Future Perfect: Cloud seeding to end freshwater woes

Cloud seeding Cloud seeding technique to end the drought

What’s happening right now?
With the growing levels of deforestation and global warming, incidences of drastic weather changes and droughts have been on the increase. Naturally, the sufferings are numerous and the losses immense. The focus thus is to somehow eradicate the water hassle and hurdle and present a prosperous environment. The best way to achieve this is by cloud seeding, better explained as a way to cause rainfall artificially. This method is still in the nascent stages of its application and is largely dependent on natural conditions.

There is a particular kind of clouds that can be artificially seeded in order to fasten the process of rainfall and they are thunder clouds. Naturally, it rains only when the rain drops are large and heavy enough to induce a shower. Generally, the densing of these drops takes place by the accumulation of water droplets around an ice nucleus or a tiny particle of ice.

Artificially, this process can be induced by spraying silver iodide over clouds. The gush of the gas induces the freezing of water, even when naturally; the process is simply not possible. When ice crystals are formed, they attract the surrounding water droplets and convert them into drops. These drops collide with each other a make an artificial shower.

However, there is a limitation. Only thunder clouds can be artificially made to rain. The challenge is to do so since during droughts, when water is most needs, these types of clouds seem to have gone for a long hibernation and return when not much in need.
Trends

1. China overdoes cloud seeding to end drought

China Cloud SeedingChina Cloud Seeding
China has been one of the nations that have experimented with this technique. In order to overcome the pounding drought conditions in 2009. 500 sticks of silver iodide, the size of a cigarette stick each were sprayed into clouds, inducing artificial precipitation. The result? Beijing was covered by snow due to excess application of silver iodide and thus an excessive freezing of water particles in the clouds.

2. Cloud Seeding in India

Cloud Seeding in IndiaCloud Seeding in India to end drought
Similar as the case in China, India also had felt the crunch of extreme drought conditions in 2009. In order to free the population of the threatening conditions, the Indian government had set out to build up its own cloud seeding methods. But ritualistically, silver iodide was used to induce rainfall.

The concept
As already discussed in the first section, cloud seeding is the artificial process of inducing rainfall. Going into further depths, the method is traditionally used for two separate purposes. The first motive is to cause artificial rainfalls in order to increase precipitation so as to eradicate drought conditions and protect crops from utter dryness that droughts bring with themselves. The second motive is to reduce the incidence of hail attacks on crops. Hails are destructive for vegetation and they can be stopped by inducing the showering of cloud water before the troposhperic temperature conditions induce the formation of hail.

As of the factors on which the successful process of cloud seeding depends, well, there are two of them, the temperature in the clouds and the time when the chemical is being sprayed into them. The temperature has to be appropriate. At temperature lower than -25 degree Celsius inside the clouds, the spraying of silver iodide would induce the formation of snow rather than rain, a similar case to that of China. If, however, the temperature is well above -10 degrees, then the situation does not encourage the sufficient freezing of water to form bigger droplets of water.

Time is important because, if the winds are fast blowing, the natural process of precipitation does not have enough time to occur sufficiently. As such, artificial seeding is an appropriate method. If, however, the winds are slow, it is better to let the natural process take over.

The advantages
As a highly preferred method must have, this method also has considerable advantages, the foremost among them being that seeding lets man overcome drought conditions. Secondly, crops are protected leading to relief to governments and to all individuals who are connected t agriculture in some way or the other. Natural induction of rainfall reduces the requirement of an elaborate irrigation facility which often claim a whole lot of energy input, thus demanding huge fuel consumption.

The impact
The most potent drawback is that all forms of clouds are not possible to induce to shower by using this method. Secondly, even this artificial method is highly dependent on the natural traits of rainfall, hence it is not of much use during droughts when getting clouds to seed artificially is a challenge in itself.

There is no potent damage that silver iodide causes to the environment, so that is not a concern according to some. This point however remains debatable since some researchers believe in the long term effect of silver iodide on the existence of species. The further development in this method through extensive research would also be used to combat super storms and hurricanes by altering the precipitation in the clouds involved.


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Future Perfect : Fusion power as a safe alternative to fission power

Fusion power as a safe alternative to fission power
Fusion power as a safe alternative
With various countries undergoing liberalization for faster economic development, the energy needs of the world are growing at a very fast pace. The availability of fossil fuels is only for a limited time period and their effects are also very devastating for the global environment. As increased carbon levels in atmosphere have been found to damage economic systems throughout the world, the nuclear power is emerging as a more useful and easily explorable option for fulfilling the energy needs without causing any environmental damage.

