the Caucasus region to police oil and it can also involve entering into international agreements to underpin international energy trading relationships, such as the Energy Charter Treaty in Europe
18.
Liquefied natural gas
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Liquefied natural gas is natural gas that has been converted to liquid form for ease of storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume of gas in the gaseous state. It is odorless, colorless, toxic and non-corrosive, hazards include flammability after vaporization into a gaseous state, freezing and asphyxia. The liquefaction process involves removal of certain components, such as dust, acid gases, helium, water, and heavy hydrocarbons, which could cause difficulty downstream. The natural gas is condensed into a liquid at close to atmospheric pressure by cooling it to approximately −162 °C. LNG achieves a reduction in volume than compressed natural gas so that the energy density of LNG is 2.4 times greater than that of CNG or 60 percent that of diesel fuel. This makes LNG cost efficient to transport long distances where pipelines do not exist. Specially designed cryogenic sea vessels or cryogenic road tankers are used for its transport, LNG is principally used for transporting natural gas to markets, where it is regasified and distributed as pipeline natural gas. It can be used in natural gas vehicles, although it is common to design vehicles to use compressed natural gas. Its relatively high cost of production and the need to store it in expensive cryogenic tanks have hindered widespread commercial use, despite these drawbacks, on energy basis LNG production is expected to hit 10% of the global crude production by 2020. The heating value depends on the source of gas that is used, the range of heating value can span +/-10 to 15 percent. A typical value of the heating value of LNG is approximately 50 MJ/kg or 21,500 BTU/lb. A typical value of the heating value of LNG is 45 MJ/kg or 19,350 BTU/lb. For the purpose of comparison of different fuels the heating value may be expressed in terms of energy per volume which is known as the energy density expressed in MJ/liter. The density of LNG is roughly 0.41 kg/liter to 0.5 kg/liter, depending on temperature, pressure, using the median value of 0.45 kg/liter, the typical energy density values are 22.5 MJ/liter or 20.3 MJ/liter. The energy density of LNG is approximately 2.4 times greater than that of CNG which makes it economical to transport natural gas by ship in the form of LNG. The energy density of LNG is comparable to propane and ethanol but is only 60 percent that of diesel and 70 percent that of gasoline, experiments on the properties of gases started early in the seventeenth century. By the middle of the seventeenth century Robert Boyle had derived the relationship between the pressure and the volume of gases
19.
Steelmaking
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Steelmaking is the process for producing steel from iron ore and scrap. Limiting dissolved gases such as nitrogen and oxygen, and entrained impurities in the steel is also important to ensure the quality of the products cast from the liquid steel, steelmaking has existed for millennia, but it was not commercialized until the 19th century. The ancient craft process of steelmaking was the crucible process, in the 1850s and 1860s, the Bessemer process and the Siemens-Martin process turned steelmaking into a heavy industry. In recent times, EAF steelmaking technology has evolved closer to oxygen steelmaking as more energy is introduced into the process. Steelmaking has played a crucial role development of modern technological societies, cast iron is a hard brittle material that is difficult to work, whereas steel is malleable, relatively easily formed and a versatile material. For much of history, steel has only been made in small quantities. The earliest means of producing steel was in a bloomery, early modern methods of producing steel were often labour-intensive and highly skilled arts. See, finery forge, in which the German finery process could be managed to produce steel, an important aspect of the Industrial Revolution was the development of large-scale methods of producing forgeable metal. The puddling furnace was initially a means of producing wrought iron, the real revolution in steelmaking only began at the end of the 1850s when the Bessemer process became the first successful method of steelmaking in quantity, followed by the open-hearth furnace. Modern steelmaking processes can be broken into two categories, primary and secondary steelmaking, secondary steelmaking involves refining of the crude steel before casting and the various operations are normally carried out in ladles. Basic oxygen steelmaking is a method of steelmaking in which carbon-rich molten pig iron is made into steel. Blowing oxygen through molten pig iron lowers the carbon content of the alloy, the slag chemistry of the process is also controlled to ensure that impurities such as silicon and phosphorus are removed from the metal. The process was developed in 1948 by Robert Durrer and commercialized in 1952–53 by Austrian VOEST, the LD converter, named after the Austrian towns of Linz and Donawitz is a refined version of the Bessemer converter where blowing of air is replaced with blowing oxygen. It reduced capital cost of the plants, time of smelting, between 1920 and 2000, labour requirements in the industry decreased by a factor of 1,000, from more than 3 worker-hours per tonne to just 0.003. The vast majority of steel manufactured in the world is produced using the basic oxygen furnace, in 2011, it accounted for 70% of global steel output. Modern furnaces will take a charge of iron of up to 350 tons and convert it into steel in less than 40 minutes, electric arc furnace steelmaking is the manufacture of steel from scrap or direct reduced iron melted by electric arcs. In an electric arc furnace, a batch of steel may be started by loading scrap or direct reduced iron into the furnace, gas burners may be used to assist with the melt down of the scrap pile in the furnace. As in basic oxygen steelmaking, fluxes are also added to protect the lining of the vessel, electric arc furnace steelmaking typically uses furnaces of capacity around 100 tonnes that produce steel every 40 to 50 minutes for further processing
20.
