(EarthTimes)

What is hydrofracking? Hydrofracking uses significantly more water than conventional drilling, as well as a “slick water” mixture that is pumped into the shale to fracture the rock and release the gas. Second, there is an increased potential for toxicity and its long-term impacts. Finally, there is the environmental impacts of the drilling: surface and subterranean damage including forestland loss, multiple well sites, groundwater and surface water contamination, habitat and species disturbance, and likely an increased number of access roads to the well sites. (Peace Council)

The Marcellus Shale which stretches 104,000 square miles across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and upstate New York, is America’s largest source of natural gas, hydraulic fracturing has been used to release and capture the shale gas for energy consumption. Avner Vengosh is a professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke. Vengosh stated his concern with hydrofracking by saying, “the amount of radioactivity that has accumulated in the river sediments exceeds the thresholds for safe disposal of radioactive materials.” (ENN)

Overall, hydrofracking seems to carry more negatives than positives with it: contamination of ground water, methane pollution, air pollution toxic chemicals, explosions, excess waste, earthquakes, etc. Mechanically, hydrofracking is helpful and you are able to get what you want more efficiently, but due to the environmental risks and safety risks that come with hydrofracking, it is just a bad idea.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck in the area of Fukushima and caused a 15-meter tsunami to disable the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. All three reactors mostly melted within the first three days. Cooling the reactors was the primary task, but also they had to work to prevent radioactive materials from spilling out. (World Nuclear)

The dangers to people and the environment are obvious, but a nuclear meltdown also presents a serious threat on the economy. The public ends up having to pay for the mess through taxes and other charges, whereas, the companies who had originally been funding these reactors essentially escaped any financial responsibilities at all. (Greenpeace)

(propublica)

Regardless of the incident in Fukushima, Japan still wants to continue to use nuclear energy. A Japanese government panel decided that nuclear power would be a very important factor in their new energy plan going forward. The panel states, “”Nuclear power should continue to be used on the condition that its safety is ensured, and it is an important and basic power source that supports the stability of Japan’s energy supply and demand structure.” (Global Post)

(Energy.gov)

Practically every American now has a “smart” phone, and what that means is essentially that the phone has a computer built in to it. Well, “smart” grid technology means “computerizing” the electricity grid. It communicates between the device being powered and the grid itself. The “grid” amounts to the networks that carry electricity from the plants where it is generated to consumers. The grid includes wires, substations, transformers, switches and much more. (Energy.gov)

(Smartgrid.com)

The Smart Grid automatically improves energy usage, and minimizes waste while delivering real-time information to both consumers and providers. Advocates of the Smart Grid believe that it will open up new markets for large and small scale alternative energy producers like solar, wind and bio-fuels by decentralizing generation. (SmartMeters)

As far as environmental concerns go, smart grid technology will help to reduce our carbon footprint and it will give consumers more choices on how they use their energy. Smart grid technology makes energy use more efficient and more reliable. (PGE)

We utilize all sorts of batteries throughout our everyday lives. Cars, cellphones, and digital watches are all powered by some sort of a battery. But, we were curious what kind of basic principles create a “battery.” A battery is a container that consists of one or more cells that produce an electrochemical reaction when connected to a device.
The experiment we chose was to create a battery out of fruits (lemons, limes, oranges, bananas) using graphite/carbon as the constant element and switching out various conductive metals (zinc, copper, iron) as the second element. We hypothesized that the lemon would have the highest pH level and thus would generate the highest amount of voltage. We utilized a voltage meter to measure the voltage of each fruit/metal combination.

Our Results:

As shown in the chart above, we were wrong with our hypothesis. Surprisingly, the orange yielded the highest voltage when paired with a galvanized nail, but all the fruits we tried, even the banana, yielded some level of voltage showing that you can create a battery (though a weak one) out of fruits and conductors.