Text 9. Wind energy application trends

The majority of industrial enterprises, cities, and settlements of the Murmansk region receive their energy from the grid of Kola Energy System. A large number of remote consumers in the area – small settlements and villages, weather stations, beacons, border patrol quarters, and sites of the Russian Northern Fleet – are isolated from the grid and receive energy from independent diesel power plants (DPPs). The capacity of a DPP ranges between 8 to 16 kW and 300 to 500 kW. The total number of such installations in the region numbers a few dozen.

Because of their decentralization and significant distance to grid-based energy sources, as well as their relatively low power consumption, plugging remote consumers into the central power supply is economically inexpedient. That is why diesel power stations will remain the only energy suppliers for these consumers in the foreseeable future.

A DPP's operation involves considerable costs incurred from burning expensive fuel. Diesel fuel prices are high not only because the fuel is of better quality than fuel oil, but also because its transportation is quite costly.

For instance, the coasts of the Barents and White Seas receive their diesel fuel deliveries by sea. Sea-going oil tankers unload fuel to coastal settlements as they cruise along the shoreline. If no berths can be used for unloading operations, the tankers are unloaded at offshore terminals with the help of small-size vessels. Transportation from the coastline to areas located further from the shore is performed by motor vehicles, tractors, sledge trains, and sometimes by air.

Due to location and their poor transport arteries, fuel prices increased in the coastal areas of the Kola Peninsula and in the more inaccessible inland areas.

Under these conditions, the use of wind energy converters can provide contribution to cutting high diesel fuel expenses. The degree of economizing depends on local wind potential and the diesel power station's operating load. According to estimations, a wind energy converter operating in an area with favorable wind conditions can replace between 30 % and 50 % – and in the windiest places, up to 60 % or 70 % – of the hard-to-obtain fossil fuel. In the long run, introducing WECs will allow to reduce the total costs of producing and consuming electric energy.

Text 10. Biomass – energy from organic materials

Wood was once our main fuel. We burned it to heat our houses and cook our food. Wood still provides a small percentage of the energy we use, but its importance as an energy source is dwindling. Sugar cane is grown in some areas, and can be fermented to make alcohol, which can be burned to generate power. Alternatively, the cane can be crushed and the pulp (called "bagasse") can be burned, to make steam to drive turbines. Other solid wastes, can be burned to provide heat, or used to make steam for a power station. "Bioconversion" uses plant and animal wastes to produce "biofuels" such as methanol, natural gas, and oil. We can use rubbish, animal manure, woodchips, seaweed, corn stalks and other wastes.

Biomass can be burned to get the heat for our hoses, or to get energy for a car engine, or for some other purposes.

Sugar cane is harvested and taken to a mill, where it is crushed to extract the juice. The juice is used to make sugar, whilst the left-over pulp, called "bagasse" can be burned in a power station. The station usually provides power for the sugar mill, as well as selling electricity to the surrounding area. It is claimed that biofuels will help us to reduce our reliance on fossil-fuel oil, and that this is a good thing. On the other hand, it is also claimed that it takes a huge amount of land to grow enough crops to make the amount of biofuels we'd need. Who is right? Should we use more biofuels and less fossil fuels? Think about the carbon dioxide – there are similar CO₂ emissions from biofuel-powered vehicles being petrol-powered ones. It is claimed that growing plants to make biofuels absorb in that carbon dioxide again. But biologists tell us that forests are not the lungs of the planet after all – they give out as much CO₂ as they absorb as the plants respire.

Biomass is renewable, as we're going to carry on making waste products anyway.

In the list of non-conventional and renewable energy sources bioenergy is found in wood waste and the organic waste of the livestock and poultry farming industries. The technical potential of these resources in the Murmansk region is small in comparison to other energy sources. It is obvious that utilizing biodegradable waste resources is of certain interest to small and isolated populated areas and localities where these wastes are generated. Timber and wood waste have been used by mankind for centuries. Biodegradable wastes generated from livestock and poultry farming constitute a "younger" energy source, but various technologies developed in the past decades to efficiently recycle these raw materials have finally reached polar regions as well. In particular, they have been successfully applied in the Kovdor region of Murmansk, where biogas is produced with the help of bio-energy converters.

Text 11. Nuclear Fusion - the Way Forward?

The challenge for the nuclear power industry is to make the technology as safe and secure as possible. After all, most people have heard of the catastrophic effects of the accident at Chernobyl in 1986 -the repercussions of which can still be seen today, with radioactive fallout contaminating large areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. There is also the contentious issue of dealing with the waste from the nuclearfission process, which has still not been adequately dealt with in most countries.

The question arises: can such waste be avoided in the first place? Not it would seem with nuclear fission, but nuclear fusion could be the answer if it is ever successfully developed.

In this process isotopes of hydrogen- deuterium and tritium - have to be heated up to over 100 million °C. The fission process not only produces heat but also several additional neutrons than can cause fissioning of other uranium -235 or plutonium -239 atoms. Thus, by proper arrangement of the atoms of the fuel, a sustained chain reaction can be maintained to provide a steady source of heat for operating a power plant. This chain reaction is controlled by regulating the number and the energy of the neutrons as they proceed from one fission reacting to another.

The atoms are thereby fused together thus releasing enormous amounts of thermal energy, which could then be harnessed to produce electricity. There are a number of benefits. No greenhouse gases are released, very little radioactive waste is produced - as is the case with nuclear fission - and furthermore the primary fuel is abundantly available on earth.

This technology, however, is still in its infancy. The EU, USA, China, India, Russia, Japan and South Korea have set up a project called ITER (the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which includes an experimental reactor in Cadarache, France. The goal of the project is to make fusion commercially viable. But experts say it will take at least 30 years to achieve the target and there is also no guarantee of any success.

ITER has other critics too. Some environmental groups claim that the money invested in the project - around €10 billion - should be used to develop renewable energy, firstly because it is available today and secondly because it has a proven track record.

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