Nuclear power in Japan
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Nuclear energy was a national strategic priority in Japan, but there had been concern about the ability of Japans nuclear plants to withstand seismic activity. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant was completely shut down for 21 months following an earthquake in 2007, while exact details may be in dispute, it is clear that the safety culture in Japans nuclear industry has come under greater scrutiny. On 6 May 2011, Prime Minister Naoto Kan ordered the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant be shut down as an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or higher is likely to hit the area within the thirty years. Problems in stabilizing the triple reactor meltdowns at Fukushima I nuclear plant hardened attitudes to nuclear power, as of June 2011, more than 80 percent of Japanese now said they were anti-nuclear and distrusted government information on radiation. As of October 2011, there have been electricity shortages, all Japans nuclear plants were closed, or their operations suspended for safety inspections. The last of Japans fifty reactors went offline for maintenance on May 5,2012, despite protests, on 1 July 2012 unit 3 of the Ōi Nuclear Power Plant was restarted. In September 2013 Ōi units 3 and 4 went offline, making Japan again completely without nuclear-produced electrical power, on August 11,2015, the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant was brought back online, followed by two units of the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant on January 29,2016. In 1954, Japan budgeted 230 million yen for nuclear energy, the Atomic Energy Basic Law limited activities to only peaceful purposes. The first nuclear reactor in Japan was built by the UKs GEC and was commissioned in 1966, in the 1970s, the first light water reactors were built in cooperation with American companies. Developments in nuclear power since that time have seen contributions from Japanese companies, between the early 1970s and today, the Japanese government promoted the siting of nuclear power plants through a variety of policy instruments involving soft social control and financial incentives. Japans nuclear industry was not hit as hard by the effects of the Three Mile Island accident or the Chernobyl disaster as some other countries, construction of new plants continued to be strong through the 1980s, 1990s, and up to the present day. While many new plants had been proposed, all were canceled or never brought past initial planning. While exact details may be in dispute, it is clear that the safety culture in Japans nuclear industry has come under greater scrutiny, Units 7 and 8 of the Fukushima Daiichi plant would now enter commercial operation in October 2014 and October 2015, respectively. Unit 1 of the Higashidori plant is now scheduled to begin operating in December 2015, as of September 2008, Japanese ministries and agencies were seeking an increase in the 2009 budget by 6%. A2011 independent investigation in Japan has revealed a history of nuclear power companies conspiring with governments to manipulate public opinion in favour of nuclear energy. One nuclear company even stacked public meetings with its own employees who posed as ordinary citizens to speak in support of nuclear power plants and it also omits a section on nuclear power expansion that was in last year’s policy review. There were flaws in, and lax enforcement of, the safety rules governing Japanese nuclear power companies, as of 27 March 2012, Japan had only one out of 54 nuclear reactors operating, the Tomari-3, after the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 6 was shut down. On 15 June 2012, approval was given to restart Ōi Units 3 and 4 which could take six weeks to bring them to full operation, on 1 July 2012 unit 3 of the Ōi Nuclear Power Plant was restarted
21.
Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents
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A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility. Examples include lethal effects to individuals, large radioactivity release to the environment, the prime example of a major nuclear accident is one in which a reactor core is damaged and significant amounts of radioactivity are released, such as in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The impact of nuclear accidents has been a topic of debate since the first nuclear reactors were constructed in 1954, as of 2014, there have been more than 100 serious nuclear accidents and incidents from the use of nuclear power. Fifty-seven accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and about 60% of all nuclear-related accidents have occurred in the USA, serious nuclear power plant accidents include the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Chernobyl disaster, Three Mile Island accident, and the SL-1 accident. Nuclear power accidents can involve loss of life and large costs for remediation work. Nuclear-powered submarine core meltdown and other include the K-19, K-11, K-27, K-140, K-429, K-222. The IAEA maintains a website reporting recent accidents, one of the worst nuclear accidents to date was the Chernobyl disaster which occurred in 1986 in Ukraine. The accident killed 31 people directly and damaged approximately $7 billion of property, a study published in 2005 estimates that there will eventually be up to 4,000 additional cancer deaths related to the accident among those exposed to significant radiation levels. Radioactive fallout from the accident was concentrated in areas of Belarus, Ukraine, other studies have estimated as many as over a million eventual cancer deaths from Chernobyl. Estimates of eventual deaths from cancer are highly contested, industry, UN and DOE agencies claim low numbers of legally provable cancer deaths will be traceable to the disaster. The UN, DOE and industry agencies all use the limits of the epidemiological resolvable deaths as the cutoff below which they cannot be proven to come from the disaster. These are two different concepts and lead to the huge variations in estimates. Both are reasonable projections with different meanings, approximately 350,000 people were forcibly resettled away from these areas soon after the accident. Fifty-seven accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and almost two-thirds of all nuclear-related accidents have occurred in the US, there have been comparatively few fatalities associated with nuclear power plant accidents. The vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack is of concern in the area of nuclear safety and security. The United States 9/11 Commission has said that power plants were potential targets originally considered for the September 11,2001 attacks. New reactor designs have features of nuclear safety, which may help. In the United States, the NRC carries out Force on Force exercises at all Nuclear Power Plant sites at least once every three years
22.
Radionuclide
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A radionuclide is an atom that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable. During those processes, the radionuclide is said to undergo radioactive decay, the unstable nucleus is more stable following the emission, but will sometimes undergo further decay. Radioactive decay is a process at the level of single atoms. However, for a collection of atoms of an element the decay rate. The range of the half-lives of radioactive atoms have no known limits, Radionuclides occur naturally and are artificially produced in nuclear reactors, cyclotrons, particle accelerators or radionuclide generators. There are about 730 radionuclides with half-lives longer than 60 minutes, with the longest half lives are the 32 primordial radionuclides that have survived from the creation of the Solar System. Over 60 further radionuclides are detectable in nature, either as daughters of these, more than 2400 radionuclides have half-lives less than 60 minutes. Most of those are produced artificially, and have very short half-lives. For comparison, there are about 254 stable nuclides, even the lightest element, hydrogen, has a well-known radionuclide, tritium. Elements heavier than lead, and the elements technetium and promethium, unplanned exposure to radionuclides generally has a harmful effect on living organisms including humans, although low levels of exposure occur naturally without harm. However, radionuclides with suitable properties are used in medicine for both diagnosis and treatment. An imaging tracer made with radionuclides is called a radioactive tracer, a pharmaceutical drug made with radionuclides is called a radiopharmaceutical. On Earth, naturally occurring radionuclides fall into three categories, primordial radionuclides, secondary radionuclides, and cosmogenic radionuclides, Radionuclides are produced in stellar nucleosynthesis and supernova explosions along with stable nuclides. Most decay quickly but can still be observed astronomically and can play a part in understanding astronomic processes, primordial radionuclides, such as uranium and thorium, exist in the present time because their half-lives are so long they have not yet completely decayed. It is possible decay may be observed in other nuclides adding to this list of primordial radionuclides, secondary radionuclides are radiogenic isotopes derived from the decay of primordial radionuclides. They have shorter half-lives than primordial radionuclides and they arise in the decay chain of the primordial isotopes thorium-232, uranium-238 and uranium-235. Examples include the natural isotopes of polonium and radium, cosmogenic isotopes, such as carbon-14, are present because they are continually being formed in the atmosphere due to cosmic rays. Many of these radionuclides exist only in trace amounts in nature, secondary radionuclides will occur in proportion to their half-lives, so short-lived ones will be very rare
23.
