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tv   Doc Film  Deutsche Welle  May 18, 2019 5:15pm-6:00pm CEST

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solution government is stepping down as the leader of the freedom party that's after german media publishes she quickly taped video allegedly showing him promising government contracts in exchange for campaign donations. you're watching news up next a documentary on how we will satisfy how energy needs in the future that's after a short break i'm michael okwu stated. it's all happening good job it. surely is news from africa to the world your link to exceptional stories and discussions can you and will come to the debut suffocating program tonight from for an example. of easy to our i would say defeated slash africa join us on facebook t.w. africa.
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some 7600000000 people live on earth and a 1000 more are born every hour most of us consumer electricity around the clock. steps of his own as i have as a vision of an all electric world where no one uses oil or gas to heat their homes only electricity that's generated from renewable sources for years it's estimated that our electricity needs will double by 2050 will wind and solar power be able to meet this demand. that's kind of a sky behind us the so hard to wind and solar power all the cheapest energy sources today no one can deny that you know what i did so i may cause a lot of problems you need to see that. nuts trying to use all of the sun doesn't shine at night. sometimes the wind doesn't blow and there needs to be an energy
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source that's reliably available at all times so that's a push of a button so to speak only conventional sources like coal and natural gas can do that because. around 85 percent of global energy production comes from fossil fuels but the reserves are finite. and even worse oil coal and gas are the biggest climate killers. who really didn't watch what we do with the emissions budget to prevent climate change getting out of control the studios are going to get it. how can we save our climate is nuclear energy the future is on its own so corsica sun is our great nuclear fusion furnace it works beautifully through so it makes you wonder could we use it directly to us who haven't tried that yet. morocco is a country with very little fossil fuel 95 percent of its energy comes from imports
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. electricity is still a luxury commodity here. we're in the oasis village of fent. so hussein de void invites us into his home. he shows us what electricity means for him and his family. the 4 of them have about $100.00 euros a month disposable income so they have to save money there are almost no electrical appliances in the house they're too expensive. many things are still done by hand. they cook with gas. the gas canister costs just $4.00 euro's and it
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lasts usually more than a month. by comparison electricity costs 15 year as a month. but they don't want to do without it completely. to his son we see tricity is very important to us. people in the village want to watch t.v. and challenge their fans. and they want to watch football they need. to see the shows you see the way you see people stop. just a few kilometers away from the traditional berber village and you're in a completely different world. the world's largest solar power plant is currently under construction in the desert town of. half a 1000000 parabolic reflector so have been installed on the edge of the sahara. the high tech plant will expand 5 fold over the next few years.
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we have a potential renewable energy sources in rocco mainly the sun. all the power produced by this solar plant will go to moroccans. by 2030 we want to cover 52 percent of our electricity consumption with renewal energy. across an area of $650.00 football fields the reflectors will be constantly directed towards the sun using computers. it hardly ever rains here so it's an optimal occasion for capturing sunlight on a. really uphill. we can't even produce electricity when the sun goes down with the thermal energy storage system. this is . it loses chemical salt compounds that can store heat energy at a temperature of $100.00 degrees celsius. you know it's a great way to produce electricity after sunset. because.
