hi there today let's talk about the problems that technology must overcome to provide a cleaner Greener future for all of us without fossil fuels let's talk today about how scientists at MIT and a company called quaz that's qu a i e how they may have found the answer this is a technology good news story hear about how we may be about to solve one of the biggest problems of our times solving the world's energy crisis and hear about it all while enhancing your English listening skills and learning
some good scientific vocabulary at the same time sounds good doesn't it this story isn't just about technology but it's about Hope Innovation the future of our planet even so stay with me and polish your English skills while we cover this fascinating topic it's really exciting isn't it when people come up with new technology which solves the world's problems hello I'm Hillary and you're listening to Adept English we will help you to speak English fluently all you have to do is listen so start l
istening now and find out how it works and that's exactly what I've been reading about this week MIT and a company called quaz may be on the way to completely solving the global energy crisis how do we generate energy without ruining our planet so-called clean energy it's that old story we're worried about CO2 and we don't want to rely on fossil fuels fossil fuels means fuels that come from the ground coal gas oil but we also consume a lot of energy and we don't want to stop it's how we heat our
houses and how we generate electricity so we can use all those lovely things like computers mobile phones televisions cars hair dryers that last one's very close to my heart all the Comforts of our Modern Life and things like healthc care and food production all rely on energy nobody wants want to go back to the Middle Ages it would be even more difficult if you'd known Modern Life before it so scientists have been working on this big problem and making some progress so the current situation we
talk about renewable energy that's r n e w a b l e renewable means sources of energy which don't dirty the planet and which keep on working which don't run out so by this we usually usually mean wind power solar power so that's from the Sun wave power we're trying all of these things but each of these possible solutions has problems the technology is not quite there take wind for example and wind turbines that's turbine t u r b i n e those are huge machines those windmills that are there to cap
ture wind energy they are marveles of engineering but they depend on the weather if there's no wind they're not generating any energy and if the wind blows above a certain speed wind turbines have to be switched off or they're not safe wind turbines are not that efficient and they alone are never going to generate enough energy for our needs if you consider how wind turbines are made there's a lot of metal in there and a huge amount of con rete c o n c r e t e concrete is needed to secure them s
afely into the ground so there is a risk that the construction of a wind turbine might actually use up more energy than it creates or it may take years to pay back that energy and you have to look after them you have to maintain and repair them and that's expensive and it's just not practical to cover the land in wind turbines in some places like where I live in the UK it's just not very windy I've never seen a winter by where I live it wouldn't be worth having one because there's little wind I
guess this is why we put them in the sea it's windier there but those ones are even more expensive to maintain either way if you research wind turbines thoroughly they are not a solution on their own and that's the same for the other renewable energy sources like solar and wave their podcasts are objects in their own right perhaps another possibility is nuclear energy that's n u CLE e a r nuclear that's the British English pronunciation of course nuclear in US pronunciation it's more like nuclea
r I can't even say that properly but Nuclear So nuclear energy might be a more viable option you could have small scale nuclear plants all around your country to generate energy Loc Al but if you're old enough to remember chobble in 1986 or if you've seen the miniseries that's from HBO in 2019 then the idea might be a little worrying I think computer controlled nuclear power stations would be a great deal safer so the smaller risk might be one worth taking but the main problem here it would take
years and years and years to build them what if instead we looked beneath our feet to the very core of our planet for answers in countries like Iceland the energy demand is high Iceland is a cold country it's in the name but there is a lot of what we call geothermal activity meaning literally heat from the earth we've seen on the news recently the lava flow erupting in roads and villages in Iceland that's frightening and not good for the people who live there but it shows just how much geotherm
al energy there is in Iceland historically icelanders used the Earth's heat not only to wash in but to bake bread known as hot spring bread or clearer brute clearer brute my goodness a bit of Icelandic pronunciation there sorry about that if that's your language but the point is that from the 1930s Iceland moved move towards being entirely powered by geothermal energy no fossil fuel usage at all just pausing a moment there if you like this podcast check out our website at adep english.com we hav