Atoms for Peace
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Atoms for Peace was the title of a speech delivered by U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City on December 8,1953. I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new – one which I and that new language is the language of atomic warfare. The United States then launched an Atoms for Peace program that supplied equipment and information to schools, hospitals, the first nuclear reactors in Iran, Israel and Pakistan were built under the program by American Machine and Foundry. The speech was part of a carefully orchestrated media campaign, called Operation Candor, to enlighten the American public on the risks and it was a propaganda component of the Cold War strategy of containment. The speech was a point for international focus on peaceful uses of atomic energy. It presents an ostensible antithesis to brinkmanship, the intrigue that subsequently kept the world at the edge of war. However recent historians have tended to see the speech as a cold war maneuver directed primarily at U. S. allies in Europe. Eisenhower wanted to make sure that the European allies would go along with the shift in NATO strategy from an emphasis on weapons to cheaper nuclear weapons. Western Europeans wanted reassurance that the U. S. did not intend to provoke a war in Europe. Eisenhower later said that he knew the Soviets would reject the proposal he offered in the speech. Eisenhowers invoking of. those same concepts of universal peace. The UN Charter, placed new emphasis upon the USs grave responsibility for its nuclear actions—past, present, in a large way, this address laid down the rules of engagement for the new kind of warfare, the cold war. Two quotations from the follow, It is with the book of history, and not with isolated pages. My country wants to be constructive, not destructive and it wants agreement, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom, and in the confidence that the people of other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life. Prior to Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech the state of development in the world was under the strictest of secrecies. With atomic development kept so far under wraps there were no safety protocols, the great part about his speech is the motive, how ingenious to take a horrible weapon and repurpose it to make the world a better place. During his time in office the nuclear holdings of the US rose from 1,005 to 20,000 weapons, Atoms for Peace opened up nuclear research to civilians and countries that had not previously possessed nuclear technology
24.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
25.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
26.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
27.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
28.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
29.
Environmental group
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The environmental movement, also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy, in its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, and human rights. The environmental movement is a movement, represented by a range of organizations, from the large to grassroots. Due to its membership, varying and strong beliefs, and occasionally speculative nature. The movement also encompasses some other movements with a specific focus. At its broadest, the movement includes private citizens, professionals, religious devotees, politicians, scientists, nonprofit organizations, early interest in the environment was a feature of the Romantic movement in the early 19th century. The origins of the movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. The modern conservation movement was first manifested in the forests of India and this was the first case of state management of forests in the world. In 1860, the Department banned the use shifting cultivation, dr. Hugh Cleghorns 1861 manual, The forests and gardens of South India, became the definitive work on the subject and was widely used by forest assistants in the subcontinent. Sir Dietrich Brandis joined the British service in 1856 as superintendent of the forests of Pegu division in eastern Burma. During that time Burmas teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals and he introduced the taungya system, in which Karen villagers provided labour for clearing, planting and weeding teak plantations. He formulated new forest legislation and helped research and training institutions. The Imperial Forest School at Dehradun was founded by him, the late 19th century saw the formation of the first wildlife conservation societies. The zoologist Alfred Newton published a series of investigations into the Desirability of establishing a Close-time for the preservation of animals between 1872 and 1903. His advocacy for legislation to protect animals from hunting during the season led to the formation of the Plumage League in 1889. The society acted as a protest group campaigning against the use of great crested grebe and kittiwake skins, the Society attracted growing support from the suburban middle-classes, and influenced the passage of the Sea Birds Preservation Act in 1869 as the first nature protection law in the world. For most of the century from 1850 to 1950, however, the Coal Smoke Abatement Society was formed in 1898 making it one of the oldest environmental NGOs. It was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke, although there were earlier pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act 1875 required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke
30.
Three Mile Island accident
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It was the most significant accident in U. S. commercial nuclear power plant history. The incident was rated a five on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale, the partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment. Cleanup started in August 1979, and officially ended in December 1993, in the nighttime hours preceding the incident, the TMI-2 reactor was running at 97% of full power, while the companion TMI-1 reactor was shut down for refueling. The main chain of events leading to the core meltdown began at 4,37 am EST on March 28,1979, in TMI-2s secondary loop. These filters are designed to stop minerals and impurities in the water from accumulating in the steam generators, blockages are common with these resin filters and are usually fixed easily, but in this case the usual method of forcing the stuck resin out with compressed air did not succeed. The operators decided to blow the air into the water. When they forced the resin out, an amount of water forced its way past a stuck-open check valve. This would eventually cause the feedwater pumps, condensate booster pumps, and condensate pumps to turn off around 4,00 am, with the steam generators no longer receiving feedwater, heat and pressure increased in the reactor coolant system, causing the reactor to perform an emergency shutdown. Within eight seconds, control rods were inserted into the core to halt the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor continued to generate decay heat and, because steam was no longer being used by the turbine, heat was no longer being removed from the reactors primary water loop. Once the secondary feedwater pumps stopped, three auxiliary pumps activated automatically, however, because the valves had been closed for routine maintenance, the system was unable to pump any water. The closure of these valves was a violation of a key Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule and this was later singled out by NRC officials as a key failure. Critical human factors and user interface engineering problems were revealed in the investigation of the control systems user interface. Despite the valve being stuck open, a light on the control panel ostensibly indicated that the valve was closed. In fact the light did not indicate the position of the valve, only the status of the solenoid being powered or not, as a result, the operators did not correctly diagnose the problem for several hours. The design of the relief valve indicator light was fundamentally flawed. When everything was operating correctly, the indication was true and the operators became habituated to rely on it, however, when things went wrong and the main relief valve stuck open, the unlighted lamp was actually misleading the operators by implying that the valve was shut. This confusion contributed to the severity of the accident because the operators were unable to break out of a cycle of assumptions that conflicted with what their instruments were telling them. It was not until a fresh shift came in, who did not have the mind-set of the first shift of operators, by this time major damage had occurred
31.