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the newer plant which is arabic for light can still produce electricity for 3 hours after sunset. the aim is to increase this period to 7 hours. because you belmore not we expect the nor one plant to generate $160.00 megawatts of electricity per year that would enable us to supply $600000.00 people. 98 percent of morocco's rule areas are connected to the national grid which means the solar power can reach even the remotest areas like the oyster civility to fit. but the government has to subsidize the energy costs electricity is so expensive that most people can't afford. a development aid project has also given village residents here in the oasis access to low cost water. a
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while in the village also uses solar powered. by a so nice we have a good solar power system here and transports the water from the bottom to the top it's a sheet because over a need is this some. borneo. a light bulb here cost the equivalent of $50.00 euro cents. an energy saving lamp cost $70.00 euro's too much for the devoted family. the only important thing for them right now is to get electricity. and they don't care where it comes from as long as it's cheap. the world bank and other european languages have invested 2200000000 euros in the moroccan solar power plant. was becoming a pioneer in the energy revolution. this high tech project is already setting an
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example for other countries. egypt tunisia and saudi arabia are planning to build similar solar power plants the vision here is to harness the abundant sunshine in the sahara and export electricity to europe. in theory solar radiation alone could easily meet the needs of the entire human race. konstantinos bellew horse is a professor of energy technology in zurich he knows the potential of solar power in the long 50 and it will far outperform wind power in the long term but if as winning power was quick to become competitive against the other energies and it's still cheaper than solar. but solar power has huge potential it's constantly
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getting cheaper and fast well and it can be installed almost anywhere with relatively little resistance from the public it doesn't bother people there are no moving parts and no noise. but central europe doesn't even have half the sunlight hours of north africa. will sunshine be the new luxury raw material of the future. could it make barack obama rich. diesel ended these are the countries that have sun are ones that can sell solar power very well for the teeth to produce energy they need investors to build solar plants for and this is question is who are these investors are they the developed industrialised countries is worried they'll try and take the lion share for themselves because it's a question of power politics and perspective from polity power perspective it. providing the whole world with solar power from the desert was also
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a vision of the desert tech project. that launched in 2009 but never came to fruition. it lacked the necessary european cooperation. there's also no power like from africa to europe which would be technically possible but would mean very high investment costs for all countries involved in tissue he landed in different countries have different priorities of us for what we're now seeing from various european projects is that some countries simply don't have the financial resources money here in the least and that if indeed they're still in financial crisis will they still have a much lower level of economic development to get in viciously though that it is very hard to convince them to make investments when they have 30 percent unemployment. and there's no coordination with the e.u. has to do a balancing act between including the nations in decision making and
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a kind of top down decisions that let me. out from the top down into i do. is wind up better energy source the massage. we move from the sunny south of morocco to the windy north of germany to the baltic sea. leaving from. bottle of harbor we board a ship that takes mechanics out to the baltic one offshore wind farms. the 115 meter high wind turbines are located 16 kilometers off the shore. when discourtesy the most promising renewable energy after solar power more and more wind farms are being built especially at sea as a cop loves his job as a wind turbine mechanic but it's not without its challenges. this topic since it's buried it's not always the same it's like you've got electrics mechanics hydraulics you have a bit of everything. on the floor we sail out we have to train to make sure we're able to work at heights and we do survival training. the body i'm standing this
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woman who i saw what happens if the ship sinks how do we behave in the water with a survival suit a life jacket without a life jacket which it can happen when it's one that's there so you don't need to be scared you just need to respect your environment. the space. lars and his colleagues have 8 hours of work ahead of them at dizzying heights a sensor in a wind turbine has stopped working they need to find the fault and repair it every hour working at c. cost 3 times as much as on land but offshore wind turbines generate twice as much electricity. the old sport on the end. harvesting wind is more efficient it see you have no obstacles like lorries or hills so the wind blows mostly from kind of the end of the better from the turbines because there are no cross currents i wind is constant in the same direction for
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a long period you know lies and lows like the gusts you hear blowing against your house you don't get out over the sea so it's better for the materials and over the years is consistent winds give you a higher energy. and. and it could be. the mechanics always climate turbine in pairs in case one of them needs help it's switched off while they work on it for safety reasons so it can't harvest power during that time. it's to september october after september or october we don't do maintenance it's almost as if you we have a limited period in summer say 4 or 5 months where we try to do all the necessary work there also official requirements we fulfill in that time is it tests on the letters and crane systems for us is our yields are highest from september on or it's when the autumn storms come and later during the spring storms so we need the systems to work then and not require maintenance. this offshore wind farm cost
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$200000000.00 euros every single part had to be brought here on special ships $21.00 turbines produce on average enough electricity 450000 homes every year. and. the huge wind turbines stand on steel tube foundations that are rammed into the seabed up to 30 meters below the surface. the turbines still sway noticeably in the constant wind. destruction gonchar it really wobbles sometimes and so fling it at the if it keeps wobbling for too long you get seasick doesn't make sense to me too i get queasy as this but float. the electricity providers control center is located 16 kilometers away on land all the company's renewable energy sources are monitored here
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including the baltic one wind farm employees are in radio contact with the mechanics outside at all times and they know which wind turbines are faulty and which are not. they can also see when ships sail through the wind farm without permission. they say there are no collisions with migratory birds as environmentalist and fear. helps cornish too there are cranes and geese which migrate in autumn but i don't think they pass through these routes. these authorities checked this before the wind farms weren't proved migration routes don't cross them wind farms food with these of in pox. after 3 or 4 years we've established that wind farms are harmful to the environment so that they can actually have a positive effect if for example the great artificial reefs that are very popular with marine life and get on the fish use them as breeding grounds and finding spots
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with stones that are laid down contain food for all kinds of a secret child but if. the offshore wind farms will continue to expand in the north sea and baltic sea. but there are still problems with wind power. it's not always available when you need it and the electricity can't be stored for long. so as a result wind energy worth billions goes to waste better infrastructure is needed to use it more efficiently.
