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tv   Tomorrow Today  Deutsche Welle  November 20, 2023 11:30pm-12:01am CET

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she wanted me to remain mysterious, fearsome, strong, sometimes threatening, sometimes of charming. but i couldn't see behind her man. to disagree with. the red princess stops november 25th on dw the there emblems of a cleaner future. but how environmentally friendly our solar panels, the wind turbine and electric cars, really? if there's one thing, the green transition will demand above all else. it's raw materials, lots of them. but extracting resources is a dirty business, which is white plans for new mines run into fierce resistance. in many places. europe wants to start sourcing many key metals and minerals from scandinavia, but is mining in norway really cleaners and what are the alternatives? these and other questions and focus this week on data science show. welcome to
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tomorrow. today, the heavy duty load are attempts 25 tons of rock into a truck in on time in western norway where one gigantic machine. after another, rumbles through a fast open cast mine, a mineral called olivine has been mind here since 1948. it contains significant amounts of magnesium that plays an important role in steel production quality and can also bind carbon dioxide. all home is the largest mining site for the mineral in the world. when the mine is one day, finally tapped out here, everything will be re natured then this, the fiscal year, the if you mind, you need to do it in ways that do a little damage to nature as possible. and before you start, you have to gain social acceptance for the idea. at the moment,
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this is one of just a few mines of this size in norway. for many decades, the northern country has focused mainly on oil and gas production. now, however, interest is growing in the many other abundant natural resources beneath the ground . here for that they are, the industry isn't that large here yet before we do have money deposit, as you see, the probably even the largest deposits of metal and rivers in europe and those are building blocks that are important to a grand transition in your you think it's also important that when you're in europe work together to make ourselves less dependent on china having yeah, all the built on to, you know, china currently dominates the market for certain valuable raw materials in an attempt to ease its dependence. europe is trying to tap more resources within its own borders, including those from norway. the finally button motors dangerous the china has to some extent in quite monopolies in the production of certain raw materials. and it is use these monopolies to monopolize that entire value chain. stocks so the that
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has made it very difficult to alter existing value chains, home health, and bring green industries to europe or for the incline industry tables. if europe wants to implement green transitions in areas like mobility and energy supply, it will need access to the key raw materials that enabled them. so societies will have to agree to their extraction, and at least for the time being, doing so has a big environmental impact to the residents of no style had been resisting a major mining project on the philadelphia yard for years. a company called nordic mining wants to remove the top of this mountain to mind titanium and the mineral called rutil, which contains titanium dioxide to get to the project that were against this project. because they want to cut off the summit of and get my mountain done. and are planning to dump 250000000 tons of mining, sludge chemicals on heavy metals and micro plastics directly into one of the
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regions most fish rich. your doctor said he gets to fuel to the people here. fear dire consequences for the fjord, which is also an important breeding ground for cod. but they don't know exactly what to expect. it was gonna say, man, it's hard to say, you know, so, but it's highly likely the most of the few or you'll die. that there will be no more efficient in your office, but by the time we know for sure, it might be too late to have full time. no, no, no, no. these demonstrators are shouting, let the fjord live. the attempt to provide you with a secure source of key raw materials has turned into a classic cultural battle between environment and industry and government and all that and to be so and it's, it's easy to protest against opening a new mind that stuff like that. but when you organize your protesters and you do
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that, you use a cellphone to do it on this home and don't give it a 2nd side of it. it will be effective on the iron and the change they use to chain themselves. machines in protest comes from mine or iron or is my yeah, and yeah, and it is a, we use all these products around us get out before and take for granted that we just have done that. and they'll take you there and they'll say i didn't after use of delays and agreeing to many conditions. nordic mining received approval to start extracting raw materials at the fjord in 2024, against the background of new geo political tensions. the project has acquired fresh importance oil for bid out then for the i hope the publications and others understand that we in norway and the other northern countries must contribute to providing an important minerals for 0 dollars and the rest of the world. i do apologise now we can't just wait for the developing world to provide us with every single you know you to how she and also all the minute. all anything you extract in key resources within its own borders can help us reduce its current dependence on
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the global market and establish its own production chains. but in norway, mining companies 1st have to take the local residents and the environment into account. the world is hungry for sand, it's in cleaning agents, cosmetics, and every computer. we make glass from sand and mix it into concrete. but only certain types are suitable for concrete production. and what's called building sound is growing scarce. are there ways to replace it in construction? the construction industry just spacing a massive challenge. it's most important, raw material is growing scarce. these 2 met and want to solve the problem. we have in mind, we have a global problem in the concrete sector. demand can no longer be met and we have to