Advanced boiling water reactor
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The advanced boiling water reactor is a Generation III boiling water reactor. The ABWR is currently offered by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Toshiba, the ABWR generates electrical power by using steam to power a turbine connected to a generator, the steam is boiled from water using heat generated by fission reactions within nuclear fuel. The ABWR is the present state of the art in boiling water reactors, the first reactors were built on time and under budget in Japan, with others under construction there and in Taiwan. ABWRs are on order in the United States, including two reactors at the South Texas Project site, the standard ABWR plant design has a net electrical output of about 1.35 GW. The ABWR represents an evolutionary route for the BWR family, with numerous changes, only the RIP motor is located outside of the RPV in the ABWR. According to the Tier 1 Design Control Document, each RIP has a capacity of 6912 m3/h.80 s from receipt of an initiating signal, or ARI in a greater. The FMCRD also improves defense-in-depth in the event of primary hydraulic, a fully digital Reactor Protection System ensures a high level of reliability and simplification for safety condition detection and response. This system initiates rapid hydraulic insertion of control rods for shutdown when needed, two-out-of-four per parameter rapid shutdown logic ensures that nuisance rapid shutdowns are not triggered by single instrument failures. RPS can also trigger ARI, FMCRD rod run-in to shut down the chain reaction. The standby liquid control system actuation is provided as diverse logic in the event of an Anticipated Transient Without Scram. Fully digital reactor controls allow the room to easily and rapidly control plant operations. Separate redundant safety and non-safety related digital multiplexing buses allow for reliability and diversity of instrumentation, in particular, the reactor is automated for startup and for standard shutdown using automatic systems only. The Emergency Core Cooling System has been improved in areas, providing a very high level of defense-in-depth against accidents, contingencies. Previous BWRs had 2 divisions, and uncovery was predicted to occur for a time in the event of a severe accident. There exists an extremely thick basaltic reinforced concrete pad under the RPV that will catch and hold any heated core melt that might fall on that pad in extraordinarily contingent situations. The containment has been improved over the conventional Mark I type. This will keep containment pressure low, notably, the typical ABWR containment has numerous hardened layers between the interior of the primary containment and the outer shield wall, and is cubical in shape. One major enhancement is that the reactor has a standard safe shutdown earthquake acceleration of. 3G, further, seismic hardening is possible in earthquake-prone areas and has been done at the Lungmen facility in Taiwan which has been hardened up 0.4 g in any direction
32.
Rokkasho, Aomori
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Rokkasho is a village in Kamikita District of northeastern Aomori Prefecture in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan. As of 1 February 2017, the village had an population of 10,549. The total area of the village was 252.68 square kilometres, Rokkasho occupies the eastern coastline of the base of Shimokita Peninsula, facing the Pacific Ocean to the east. The village has a maritime climate characterized by cool short summers. The average annual temperature in Rokkasho is 9.6 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1213 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 22.4 °C, the village forms the northern shoreline of Lake Ogawara. The area around Rokkasho was known for raising horses during the Kamakura period, during the Edo period, it was controlled by the Nambu clan of Morioka Domain, becoming part of the territories of Shichinohe Domain in the latter half of the Edo period. With the establishment of the system after the start of the Meiji period, on April 1,1889. The economy of Rokkasho has traditionally been dependent on agriculture and commercial fishing, from the 1980s onwards, the village has become a center for various energy developments, which now dominate the local economy. Nuclear fuel cycle related facilities, Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited headquarters The Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant A uranium enrichment plant, since the 1970s local opposition to plans to operate Japans first large commercial plutonium plant at Rokkasho have focused on the threat of a large-scale release of radioactivity. During the 1990s anti-nuclear groups in Japan released studies showing the risks of routine operation of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, the facility in full operation is designed to separate as much as 8 tons of plutonium each year from spent reactor fuel from Japans domestic nuclear reactors. As of 2006 Japan owned approximately 45 tons of separated plutonium, in May,2006 an international awareness campaign about the dangers of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, Stop Rokkasho, was launched by musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. Greenpeace has opposed operation of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant under a campaign called Wings of Peace, No more Hiroshima, Stop Rokkasho, since 2002 and has launched a cyberaction to stop the project. Rokkasho was a candidate to host the plasma fusion reactor ITER, Rokkasho has been hosting high-performance supercomputer centre capable of performing complex plasma physics calculations for fusion research, since January 2012. Rokkasho has four elementary schools and four public middle schools operated by the village government. Rokkasho is not served by any train service. Japan National Route 338 Japan National Route 394 Waren, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rokkasho Prefectural History Museum A documentary, Rokkasho Rhapsody, came out in 2006, which portrays the Rokkasho communitys views on the nuclear reprocessing plant
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Takahama Nuclear Power Plant
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The Takahama Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located in the town of Takahama, Ōi District, Fukui Prefecture. It is owned and operated by the Kansai Electric Power Company and it is on a site with an area of about 1 km2. The four pressurized water reactors give the plant a total electric capacity of 3,392 MW. From 2012 to 2016 only reactor 3 was operating, generating power in 2012 and again in 2016, on 17 February 2012, Kansai Electric Power Co. announced that on 21 February 2012 reactor no.3 would be taken off the grid for a regular checkup and maintenance. From 5 May until 1 July 2012, Japan had no operating power plants. In July Ōi Nuclear Power Plant units 3 and 4 became Japans only operating nuclear power plants, however, those plants were later taken offline. On 17 April 2013, a shipment of fuel to Japan left the port of Cherbourg in northern France. The MOX shipment is destined for Kansai Electric Power Cos Takahama nuclear plant west of Tokyo, MOX fuel contains around 7% plutonium. As of 16 April 2015, the Takahama reactors were ordered to remain offline by a Japanese court, the Fukui Court issued a similar injunction against the restart of Oi units 3&4 in May,2014. Judges are not experts on nuclear plants, so it is imperative that they humbly pay attention to scientific knowledge. I doubt the presiding judge took that into consideration. ”Japan News also criticized the Fukui decision, “We have no choice but to call it a decision, ” and. Unit 3 was restarted on 29 January 2016, reactor No.4 started leaking at the Takahama plant in February the 21st. Kansai Electric Power stated that about 34 liters of water have escaped the plant’s reactor No.4. The official said the alarm went off as soon as water was injected into a pipe connecting to the reactor’s first cooling system the same day. An eight-liter pool was discovered, but traces of the water across the floor indicated a total of 34 liters had managed to spill. This amounted to about 64,000 becquerels of radioactive waste, Unit 4 was restarted on 27 February 2016. On 29 February 2016, after three days of operation, Unit 4 shut down one second after it started generating power, the cause was stated to be a main transformer/generator internal failure. On 9 March 2016, the Otsu district court in Shiga prefecture issued an injunction to halt operation of Unit 3 and Unit 4, Unit 3 is to begin shutdown operations at 10,00 AM on 10 March 2016 and be completed within 12 hours
34.
