The best solution to Global Energy Crisis | Dr Srikumar Banerjee | TEDxSurat

[Music] [Applause] today we have come to this TEDx turret and the theme is to build I was asking myself what to build is it only building some bridges bridges between what across stop the river much more than that between the mother and the child for their choices to menu between the doctor and the patient to understand the trust that they have between each other so all these kind of builds are there in built in this today's theme now one of the main in fact not - one of the main I think if you ask anybody then what's the biggest challenge that humanity is facing today in one word I can say everybody would agree on this point that it is the desire for improvement of the quality of life for the people in the developing world which essentially depends on how much of energy is available to them that is one side the other side protecting the environment and having a system to prevent the climate change this is the biggest challenge it's easy to say that okay you will produce more energy if you produce more energy by the conventional means of burning fossil fuel then the climate cannot be controlled and that will have such a severe effect it's not for the future it's for the present generation that they will feel this is unbearable so let me talk about that what we should do about this about the building of this so first let us see what is outstanding generally we all feel that we are very much impoverished look at our standing in different areas whether it's in food grain production fruits and vegetables pulses in milk milk we are number one and may be good javis contribute in a great deal for that in everything in steel in cement our position is pretty good worldwide problem is poppy look at our use of mobile and internet usage we have 1.1 to 7 billion mobile connections we have thirty four point eight seven percent population connected by Internet which means essentially we are second oil and ranking in both come to the electricity use there we find that we are awfully poor our per capita electricity consumption is typically about thousand thousand seventy five kilowatt hour that's a thousand kilowatt unit and that is one third of the world average it's not of the of the very rich countries it's something talking of the world average which includes Africa many places which is completely dark even today and if you take a picture a satellite picture it has changed we have improved considerably from the position ninety nine to position twenty six this year it's a crime our cable achievement but we have to do something more let us look at the resources because the country when we talk a build again build on what you have to have a foundation the foundation is the resource and our work our intelligence our innovation so resources available we have a huge Lange we have a about forty four percent of the global freshwater more importantly most importantly is our population 1.2 1 billion people almost one-fifth of the humanity and we have over sixty percent of them are in their working age that is called the demographic dividend we have all that advantage for us we have a five hundred million cattle not to forget about them minerals we have fifth-largest Aden Reserve we have very high aluminium reserve there are many other reserves that we have but our conventional energy resources are rather poor we have a India's balance of trade if you look at in the year 1415 we had minus 138 billion US dollar and how much is our import import was 156 billion US dollar for oil and coal alone so imagine that this oil and coal we need did not have to import we would have had a positive balance of trade so this is the big advantage the whole thing our entire economy the Sun how much we import for our energy now doing do you have much of energy resources yes let's see if we look at the well fossil fuel resources oil natural gas and coal these are the reserve and what I'm indicating there is the ratio of per year consumption and that ratio tells you that how many years this is there will be lasting it's going to last only 18 years for oil 50 or 51 years for natural gas and about 89 years for coal provided the consumption rate remains constant which is not the consumption is going to change and that would mean they'll be much less time for that to be consumed off now why do you talk of electricity electricity all the time because electricity per capita electricity consumption is a single parameter which has a direct influence on UN Development Index just now you had a beautiful talk on on the robotic surgery you talk of anything on education on a healthcare finally everything depends on whether you have the energy resources to feed it and that is why the Human Development Index which combines all these factors availability of food availability of milk drink everything water water also depends on how much energy you have otherwise that water is limitless in the sea whether you have to desalinate it which requires energy you see that Indian position is just about 0.6 above and most of the developed countries are over that point 9 what we have to do in this scale this is the annual electricity consumption which goes from say about we are at thousand level if we go to over three thousand level we'll come to a knee of the curve which means that our Human Development Index will be better than point eight so it requires three times more energy production don't you have any a resources for that look at the Sun and particularly look at this this map of India weather darkest red color means a maximum of energy that is being received and Gujarat being the luckiest place where we have the highest incident of the solar energy so it's a huge energy that is on the underthe it will tap it what's being done you see the potential is as much as one gigawatt means thousand megawatt so I may have some places now you got some places megawatt but just to explain to you one gigawatt means and the peak our response GWP gigawatt peak because solar energy is something which is intermittent if a cloud cover comes then it's become zero so that's why you have to talk of the peak power so a huge potential for that and if we just take three percent of our wasteland then also you get that much of energy which can definitely meet all our resources so here working on the solar very significantly another achievement is quite strong look at that this is the kind of renewable energy resources and as I mentioned even if you take three percent wasteland we'll be having about 750 but you have powers you have Knights so it gets reduced by a factor of five to 150 gigawatt year of energy per year will be coming and it will be coming as long as sunless alight and as long as Sun easily we are also alive so for our entire life day I mean our whole civilizations life thing now solace technologies there are two distinct we humans we must say that what we have been progressing so well in solar no no doubt about that most of it is by this photovoltaic cells which converts the solar light into electricity ABC which has to be converted into AC to fed to the grid and at every stage there are some big losses but more importantly to that is the fact that there are other means of of getting solar energy to get you a very high grade heat there are many operations whether you require not just electricity but you need a chemical operation a metallurgical operation where you need the heat at a very high temperature one of the most important application is if you want to produce hydrogen but normally we think of that okay these energies are for feeding flower electricity in the house how I'm going to run our car eventually petroleum is going to be over not far