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pick, we haven't con 90 percent of all buildings are made with at least some reinforced concrete. and a major component in that is send 200 tons on average. you go into a residential building. there are $30000.00 tons in a kilometer a free way construction projects while of 50 in times every year. the problem is, sand is growing scarce, as it gets so in the future we won't be asking how expensive is sand, but rather where can i get saying that we can expect to? there's actually plenty of sand out there. it's just that not all of it is suitable for construction. concrete sand can't be too fine or too smooth. its grains have to be able to enter lock. just 5 percent of the world. sam fulfills the right criteria because it's too smooth desert sand is unsuitable. so researchers at a university in the german town in fryeburg,
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want to recycle concrete waste for using the sam this and it's the 1st step is to grind it up, knocked. it's applying a home after crushing it. we add binding agents and water that's produces the pallet is which in turn are then added to the new concrete in inventory. both of the researchers are currently able to convert 8 different types of sand and rock into building and sand substitutes pellets. they come out of a pelletize or one machine like there's can produce up to $100.00 tons of them per hour. yeah, that's the principle with a similar to making a snowball that you roll and roll, making it more and more packed, and bigger and bigger. we need different sizes from 0 to 15 millimeters so that the 2nd thing is that the pellets have to be round and firm so that they can be processed in the concrete accordingly. but if you take
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a break after rolling the pellets have to harden for 2 days, then we'll see what it is suitable for building for cycling. fine. sam is just one approach to the shortage. however, another is developing new technologies that make do with less and the cube is unique building constructed on the k as of the university of dresden fits, the 1st made of carbon concrete. the result of 30 years of development. the concrete and the structure contains no steel. it's supported by carbon frameworks. the couple undertone, carbon concrete is a new type of material. or i should say, a combination of materials gets reinforced with high performance fibers and designs that employ the new building. material architects can save a lot of resources to actually support up to 80 percent less compared to traditional reinforced concrete applications either to and that means a big drop in c o. 2 emissions in the industry. it's made possible by this network
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of carbon fiber is the supports inside the walls. the fibers are composed of up to $50000.00 tiny filaments. each sooner than a human hair must in 10 months, extra be used to produce a variety of carbon materials scripts like this for example, which have a very large mesh size. and a very rigid structure is in but also very slim. and then structures that are very flexible, stop the pausing. halstead best when i tell you, i don't know how y'all, i am so glad. so the difference is easy to see when you make a comparison between a classic steel elements and a new carbon, elena, which is around 10 millimeters in diameter. these elements that are just 10 millimeters thick, we can build the same loads as a 28 millimeters steel rod upon the da's office. one single side carbon is 4 times lighter. and 6 times stronger than steel. 29 grams of it can replace
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accused of stealing a building and it can be used to make curved elements. carbon fiber is only need to be covered in send layers of concrete and conventional reinforced concrete. much thicker layers are needed to prevent the steel from rusting and growing brittle. so it requires a lot not for san vince before you got modeled and cause. so it means lots of material can be left out of carbon conk, right? because the carbon simply doesn't rust is listed as an added bonus. buildings can be completed more quickly. durability is also a huge plus, reinforced concrete as life expectancy of 40 to 80 years. because still eventually corrupts. the researchers are certain, the carbon concrete will last up to 200 years. but there's still a catch until now, producing carbon takes a lot of oil and energy. in the future. the plan is to refine the element from algy
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or lignin. a waste material from wood production. however, research is still in the early stages. you will be years before lightweight, durable carbon is used on construction sites. back in cyberg to the recycled san pellets. these have now been hardened and mixed into concrete, which has to meet the strict requirements. for example, in liquid form, it may only flow about 40 to 50 centimeters. and this method between the under, i'm a very satisfied with how it looks very homogeneous. ok. those have tiny law, say it's not bleeding any water, bluetooth missed. so it's good. concrete is, i'm very satisfied, totally intensive for these as a 1st success. another criterion and strength. does the concrete live up to the researchers expectations here to time to load tests? that's recycled. concrete cube so these have to be in a,
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this cube with stood the equivalent of $111.00 tons of weight. so which means it would basically made all the standard requirements for residential construction, commercial construction and pre fabricated construction. so we could so we could use this concrete in more than 80 percent of construction projects about from i'd say it's so the granular made from fine sand or building rebel. it could be a game changer because it could make nearly all sand usable. at the same time, it could reduce rubble and waste catcher, demolitions, recycled. concrete also score is highly when it comes to emissions. how many of the studies we've carried out, we can save 90 kilos of c o 2 with every cubic meter of concrete by the recycling method is already being used in construction projects. the 1st 3 production plans for the pellets are already being planned,