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plans for a gigantic wind island are already underway at the headquarters of electricity grid operations for tenet in berlin. for more than functional goals thanks and you have to think big it's not about providing just one platform for each individual wind farm operator almost what we need to develop the infrastructure together that's how we came up with the idea of a win diamond as i've written off to not see the water is not that deep in the middle of the north sea you could build an artificial island there with an airport hotels and ports. and there'd be converter stations that collect the electricity and transported to germany denmark norway england or the netherlands. and that has the huge advantage that you can over produce because you can send it in different directions to one. second advantage is the huge cost savings offshore is expensive because you have to constantly go out there by boat or
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helicopter. every working hours 3 times more expensive these across this thing and it's possible to reduce these costs with this kind of communal infrastructure. siemens executive centric nika says networking is key for the future of green energy. one of his responsibilities is energy management in asia. because in the tradition of senate but in germany the electricity produced in the north sea and baltic sea is actually needed in the south cities and that's a bone if we don't build networks we have a big problem so in business when the energy worth over a 1000000000 euros is produced in the north sea that's never used for profit that's good in this post we didn't 100 plus if the electricity price falls or even goes into minus then we are obliged to switch off wind farms to reduce their output was in the us. we do that from here. this usually happens on the days around bank
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holidays because the electricity consumption is lower. so the output can and has to be reduced to this little bit seals was and was. right. when turbines aren't in operation it might not be because there's no wind there might already be too much green energy the plan is to put it to good use in the future. to bone we're building more and more connections to anyone in norway portugal and france to optimize the network as an example and has a time difference of just one hour but it means televisions they are go on at a different time to ours so we can optimize the electricity consumption between these 2 countries. the exchange of electricity between germany and norway is also to be improved a project called north link is installing one of the biggest power lines in europe . a 516 kilometer long underwater cable will transport norwegian hydro
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power to germany in exchange for german wind and solar power. in different sections of the cable have gradually been in storms in 20192020 will install the land cable and by 2020 the north lng interconnect it will be in operation the modeling to keep it. under water cable starts in vista and the german state of. it stretches from northern germany through the north sea to 20 and norway. can supply more than 3600000 homes in germany with renewable energy. the north of the connection should also make supply more reliable and improve grid
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stability. the extra capacity in the norwegian hydro power plants could also be used to store excess energy produced by germany. this would also help norway during dry spells. you know they can it's it feels cold norwegians use a lot of electricity 5 times more than germany on average and are there every 7 years or so it gets very dry and norway is and when it's dry the prices go up and the prices were lower in germany we could export either solar or wind power and it could also come from other neighboring countries or to. a similar project is causing controversy within germany. the plans you'd link connection would transport wind power to the southern german states. but it's now
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on hold having faced fierce opposition from the public. our next stop is china. ready this land of superdelegates is also the front runner in renewable energy. at 3000 kilometers it has the longest power cable in the world it's home to the largest hydroelectric power plant it's the biggest fault of all take cell producer and now it has the world's 1st solar highway. as china rose to become the world's 2nd largest economy its demand for energy soared. it now consumes more energy than any other country in the. us you know and it was not a few years ago china was still one of the great environmental centers but you know the economy grew but china had very little oil or natural gas and you know they
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mostly had whole gun and the air pollution in beijing and shanghai was extremely high hopes that when china decided it wanted to change it's now on the 13th 5 year plan to create more beautiful healthier environmentally friendly china which is you know it's been that a knuckle down and focused on going down the renewable route that it's the no problem with renewable energy though of us and it is that it usually isn't where the people are in again my sense in china is they have lots of sun and water 3 or 4000 kilometers away from cities and before that i told them a few 1000 but that doesn't bother them why they decided to produce renewable energy there and transported 3000 kilometers to cities like shanghai and eventually but i don't think you know me that's a good thing in the state of the shanghai. china built the world's biggest hydroelectric power plant about 700 kilometers from shanghai the. 3 gorges dam. annually it produces the same amount of electricity