The common man in general has not been able to trust nuclear power and the word 'nuclear' still instills fear in many people. There are various dangers which people associate with the world nuclear. These includes the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapon, the nuclear disasters of Russia and Japan and the likely occurrence of such events in the future which can have catastrophic effects for mankind etc. The fast depleting energy sources have led the scientists to explore the area of nuclear energy and power in a much deeper way and such measures are being devised so that the nuclear power generation can be done in such a way so that there is no risk involved. One answer to the complexities mentioned above is thorium. thorium is a silvery metal which is present in the earth's crust in abundance, is clean and is able to produce more energy when compared to uranium.
As of now many countries are taking part in the fusion research with the EU, USA, Russia and Japan lading the way. Other countries contributing to a certain extent are China, Canada, Brazil, and Korea. In earlier days, both USA and USSR linked the fusion technology to their atomic weapons development programs. The fusion technology was classified till the year 1958's Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva happened. Thereafter, a breakthrough at the Soviet Tokamak made the fusion research as the most sought after 'big science' in the 1970's. International cooperation for developing fusion energies ensures that cost and complexity of the devices which are involved in developing fusion energy no longer remain a setback and issue and the process is not hindered by economic shortfalls.
Evolving trends
In the last fifty areas, enormous progress has been made towards achieving scientific and technological progress in the field of fusion. The industrial scales containing fusion devices where plasma are manipulated at hundreds of millions of degrees are used by the scientists.
JET or the Joint European Taurus-the central research facility of the European fusion program is also called as the JET. it is located at Culham, Great Britain. It is the most eminent fusion facility in the world and is the focus of significant fusion research funding. The state-of-art facility has enabled Europe to make great strides in the area of fusion research. Around twenty individual EU member states run a number of specialized smaller devices. The operation of JET started in the year 1983 after the facility was approved in1974. It met all its operational goals in the year 1990. After it, new scientific program were started and JET now also serves as a research facility and hosts a great number of operational researches. JET has been able to produce significant fusion power in the deuterium and the tritium plasma with numbers going up-to 16 MW in the short pulses which are characteristic of the current and existing experimental devices. The 'beak even' condition where the output power of the fusion process equals the external power which is inputted has been successfully achieved by the JET. The jet has also demonstrated clearly that the fusion devices can be operated in a very safe manner by using the tritium fuel. By using the remote handling techniques the radioactive structures can be easily maintained and also modified in the JET.
The Eco Homes- the eco-homes use the cylindrical solar panels for generating more power. The eco house, which is 800 square foot in size uses the solyndra cylindrical photo-voltaic which by their unique shape capture more amount of sunlight when compared to traditional solar panels. The system is also termed as the green roof integrated photo-voltaic or the GRIP V. Here the green roof located beneath the panels help in creating greater efficiency for powering the solar house. The green roof underneath ensures that the reflectivity is minimized and the greenery regulates the temperature of the solar panels which are located above the house. The house is expected to produce zero emission. The house has been built using sustainable materials. The wood sided flooring is obtained form an old Pennsylvania barn and the house also has an indoor garden which contains herbs and other plants.
MIT's Alcator C Mod Reactor- MIT's Alcator C Mod Reactor is the tokamak type fusion reactor which is university based. The new process of fusion burn has been revealed after 30 years of experiments which have been done at this reactor. The basic operational problems of the fusion reactors can be solved by this reactor. As per MIT news,self heating sustains the power and fusion reactions in this reactor and no outside heat supply is needed.
The Concept- When the nuclear processes generate power the power is termed as nuclear power. A fusion reaction is said to occur when two light atomic nuclei bind or fuse together to form a more heavier nucleus. While binding, a large amount of energy is released which arises form the binding energy that occurs due to strong nuclear force that is manifested as an increase in the reactant's temperature. The fusion power forms the primary research area in plasma physics.
The Advantages- the reaction of the nuclei of tritium and deuterium produces fusion power. The availability of these hydrogen isotopes is in in-exhaustive proportions. The fusion reaction gives helium as its byproduct which is not harmful to the environment. Moreover the fusion reaction does not gives any harmful waste as is the case with fission reaction. Thus, the energy obtained from nuclear fusion reaction can be the answer to global warming, nuclear waste and the impending energy crisis.
The impact- the fusion power and energy can be seen as the future in-exhuastible source of energy for the whole world. Many researches are currently going on in the area as there are extreme scientific and engineering challenges in this fled of energy production. Different countries are contributing their scientific expertise and research acumen and working towards the attainment of fusion energy by their combined efforts. This is in sharp contrast to the initial days of exploration of fusion energy when countries like USA and USSR kept the fusion energy exploration processes secret.
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