e language courses we have hundreds of podcasts and we even have a free course on how best to learn English if you only know the podcast from Adept English then you're missing out so visit our website website adep english.com to discover more back to our topic but what if you don't live in a country where there's a lot of geothermal activity is this not an option well scientists have long thought about what might be possible if you could drill down into the hot part of the earth if only you coul
d drill down far enough to drill Dr i l l means to make a hole mechanically if you are putting shelves up in your house you would probably drill holes in your wall and if you could drill down into the Earth to where it's hot this might well be a source of energy we could use MIT the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been exploring these options and coming up with possible future Solutions there is MIT and also a spin-off company called quaz that's again quu a i s e if you want to look t
hem up they may be starting to solve the problems here they're coming up with possible solutions so drilling down into the Earth sounds good but in practice it's really difficult to do and it gets more difficult when the rock that you're drilling through begins to get hot there have been previous attempts by the Russians in the 1970s and the Germans in the 1980s and both made progress but neither succeeded in finding a realistic method that could supply energy on a wide scale one of the problems
has been the metal drill I still Marvel at say the construction of the channel tunnel between England and France it goes under the sea between the two countries in the seabed and effectively this was done using an enormous metal drill I think that's amazing and clearly the technology was there some years ago when this was actually built but it appears that drilling for Miles downwards into hot rock is much more difficult technology developments now mean that there are other options besides that
problematic metal drill they can drill down into the Earth using energy beams instead an energy beam that's beam b e a m well we use that word to mean those long pieces of wood which hold up our ceiling or our roof perhaps but a beam can also mean a beam of light we would talk about sunbeams used especially when you can see Stripes of light coming through the clouds but here we're talking about drilling with an energy beam a bit like a laser beam but apparently laser beams don't work for drilli
ng rock this is a Direct Energy Drilling process and it uses something a bit closer to a microwave now the other problem to overcome here was the amount of energy used to power the beam but it looks like this is about to be solved by something called Fusion f u s i o n I'm not even going to attempt to explain that here nor do I particularly understand that myself but if you want to research that more look online for machines called gyrotrons that's g y r o t r o n so I mentioned qu the tech busi
ness that's connected with MIT and which hopes to use the research from MIT and roll this out in reality put the plan into action so quaz plans to use these new technology ideas for deep drilling to generate clean energy on a widescale basis with this method of energy production it's clean nothing is burned there's no pollution no dirty air or CO2 generated unlike power from the Sun or wind this doesn't depend on the weather it's always available day and night and generating energy this way woul
d use less land than solar power or wind power or wave power for that matter this means better use of the land we can continue to conserve nature and we can use the land for food production where it's needed and this also avoids the risk that come with nuclear energy like radiation how brilliant is all that but one more thing that's coming out of MIT and is part of the quaz plans that makes it even better more practical a final challenge is actually turning that raw energy that heat into usable
electricity it's this part of the process which has also proved to be a block to progress again it's building the infrastructure that's needed it would take many many years and cost a lot of money the brilliant idea from MIT and quaz well all across the world there are old power plants a power plant means a factory that is used to generate electricity many of them are coal powered so many of them have been closed down mothballed taken out of action decommissioned but the technology is there insi
de those power plants to convert large amounts of heat to electricity that we can use so Quay say what if we were to drill these holes on the site of those power plants they're sitting there doing nothing and we could use that existing infrastructure which is already there which is designed to convert heat into usable electricity doing it this way would mean it could happen much more quickly and it uses what we already have which is always a good thing to do if they can do that brilliant it's a
new idea but there's hope it can succeed this method of generating clean energy renewable energy could actually work I've included links in the transcript if you want to know more you'll find that on our website of course I recommend watching the video on the new Atlas website that's really good if you want a bit more practice after today's podcast I hope you get excited by these things as I do and I count this as one of those good news stories which you say you like enough for now have a lovely
day speak to you again soon goodbye thank you so much for listening please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it and please share it on social media you can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adep english.com [Music]
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