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as burning nearly 50000000 tons of coal. the hydroelectric power is transported thousands of kilometers to the big cities through high voltage cables. because it uses the woman to me and then i hear we're well on the way to generating 100000000000 kilowatt hours. i think that enough energy to supply beijing for 11 years. they will get the easiest. use of what is hot to produce this amount it would normally take $340000000.00 tonnes of traditional culture the will of allah that it is there every year our plan helps reduce coal consumption in china by 340000000 tons. of help to reduce c o 2 emissions by 95000000 times just on electricity is transferred
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to locations within a 1000 kilometer radius political full budget battle of. the 3 gorges dam is 185 meters high at 2309 meters long it took $18000.00 workers 17 years to build this mammoth construction at a cost of around 75000000000 dollars. so you know the water flows through this opening into the plant and passes through the hydroelectric system also into generators rotate with incredible force under the immense pressure from the water this converts hydraulic energy into mechanical energy which is then transported our ports which turns a system of rotors and that's what eventually converts the energy into electricity or it hasn't gained. in china projects are decided upon by the government alone.
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this helps to explain the determination of the chinese. some have also on some levels instruction work on the 3 gorges dam began in 1913 when the final touches were funny as it lies in 2009 it took 7000 years until finally it is that people in china already had plans for the dam 100 years ago in 2018 months the dream became a reality but a monster. the. long term thinking is the asian way something china really allows itself to do is set a strict framework there's enormous competition between the companies it's not like the government says companies say does that in company b. does that framework is set and it applies for 20 to 30 years. that's had means the economy can adapt the competition is harsh there are winners and these win is a big. so it's
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a security measure to stop the investments disappearing in 10 years or so because the framework has changed. and. the losers in this mega project are the almost 2000000 residents who are a victim from their homes along began to see river to make way for the dam. some of them relocated far away. many did not receive compensation and were left unemployed after the forced resettlement. 13 towns were destroyed in the dams week. china is huge but it's cities are densely populated. to make space for green electricity scientists have devised a solar highway. one
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of the big disadvantages of solar power is the space you need to set up the modules . and that space is hard to find in china's overcrowded cities. only the streets after some potential. now a former time surely on the ball in a typical chinese city streets take up about 40 percent of the usable space and that's a huge resource. about it's also right next to where we live and use electricity out of the city streets could be turned into producers of green energy or they could be used immediately by the surrounding areas. in. the world's 1st solar highways on the ring road surrounding the eastern chinese city of gene on. the panels cover an area of 5800 square meters and should be able to
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generate 1000000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. enough to supply 800 households. to you want to. meet. you want to eat. our current energy yield on the roughly one kilometer test section that was injured on cross 2 lanes on the highway. don't supply a medium sized housing complex with electricity. so sure there are more than 4000000 kilometers of road in our country that. one let's. imagine if we paved over 2 lanes with photovoltaic traverse. that. forward it would generate more energy than the whole country does right know what i am and the 50 percent more i better go. but these futuristic streets aren't easy to build the photovoltaic covering has to be strong enough to
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withstand traffic and still let sunlight through there are still setbacks. to ensure not ship it out see what it. really is weak. for would you solve this problem we worked with manufacturers who specialize in making solar modules designed to withstand earthquakes and other stress factors and sure one way it's. china has a lot of overloaded trucks on a problem in. particular. because. now imagine a world where the roads themselves store energy to refuel the cars. courteous and not let the electricity grid would become a giant charger we could use on the highway. it's
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a damn. this technology would change transport fundamentally shit. for her to totally change the transport of the future. european cities also want to build solar highways but it will be some time before the technology is fully developed and the concept works properly. green energies are on the rise but lignite also known as brown coal is still the world's main energy source for generating electricity because it's independent of the weather. around $9000000000.00 tons of coal or mind every year without it many countries would not have a reliable electricity grid especially if they don't use nuclear energy. the ghauts via the mine is in the lignite mining area of germany's rhineland region 1500 people work here in shifts around the clock. there are 6 power shovels some of the