Indonesia
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Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the worlds largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands. At 1,904,569 square kilometres, Indonesia is the worlds 14th-largest country in terms of area and worlds 7th-largest country in terms of combined sea. It has an population of over 260 million people and is the worlds fourth most populous country. The worlds most populous island, Java, contains more than half of the countrys population, Indonesias republican form of government includes an elected legislature and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status and its capital and countrys most populous city is Jakarta, which is also the most populous city in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support the second highest level of biodiversity. The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper, agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber. Indonesias major trading partners are Japan, United States, China, the Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Indonesia consists of hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest – and politically dominant – ethnic group are the Javanese, a shared identity has developed, defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a Muslim-majority population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesias national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, articulates the diversity that shapes the country, Indonesias economy is the worlds 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP, the largest in Southeast Asia, and is considered an emerging market and newly industrialised country. Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950, Indonesia is a member of the G20 major economies and World Trade Organization. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indós, the name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians—and, his preference, in the same publication, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to use Indonesia, they preferred Malay Archipelago, the Netherlands East Indies, popularly Indië, the East, and Insulinde
35.
Malaysia
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Malaysia is a federal constitutional monarchy located in Southeast Asia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, East Malaysia shares land and maritime borders with Brunei and Indonesia and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government, with a population of over 30 million, Malaysia is the 44th most populous country. The southernmost point of continental Eurasia, Tanjung Piai, is in Malaysia, located in the tropics, Malaysia is one of 17 megadiverse countries on earth, with large numbers of endemic species. Malaysia has its origins in the Malay kingdoms present in the area which, from the 18th century, the first British territories were known as the Straits Settlements, whose establishment was followed by the Malay kingdoms becoming British protectorates. The territories on Peninsular Malaysia were first unified as the Malayan Union in 1946, Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and achieved independence on 31 August 1957. Malaya united with North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore on 16 September 1963 to become Malaysia, less than two years later in 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation. The country is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, which plays a role in politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Malaysian Chinese, Malaysian Indians. The constitution declares Islam the state religion while allowing freedom of religion for non-Muslims, the government system is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is the king, known as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and he is an elected monarch chosen from the hereditary rulers of the nine Malay states every five years. The head of government is the prime minister, since its independence, Malaysia has had one of the best economic records in Asia, with its GDP growing at an average of 6. 5% per annum for almost 50 years. The economy has traditionally been fuelled by its resources, but is expanding in the sectors of science, tourism, commerce. Today, Malaysia has a newly industrialised market economy, ranked third largest in Southeast Asia, the name Malaysia is a combination of the word Malay and the Latin-Greek suffix -sia/-σία. The word melayu in Malay may derive from the Tamil words malai and ur meaning mountain and city, land, malayadvipa was the word used by ancient Indian traders when referring to the Malay Peninsula. Whether or not it originated from these roots, the word melayu or mlayu may have used in early Malay/Javanese to mean to steadily accelerate or run. This term was applied to describe the current of the river Melayu in Sumatra. The name was adopted by the Melayu Kingdom that existed in the seventh century on Sumatra
36.
Brunei
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Brunei, officially the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace, is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its coastline with the South China Sea, the country is surrounded by the state of Sarawak. It is separated into two parts by the Sarawak district of Limbang, Brunei is the only sovereign state completely on the island of Borneo, the remainder of the islands territory is divided between the nations of Malaysia and Indonesia. Bruneis population was 408,786 in July 2012, the maritime state was visited by Spains Magellan Expedition in 1521 and fought against Spain in the 1578 Castille War. During the 19th century, the Bruneian Empire began to decline, the Sultanate ceded Sarawak to James Brooke and installed him as the White Rajah, and it ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1888, Brunei became a British protectorate and was assigned a British resident as colonial manager in 1906, after the Japanese occupation during World War II, in 1959 a new constitution was written. In 1962, an armed rebellion against the monarchy was ended with the help of the British. Brunei gained its independence from the United Kingdom on 1 January 1984, Economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s, with the GDP increasing 56% from 1999 to 2008, transformed Brunei into an industrialised country. It has developed wealth from petroleum and natural gas fields. Brunei has the second-highest Human Development Index among the Southeast Asian nations, after Singapore, according to the International Monetary Fund, Brunei is ranked fifth in the world by gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. The IMF estimated in 2011 that Brunei was one of two countries with a debt at 0% of the national GDP. Forbes also ranks Brunei as the fifth-richest nation out of 182, based on its petroleum, according to legend, Brunei was founded by Awang Alak Betatar, later to be Sultan Muhammad Shah. He moved from Garang, a place in the Temburong District to the Brunei River estuary, according to legend, upon landing he exclaimed, Baru nah, from which the name Brunei was derived. He was the first Muslim ruler of Brunei, before the rise of the Bruneian Empire under the Muslim Bolkiah Dynasty, Brunei is believed to have been under Buddhist rulers. It was renamed Barunai in the 14th century, possibly influenced by the Sanskrit word varuṇ, the word Borneo is of the same origin. In the countrys name, Negara Brunei Darussalam, darussalam means abode of peace. The people are pagans and are men of goodwill and their colour is whiter than that of the other sort. in this island justice is well administered. One of the earliest Chinese records is the 977 AD letter to Chinese emperor from the ruler of Po-ni, which some scholars believe to refer to Borneo
37.