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stand recycling and carbon to promising solutions to the atm pending shortage of building st. sand is also needed to make solar panels more precisely ports and there are abundant stats of the material all over the world. and best of all, the shape and size of the individual grains doesn't matter because they're meltdown only then can they turn some light into electricity? bernard, a co phone from gun i wrote in with this question, how do solar panels work. busy solar panels also called solar modules are made up of a number of solar cells linked together. about 95 percent of all the solar cells are currently made from similar con, obtain from ports and it's melted and cleaned at a complex process. the resulting silicon is cut and defend slices called way 1st to
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make the cell electrically conducted to similar con his intentionally contaminated or dope. some wafers with more on others with fos for us. when the wafers doped with boar on and phosphorus replace together, excess electrons migrate from the fonts for a silicone layer into the boar on silicon layer. this leads to a surplus of electrons at the bottom and a shortage of them at the top. similar to a battery, solar cells have positive and negative poles. when sunlight strikes, the cell electrons are released and the silica and bore on layer, since they're negatively charged, they're drawn to the positive pole. solar cells also have metallic conductors at their top and bottom of the free electrons travel along these tracks, generating an electrical current. as long as the sun is shining, the when more light strikes the
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surface, more power is generated to increase a yield. so more modules are usually connected in series and linked up to form larger systems. but even small modules can generate enough like tricity for everyday needs. more than 11 percent of all renewable energy already comes from solar energy and increasing trend. it's a form of energy with almost infinite potential. the why do you have a science question of your own? then send it in as a video, text or voice mail. if we answer it in the show, we'll send you a little surprises a thank you. the now to a material that these days seems almost more common than sand on even the most beautiful beaches, plastic it's indestructible,
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and it's everywhere. there are around $200.00 types of plastic worldwide. many can be easily recycled if they're properly sorted and separated. but identifying types of plastic is a tricky business. one that could be simplified. you all can most i'm is trying to perfect plastic recycling processes. is revolutionary approach involves marketing. the plastics during sorting. doing so can have a big impact. vision reach me, i guess i can tell you more plastic. so then reuse rather than ending up somewhere in nature or in landfill. so we're being incinerated. all of our industry simply have to start using resources and materials more efficiently and what's called a circular economy. that involves more than just plastic, but they're a huge part of it until phase of these and the highs. the big problem is that a lot of different waste gets tossed into the recycling bin, plastic bags,
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yogurt containers, shampoo bottles, put mixing, different types of plastic together to make new products isn't a good idea. it makes the recycled plastic too brittle that think is i can at least ask the trick is to win, allowed each individual objects and take several measurements of that? i assume. yep. those measurements tell us what kind of plastic it is. what kind of application that was used for, it's like food versus non food packaging. so 1st we have to window it all out. that's what we do here. so that's not my. yeah. you know, 1st step, this prototype machine splits the flood of plastic into streams. individual pieces or analyzing details. what type of plastic is it? what was the object used for? a simple idea, but hard to achieve. does the system recognize the individual types of plastic? come in principal, you can detect every time. once you have an object and its own dish,
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you can take several measurements and come on, then you can recognize it very accurately. we can correctly detected 99 percent of the time to get that extra or recycling efficiency could be increased even further. if a marker were imbedded in the plastic event, a built in amazing could detect it. you can see the laser beam at work here. but when it hit certain plastics in the machine, they light up. they're marked with a fluorescent powder. main floor was tensile arresting, particles could be used to make recycling plastics much smarter, especially in storing techniques where materials move by very quickly like wind sorting packaging, where you can't worry about how the material is oriented in space and have to recognize everything and 10 milliseconds fluorescence is great for that sort of a sense from us toward us. fluorescence has been incorporated into this packaging. for example, marking it the margaret particles could even be integrated into the label. the
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fluorescent material is struck by the laser. it reflects some of the light back and lights up. as soon as the laser moves on, it stops glowing. you could therefore, for instance, mark all kinds of food packaging in the same way. and the laser would recognize that the powder is non toxic, and the laser can detect even the tiniest amounts of it. to actually be shots, on average, you need just 10 grams per ton of plastic. so little, practically a homeopathic dose. it doesn't change the plastics properties and you can still detective fluorescent material very well because it can be switched on. almost like a light source, the least really wilson most lying and his team are now working at designing a sorting system for such packaging. it's clear that recycling has to improve with fluorescence. the researcher wants to cut down to the amount of plastic that ends