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biggest in the world to collect brown coal day and night. the coal is transported on to conveyor belt over 100 kilometers long and on the trains which take it into the nearby power plant to be converted into electricity. you believe my 90 to 95000000 tonnes of lignite every year on that field last year that generated 74000000 kilowatts of electricity and covered around 13 percent of germany's domanick and therefore help to guarantee supply and other words we supplied some 23000000 homes. since 2011 germany has taken 10 nuclear power stations off the grid with 7 more to follow. the electricity generated by sun and wind is not enough to compensate. green energy takes priority when electricity is fed into the grid but if there isn't
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enough then coal fired power stations must do what's necessary to ensure power is available at all times. in the shifting i need to make sure we employ meteorologists who systematically and continuously evaluate and track weather patterns like this as i might say something like look bad weather is approaching that's moving over east germany the wind turbines in el monte might fail because there's too much wind you've got something to make you know you might have to turn them away from the wind. so much so few think this son and so we urgently need conventional energy dense thing and it's to make sure the power plant is connected to the grid within half an hour it seemed perfect block on that side. coal fired power stations will need to become more flexible in the future the most modern ones can reduce their output by almost half within 30 minutes. older less
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flexible stations are closing down. flat it used to be about output producing as many megawatt hours as possible you know the future energy market it will be about generating electricity the minute you need it. and. they ignite the myths around 1150 grams of c o 2 for every kilowatt hour making it one of the most environmentally harmful energy sources. natural gas produces about a 3rd as much c o 2 is called. so is gas a good alternative. and how can we phase out lignite entirely. we need a plan on how fast can we replace coal and what with. what the next 10 years will
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be about which we can't wait until everything is solar wind or water power into the into the us or so we need to make a switch from coal to gas from korea of god it will make of the change in the next 10 to 20 years that's which alone will save more than half the c o 2 emissions from coal fired power stations if there are gas fired power stations but they're not profitable yet. switzerland and austria also import cheap electricity produced in german coal powered plants. that electorate is put up to and how the c o 2 prices for electricity production aren't high enough for the e.u. sets the price per ton of c o $2.00 emitted but it's only around 3 euros per target and you haven't heard it in price for today what you need is a price more like $100.00 euros per ton. in place then coal fired power stations would automatically not be competitive anymore how to live it to gas and renewable
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energies to get new that is put on the. internet in the. if we could store clean wind and solar energy could it be a way to switch to green energy. the found hopeful institute for chemical technology in southwestern germany is home to germany's largest redux flow battery . here researchers want to find out if villages or companies could reliably supply themselves with electricity without being connected to the grid. consumers would produce their own energy and store it in their own large scale batteries. and here we call it in vinge we store the wind power as direct current to the understand we feed it into the battery that is new. a special wind turbine it's the
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1st one that allows us to feed direct current into a mass storage unit without converting it. actually could supply up to $1000.00 homes each with 4 people. we could supply a whole village or an industrial park as all the canals closed off and this is the kind of magnitude we're imagining for this battery in these or go isn't all of them doing it is it but really. the 2 megawatt battery system can provide around 10 hours of electricity for the institute in fact there's almost self-sufficient with these wind turbines be conceivable for private households. taken it is technically it's possible if you had a very large storage battery with very high capacity you could charge it in the spring with the wind and then use it over the summer and autumn and then charge it back up during the autumn storm that's working. but it's not a viable option yet. it's costing me a get it and it costs
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a lot more money to store this large amount of electricity and such a big storage unit. the storage space has to be huge to cover the long 5 or 6 month summer period several 100 megawatt hours will the amount for just a few households wouldn't be worth it it's much cheaper to buy it from the grid so a few course goods to go. cost is still the biggest issue for battery storage on this scale it's just too expensive for private use. the 2nd problem is that renewable energy can't be stored for very long without huge losses. than listen to it over the top when you're talking days or weeks or even months then you can't avoid chemical changes like power to heat but mainly politic gas that reduces efficiency and you would. lose 50 or