United Arab Emirates
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In 2013, the UAEs population was 9.2 million, of which 1.4 million are Emirati citizens and 7.8 million are expatriates. The country is a federation of seven emirates, and was established on 2 December 1971, the constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain. Each emirate is governed by a monarch, together, they jointly form the Federal Supreme Council. One of the monarchs is selected as the President of the United Arab Emirates, Islam is the official religion of the UAE and Arabic is the official language. The UAEs oil reserves are the seventh-largest in the world while its natural gas reserves are the worlds seventeenth-largest, Sheikh Zayed, ruler of Abu Dhabi and the first President of the UAE, oversaw the development of the Emirates and steered oil revenues into healthcare, education and infrastructure. The UAEs economy is the most diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, while its most populous city of Dubai is an important global city, nevertheless, the country remains principally reliant on its export of petroleum and natural gas. The UAE is criticised for its rights record, including the specific interpretations of Sharia used in its legal system. The UAEs rising international profile has led analysts to identify it as a regional. It appears the land of the Emirates has been occupied for thousands of years, there is no proof of contact with the outside world at that stage, although in time it developed with civilisations in Mesopotamia and Iran. This contact persisted and became wide-ranging, probably motivated by trade in copper from the Hajar Mountains, in ancient times, Al Hasa was part of Al Bahreyn and adjoined Greater Oman. Sassanid groups were present on the Batinah coast, in 637, Julfar was an important port that was used as a staging post for the Islamic invasion of the Sassanian Empire. The area of the Al Ain/Buraimi Oasis was known as Tuam and was an important trading post for camel routes between the coast and the Arabian interior. The earliest Christian site in the UAE was first discovered in the 1990s, a monastic complex on what is now known as Sir Bani Yas Island. Thought to be Nestorian and built in 600 AD, the church appears to have been abandoned peacefully in 750 AD and it forms a rare physical link to a legacy of Christianity which is thought to have spread across the peninsula from 50 to 350 AD following trade routes. Certainly, by the 5th century, Oman had a bishop named John – the last bishop of Oman being Etienne, in 676 AD. This led to a group of travelling to Medina, converting to Islam and subsequently driving a successful uprising against the unpopular Sassanids. Following the death of Prophet Muhammad, the new Islamic communities south of the Persian Gulf threatened to disintegrate, with insurrections against the Muslim leaders. The Caliph Abu Bakr sent an army from the capital Medina which completed its reconquest of the territory with the battle of Dibba in which 10,000 lives are thought to have been lost
38.
Hydroelectricity in Japan
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As of September 2011, Japan had 1,198 small hydropower plants with a total capacity of 3,225 MW. The smaller plants accounted for 6. 6% of Japans total hydropower capacity, the remaining capacity was filled by large and medium hydropower stations, typically sited at large dams. Cost per kilowatt-hour for power from smaller plants was high at ¥15-100, energy in Japan Electricity sector in Japan Geothermal power in Japan Wind power in Japan Solar power in Japan Renewable energy by country
39.
Solar power in Japan
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Solar power in Japan has been expanding since the late 1990s. The country is a manufacturer of photovoltaics and a large installer of domestic PV systems with most of them grid connected. The insolation is good at about 4.3 to 4.8 kWh/, Japan is the worlds fourth largest energy consumer, making solar power an important national project since the countrys shift in policies toward renewables after Fukushima in 2011. Japan was the second largest market for solar PV growth in 2013 and 2014, adding a record 6.97 GW and 9.74 GW of nominal nameplate capacity. By the end of 2015, cumulative capacity reached 34,150 MW, overall installed capacity in 2015 was estimated to be sufficient to supply 3. 5% of the nations annual electricity demand. The Japanese government is seeking to expand solar power by enacting subsidies, on June 18,2012, a new feed-in tariff was approved, of 42 Yen/kWh, about 0.406 Euro/kWh or USD0. 534/kWh. The tariff covers the first ten years of excess generation for systems less than 10 kW and it became effective July 1,2012. In 2013, Japan is expected to increase its solar capacity by 5-9 GW. In April 2013, the FIT was reduced to 37.8 Yen/kWh, the FIT was further reduced to 32 Yen/kWh in April 2014. The output of all three can be monitored on the internet,341 MW of photovoltaics are planned for the island of Hokkaido, and a total of 1,800 MW of photovoltaics projects have been approved for Japan, as of October 2012. A77 MW photovoltaic power plant is planned for Tahara City, on the Atsumi Peninsula, a 200 MW plant is proposed for Tomakomai. It is expected that new projects will be constructed, to take advantage of the new feed-in tariff
40.