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up in the environment say to support in child. i just see the potential, for example, a lot of 30000000 tons of plastic waste in europe, around 5000000 to recycle. that's a 6th of that type. now then we could increase that number to 15 or 20000000 tiles for the same spot. there's so much more material that couldn't be recovered from way to estimate a huge amount. and of course, that could save a huge amount of c o 2. in a nut shell, that's the potential simple deposit is put into. so to recycle more, we have to sort more efficiently. renewable raw materials sometimes offer a good alternative to recycle more plastics. like kalki, for instance, it can be used in a range of applications even as an innovative construction material building when it would even help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. one reason why c made conservation is now being promoted in europe. and the 1st pilot projects of already
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been launched, a kind of gold rush is going on in the north sea. here on the dodge coast used of elders, a pioneer in the fields of l. g. farming, cultivates brown, l, g. from it, his company produces organic fertilizers. ready animals and various foods for humans. voters and his team have developed a method of growing the seaweed on ropes. when it's time to harvest, their lift it out with a system of metal arms and the marine plants are cut off by hand. algae absorb up to 3 times more c o 2 within plants on land. cultivating them is supposed to help europe have greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. ringback the european commission estimates that member states could dedicate half a 1000000 square kilometers at c to see we'd cultivation by then the equivalent of
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around 70000000 football fields. it's an ambitious project and it's still early days for the industry in europe, the global production of macro. algy commonly called c. we currently stands at over $30000000.00 tons per year. almost all of that comes from asia. europe produces only around one percent of the seaweed harvested world wide and that small amount mostly doesn't come from cultivation. but from wild stocks. interest into slippery crop from the sea is also growing on germany's baltic coast . like it, this kick off of and for a pilot project on ology cultivation, at the g. omar institute in keel researchers from a number of german universities want to find out among other things, how the large scale cultivation of seaweed might affect marine echo systems. they
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don't want to repeat mistakes made and land based agriculture. sure. the, the, there's the problem of over utilizing the remaining areas it see. and the fact that if you start using such a installation, it's like a home, then you have to go there that i'm almost done here. you have to harvest time. and that of course requires energy. it causes noise and so on. now. so you have to look very carefully at the potential environmental impact. those installations can have in coastal areas, in particular space it see has grown cramped, wind farms, shipping traffic, restricted military areas. ok, what culture all need room? that's why marine biologist, a fresh quote talk to is testing off shore algy cultivation bennett. the seaweed has grown far from the coast around wind farms or in combination with other aqua culture installations period. instead of getting 5 jobs, there are definitely safety aspects. so i'm like,
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it's very important that net cable aqua culture structures don't tear loose and storing ice storm because of the weather is a major challenge. dr. offshore powerful storms and high waves or comments august. so the technology has to be sophisticated guys, and this is exactly the kind of problem that research projects like ours we're set up to solve, flush and squeeze you. at the end of our visit to the dust north sea coast, we get to try chocolate with local sugar account this year. so it was developed as the seaweed cultivation in europe is still in its infancy. but after all, that's how every industry starts off. by the way, we're now also on tick tock. hey, how are we answer your questions and clips that are fun, accurate, and to the point. what also based on the latest research, one to discover even more from the world of science. then follow us at
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d w. science. that wraps up this week on tomorrow to date the science show. thanks for watching and see you next time, bye. for now, the
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wells under stretch marine biologist, sabina, ireland, the conducts research of the time frame protected various whales. but more and more also, she discovers the syringe it. why is this happening? why is the protection of quails not lacking? in 30 minutes, d, w,
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a pulse the beginning of a story that takes us along for the ride. it's about the prescriptive culture information. this is the the news w. mine's the discovery. change your mind. just click away. find out best document trees on you to see the world, the subscribe. now to dw documentary ones move for
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a robot q one giant leap for exploiting the ocean floor. cutting edge technology is i'm looking to potential of deep sea mining. so the vehicle's been designed to pick up nodules and leave as much sediment behind as possible. but this time a research team will study the possible risk in order to minimize then we have an opportunity to get it right before we even start. we have a whole new industry that will proceed only when regulation, so things are to replace the environmental to this skeptical. is this true nature conservation on the green washing of the rules? bill billions to be made out to pub documentary, deep sea greed stats, december 7th on d. w. the
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. this is dw news line from berlin. nearly 30 permit your babies in critical condition. arrive in egypt for medical care after being evacuated from causes. i'll ship a hospital. also coming up. guys, how must run health ministry said shelley killed a dozen people at hospital is ready times have surrendered the indonesian hospital in northern garza. the last remaining medical facility in the area also in the program. germany's foreign minister on the behalf of projects calls for a student far in gaza saying that base with lead.

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