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60 percent. during the conversion change from the electricity you put in back into the electricity use this is really a bicycle and. the aim is to use more renewable energy and to move away from nuclear energy but could we use nuclear power in a different way. after all the sun gets its energy from nuclear fusion. at the max planck institute in codd's followed the vendor 7 x. fusion device is being used to test whether nuclear fusion could work in a power plant. this is just i don't know you it's a new primary energy source it's an energy source that people don't use yet it's a recreating the process that happens in the sun that's the very basic physical process that releases the energy just because it's you know the fight and the
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conditions in the sun can't be created on earth they're far too extreme was certainly extreme just absolutely that's why they're better up there in the middle of the sun on earth we try to create much friendlier conditions but it was the same process of generating energy. researchers are trying to gain energy from the fusion of 2 atomic nuclei in a power plant. on earth they fused to hydrogen atoms which released large amounts of usable energy. one gram of fuel could be used in a power plant to produce 90000 kilowatt hours of energy. the same combustion heat as a lemon tons of coal. just in time of conflict it's a thermal power plant it's a gas about if you but it's an oven that uses a fusion of nuclei and not the chemical question of gas gossip that he would it's still a gas oven and it generates heat which is used to create steam and the steam power is turbines and they drive generators times that you don't have to get up to be in
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between the heat can be used elsewhere like for heating homes for example if i'm. on the downside nuclear fusion is expensive and complex. the project in cars followed cost 1000000000 euros and will require decades of research. but in return he could deliver an energy source that solves. all of our energy problems. just that's what i can see that's why it emits no c o 2 at all and largo and there are no storage issues and if there's no nuclear waste that would have to be stored in a protected for a very long time you don't but it is nuclear technology and get out of goodness in english radiation protection one must be provided as highs almost as long as you adhere to the radiation protection and everything's under control and there can be no major disasters to go get serious they're just not physically possible for us in this country can't get out of hand in all and i can tell you exactly why then did
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this last night was this then gas stopped it is in such a delicate state to nick us bringing it up to these high temperatures is so difficult that if you make the slightest mistakes it cools down and goes out. any human error or technical error would just automatically shut the whole thing down guns up shuttle. the research project has taken over 20 years and it will be 3 more decades before this type of nuclear fusion is ready for commercial use. i make enough that's one for a generation of research plants still needs to be built we have the big flagship project in southern france which follows a slightly different principle but as ultimately a fusion plant why do we get out and we still need another generation of plants to demonstrate that this power plant principle works and so you can and then will build the 1st prototypes explant side then we'll be in the middle of the 21st century cough going to 0 from that to disable notes. the electricity of the future
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will have to come from renewable sources if we're to combat the destructive forces of climate change. every step in this direction is a step toward saving the planet or we're. aand. entered the conflict zone confronting the powerful the full trial of conflict separatist leaders of a bed failed independence fig has laid best some stuff divisions in spanish society my guess is we here in madrid is sprains foreign minister knows at a rally how does he ons of a challenge for the trials how fundamentally on fast. conflicts so for
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30 minutes doubling the fuck. what secrets lie behind the smallest. find out in an immersive experience and explore a fascinating world cultural heritage sites. or d w world heritage 31615 s now. the only border is history the world is reorganizing itself and the media's role is keep shifting powers the topic in focus at the global media forum 2019 included a laboratory for the digital age visitors who are we following whom do we trust to debate and shape the future at the doj a valid global media forum 2019 the place made for minds.
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cut. from berlin protesters gather outside the austrian chancellor's office. in vienna to protest against their country's vice chancellor that's after heinz christians is forced resigned amid a corruption scandal the far right leader was filmed of legibly offering lucrative government contracts in exchange for campaign donations also coming up. by in munich this league of champions for the 7th straight season the jubilant varian's of lifted the.

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