Photovoltaics
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A typical photovoltaic system employs solar panels, each comprising a number of solar cells, which generate electrical power. PV installations may be ground-mounted, rooftop mounted or wall mounted, the mount may be fixed, or use a solar tracker to follow the sun across the sky. Dust, clouds, and other things in the atmosphere also diminish the power output, another main issue is the concentration of the production in the hours corresponding to main insolation, which dont usually match the peaks in demand in human activity cycles. Unless current societal patterns of consumption and electrical networks mutually adjust to this scenario, electricity still need to be made up by other power sources, Photovoltaic systems have long been used in specialized applications, and standalone and grid-connected PV systems have been in use since the 1990s. They were first mass-produced in 2000, when German environmentalists and the Eurosolar organization got government funding for a ten thousand roof program, advances in technology and increased manufacturing scale have in any case reduced the cost, increased the reliability, and increased the efficiency of photovoltaic installations. Net metering and financial incentives, such as preferential feed-in tariffs for solar-generated electricity, have supported solar PV installations in many countries, more than 100 countries now use solar PV. After hydro and wind powers, PV is the renewable energy source in terms of globally capacity. In 2014, worldwide installed PV capacity increased to 177 gigawatts, with current technology, photovoltaics recoups the energy needed to manufacture them in 1.5 years in Southern Europe and 2.5 years in Northern Europe. The term photo-voltaic has been in use in English since 1849, photovoltaics are best known as a method for generating electric power by using solar cells to convert energy from the sun into a flow of electrons by the photovoltaic effect. Solar cells produce direct current electricity from sunlight which can be used to power equipment or to recharge a battery, the first practical application of photovoltaics was to power orbiting satellites and other spacecraft, but today the majority of photovoltaic modules are used for grid connected power generation. In this case an inverter is required to convert the DC to AC, there is a smaller market for off-grid power for remote dwellings, boats, recreational vehicles, electric cars, roadside emergency telephones, remote sensing, and cathodic protection of pipelines. Photovoltaic power generation employs solar panels composed of a number of cells containing a photovoltaic material. Copper solar cables connect modules, arrays, and sub-fields, because of the growing demand for renewable energy sources, the manufacturing of solar cells and photovoltaic arrays has advanced considerably in recent years. Solar photovoltaic power generation has long seen as a clean energy technology which draws upon the planet’s most plentiful. Cells require protection from the environment and are usually packaged tightly in solar panels, Photovoltaic power capacity is measured as maximum power output under standardized test conditions in Wp. Solar photovoltaic array capacity factors are typically under 25%, which is lower than other industrial sources of electricity. For best performance, terrestrial PV systems aim to maximize the time they face the sun, Solar trackers achieve this by moving PV panels to follow the sun. The increase can be by as much as 20% in winter, static mounted systems can be optimized by analysis of the sun path
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Solar power in Germany
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Solar power in Germany consists almost exclusively of photovoltaics and accounted for an estimated 6.2 to 6.9 percent of the countrys net-electricity generation in 2014. The country has been amongst the worlds top PV installer for several years, with installed capacity amounting to 40,782 megawatts by the end of November 2016. This brings the countrys share of electricity to about 31 percent. However, new installations of PV systems have declined steadily since the year of 2011. Its estimated that half of the countrys jobs have been lost in the solar sector in recent years. The official governmental goal is to continuously increase renewables contribution to the overall electricity consumption. Long-term minimum targets are 35% by 2020, 50% by 2030, the country is increasingly producing more electricity than it needs, driving down spot-market prices and exporting its surplus of electricity to its neighboring countries. Paradoxically, a decline in spot-prices may well raise the electricity prices for customers, as the spread of the guaranteed feed-in tariff. As the combined share of fluctuating wind and solar is approaching 17 percent on the electricity mix. The nations largest solar farms are located in Meuro, Neuhardenberg and Templin, also, concentrated solar power, another solar power technology that does not use photovoltaics, has virtually no significance for Germany, as this technology demands much higher solar insolation. There is, however, a 1.5 MW experimental CSP-plant used for engineering purposes rather than for commercial electricity generation. Moreover, solar heating does not use solar energy for power generation and is not included in this article. The German solar PV industry installed 7.6 gigawatts in 2012 and 7.5 GW in 2011, on midday of Saturday May 26,2012, solar energy provided over 40% of total electricity consumption in Germany, and 20% for the 24h-day. From 3.5 GW to 4 GW are expected to be installed in 2013, Solar power in Germany has been growing considerably due to the countrys feed-in tariffs for renewable energy which were introduced by the German Renewable Energy Sources Act. Prices of PV systems have decreased more than 50% in 5 years since 2006, as of 2012, the feed-in tariff costs about €14 billion per year for wind and solar installations. The cost is spread across all rate-payers in a surcharge of 3.6 €ct per kWh, on the other hand, as expensive peak power plants are displaced, the price at the power exchange is reduced due to the so-called merit order effect. Germany set a record for solar power production with 25.8 GW produced at midday on April 20. According to the power industry, a feed-in tariff is the most effective means of developing solar power
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Wind power in Japan
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In Japans electricity sector wind power generates a small but increasing proportion of the countrys electricity, as the installed capacity has been growing in recent years. It has been estimated that Japan has the potential for 144 GW for onshore wind and 608 GW of offshore wind capacity. The Shin Izumo Wind Farm owned by Eurus Energy is the largest wind farm in Japan as of 2011, as of September 2011, Japan plans to build a pilot floating wind farm, with six 2-megawatt turbines, off the Fukushima coast. After the evaluation phase is complete in 2016, Japan plans to build as many as 80 floating wind turbines off Fukushima by 2020, in 2013, a floating offshore wind turbine was tested about 1 km off the coast of the island of Kabajima in Nagasaki Prefecture. It was a part of a Japanese government test project and this was the first of its kind in Japan. As of 2017, the tariff per kWh are 21 yen for onshore and 36 yen for offshore
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Geothermal power in Japan
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Japan has favorable sites for geothermal power because of its proximity to the Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc. In 2007, Japan had 535.2 MW of installed generating capacity. Geothermal power plays a role in the energy sector in the country, in 2013 it supplied 2596 GWh of electricity. Development of new power stations essentially stopped since the mid 1990s. Most of the sites are located in government-protected areas and in tourist destinations. Businesses and the government are currently considering over 60 possible sites for new geothermal power development, estimates put the total capacity potential of geothermal power at 23 GW, the third largest amount in the world after the United States and Indonesia. An estimation suggests that about 1,500 hot water wells, as of 2003,20 geothermal power plants are in operation at 18 locations in Japan. Japan has developed advanced technologies for the exploration, development, utilization, due to the stagnant domestic geothermal sector, most of the technologies have been used in overseas development in recent years. Japan provided about 67% of all the used in geothermal power stations in the world in the last 10 years. The countrys first experimental geothermal power station was opened in 1925 in Beppu, however, research in geothermal energy was slowed down by the Second World War. The first full scale power generation plant was Matsukawa in Iwate Prefecture. The plant started operating in 1966 with a capacity of 9.5 MW, in 1967, Otake Geothermal Power station in Oita Prefecture, owned by Kyushu Electric Power, launched with 11 MW. After these first generation facilities, which were considered large scale experimental plants, until the mid-1980s, these were typically mid-sized plants with capacities of around 50 MW. Total generation reached 500 MW in 1996, in April 2011, Japanese Ministry of the Environment issued a Study of Potential for the introduction of Renewable Energy report. It has shown total 19. 14GW of Japanese geothermal resource potential
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Geothermal power
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Geothermal power is power generated by geothermal energy. Technologies in use include dry steam power stations, flash steam power stations, Geothermal electricity generation is currently used in 24 countries, while geothermal heating is in use in 70 countries. As of 2015, worldwide geothermal power capacity amounts to 12.8 gigawatts, International markets grew at an average annual rate of 5 percent over the last three years and global geothermal power capacity is expected to reach 14. 5–17.6 GW by 2020. Countries generating more than 15 percent of their electricity from geothermal sources include El Salvador, Kenya, Geothermal power is considered to be a sustainable, renewable source of energy because the heat extraction is small compared with the Earths heat content. In the 20th century, demand for electricity led to the consideration of geothermal power as a generating source, prince Piero Ginori Conti tested the first geothermal power generator on 4 July 1904 in Larderello, Italy. It successfully lit four light bulbs, later, in 1911, the worlds first commercial geothermal power station was built there. Experimental generators were built in Beppu, Japan and the Geysers, California, in the 1920s, in 1958, New Zealand became the second major industrial producer of geothermal electricity when its Wairakei station was commissioned. Wairakei was the first station to use flash steam technology, in 1960, Pacific Gas and Electric began operation of the first successful geothermal electric power station in the United States at The Geysers in California. The original turbine lasted for more than 30 years and produced 11 MW net power, the binary cycle power station was first demonstrated in 1967 in Russia and later introduced to the USA in 1981, following the 1970s energy crisis and significant changes in regulatory policies. This technology allows the use of lower temperature resources than were previously recoverable. In 2006, a binary cycle station in Chena Hot Springs, Alaska, came on-line, Geothermal electric stations have until recently been built exclusively where high temperature geothermal resources are available near the surface. The development of binary cycle power plants and improvements in drilling, demonstration projects are operational in Landau-Pfalz, Germany, and Soultz-sous-Forêts, France, while an earlier effort in Basel, Switzerland was shut down after it triggered earthquakes. Other demonstration projects are under construction in Australia, the United Kingdom, the thermal efficiency of geothermal electric stations is low, around 7–10%, because geothermal fluids are at a low temperature compared with steam from boilers. By the laws of thermodynamics this low temperature limits the efficiency of engines in extracting useful energy during the generation of electricity. Exhaust heat is wasted, unless it can be used directly and locally, for example in greenhouses, timber mills, and district heating. The efficiency of the system does not affect operational costs as it would for a coal or other fossil fuel plant, in order to produce more energy than the pumps consume, electricity generation requires high temperature geothermal fields and specialized heat cycles. Because geothermal power does not rely on sources of energy, unlike, for example, wind or solar. However the global average capacity factor was 74. 5% in 2008, the earth’s heat content is about 1031 joules
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Biomass
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Biomass is an industry term for getting energy by burning wood, and other organic matter. It has become popular among power stations, which switch from coal to biomass to comply with the law. Biomass most often refers to plants or plant-based materials that are not used for food or feed, as an energy source, biomass can either be used directly via combustion to produce heat, or indirectly after converting it to various forms of biofuel. Conversion of biomass to biofuel can be achieved by different methods which are classified into, thermal, chemical. Historically, humans have harnessed biomass-derived energy since the time people began burning wood to make fire. Even today, biomass is the source of fuel for domestic use in many developing countries. Biomass is all biologically-produced matter based in carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, the estimated biomass production in the world is 104.9 petagrams of carbon per year, about half in the ocean and half on land. Wood remains the largest biomass energy source today, examples include forest residues, yard clippings, wood chips, wood energy is derived by using lignocellulosic biomass as fuel. Harvested wood may be used directly as a fuel or collected from waste streams to be processed into pellet fuel or other forms of fuels. The largest source of energy from wood is pulping liquor or black liquor, in the second sense, biomass includes plant or animal matter that can be converted into fibers or other industrial chemicals, including biofuels. Based on the source of biomass, biofuels are classified broadly into two major categories, first-generation biofuels are derived from sources such as sugarcane and corn starch. Sugars present in this biomass are fermented to produce bioethanol, a fuel which can be used directly in a fuel cell to produce electricity or serve as an additive to gasoline. However, utilizing food-based resources for production only aggravates the food shortage problem. Second-generation biofuels, on the hand, utilize non-food-based biomass sources such as agriculture. These biofuels mostly consist of lignocellulosic biomass, which is not edible and is a waste for many industries. Despite being the alternative, economical production of second-generation biofuel is not yet achieved due to technological issues. These issues arise due to chemical inertness and structural rigidity of lignocellulosic biomass. Plant energy is produced by crops grown for use as fuel that offer high biomass output per hectare with low input energy
This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/. – Japan
This article incorporates 