away is in this present generation most of you will see in your own life that petroleum is not there how to run your class you we'll only run by hydrogen but is hydrogen freely available source of hydrogen is freely available that's water so to break water and for breaking or water you need lot of energy so that energy is provided and solar energy can be very effective for doing that provided you go for high temperature and that is done in a process called solar thermal I am sorry to say that in the country the effort on solar thermal is rather very meager because it is attractive today too just to put a photovoltaic cell and get some electricity and that is what is happening today there also the manufacturing capability within the country is offered do you know how much of the money that you have to spend our target is very good we are at the stage of going to 20 gigawatt 20 thousand megawatt very soon 40 thousand megawatt by 2020 and about 100 thousand megawatt by 2022 so such a big expansion in the solar energy but if you ask that how much of silicon we produce in the country now all this based on silicon do you know the number and I ask this question to this great audience is any easy to answer that it is zero so we have to depend entirely on input for our solar photovoltaic cells so this is where the mismatch is when you are talking of building we have to build these things the other big sources okay this is the example we have been doing in a small way it's a very small rooftop solar thermal setup facility and based on that a large facility commercial facility is coming up in Gujarat very soon what are primary energy sources see primary energy sources then fossil fuel energy sources are different because primary energy sources will not get exhausted for self well is something which you'll get this exhaust it is there under the earth and as we take it out gradually it will get exhausted so in the primary the first is we can consider wind and Sun this is primary energy source it is not going to be exhausted but it is distributed and intermittent win doesn't flow all the blow all the time neither does the sunshine if you'd company concentrated and continuous source that is the nuclear energy source this is the Qaeda picture in the greenery you see that how beautifully it is placed and the greenery is perfectly all right and look at the numbers if you want to put up at 10 gigawatts that this 10,000 megawatt plant in one place how much is the area that you require you require 5,000 square kilometer for the case of wind you require about 400 square meter called kilometer in case of Sun but you can get that same energy in a concentrated continuous absolutely reliable form is wrong in India as small as 2 square you know now imagine that requirement you have the requirement of heating electricity to the large number of villages that we have we have to provide that energy to the field you require distributed form of energy you need to satisfy the energy need of a city like Surat you want to produce energy for feeding and Industry energy intensive industry you need concentrated energy totally reliable totally uninterrupted there's no question of break and nuclear can do that so these are complementary many a time we find this kind of a debate this debate is meaningless one versus the other no we need both we need an optimum mix of these and that is what the energy planets are doing today look at the average capacity factor main difference between the capacity factor on wind solar which is in the range of 20 to 25 percent whereas nuclear has demonstrated between 80 and 90 percent is because that is continuous this is not okay so now I come to thorium see the question is that are you so much impoverished in our energy resources we don't have much of uranium we do have today we have improved that quite a bit today I think the number comes to about 2 lakh 20,000 tons of uranium or reserve that we have but that's not enough for our future but when you look at thorium I'll do a simple back of the envelope calculation for you you can see that we will deposit about 810 thousand tons of metal next then we have if you take sixty thousand megawatt thermal vapour ton it is 4 into 4 point 6 into 10 to the 14 kilowatt hour per cycle 10 times of that because you can do recycling of that no I think yes so in there stabilize population is going to be about 1.7 billion most of the demographers have worked out that will be reaching somewhere around this number and if I take this 3000 we have sufficient energy for this thorium for over 900 years if it is only fed by nuclear and if we take 20% comes from nuclear LS comes from solar wind even some part of carbon or oil then it will last for 4,500 years it's not a small number your human history is of the 6,000 years human written history is only 6,000 years so we have plenty of that and then we can say that we are really rich we are not impoverished we are rich and we can be even clearly the shaykhs of tomorrow because of our thorium and how thorium is distributed you don't really mind it it's not underground if you go along with 75,000 kilometers of coastline of India and mostly in the eastern and western coast you will find that black sand and this black sand contains monazite which is sodium and there are plenty of advantages of having of thorium based reactors the immediate question that you will be asking me that okay you people have been talking about thorium movie mama talked about thorium 50 years whether or not more than 50 years back he centenary was celebrated just about few years back so so much so many years back but still why you are not done it yet reason being thorium as such is not F well thorium as such cannot be fission by Neutron to get energy thorium needs to be converted thorium gets converted by nuclear reactions it goes to nuclear chain finally goes to uranium 233 and that is the fissile and that is the fuel material so thorium has to be converted like this what it's needed for that you need to have neutrons and these neutrons are not available from mines neutrons are not available from space neutrons have to be generated and this generation is done inside a nuclear reactor so what you need to do is that have the first generation reactor of today and that is going to produce Neutron this Neutron converts uranium 238 to plutonium 239 or thorium 232 to uranium 233 and this becomes almost an inexhaustible source of energy for our future so that is our building from our own resources so what I'm trying to say here is that you have to understand little bit on this issue of well cycle nuclear reactor it comes with a well within in which we have both fissile and fertile fissile material and fertile material material gives energy fertile material gets converted into fissile and you can see that the spent fuel which is coming out of the reactor is not a waste it is actually potential for fog that energy it's a huge potential so India has adopted the close fuel cycle which is shown in the bottom and that advantage of getting the Fertile to fissile is something which we are exploiting our fast reactor is ready for operation in Kalpakkam within few months it will become operational and that is the first example to show you that yes we have converted uranium 238 with petroleum which is going to burn in this reactors and produce more neutrons to get converted the thorium to uranium 233 we're in the right track all along there's a second important question which most of the people here would know that is the issue of nuclear waste you will say that oh all that we understand but this nuclear waste has lot of radioactivity and this radioactivity is going to last for many many years and that is thin in this plot you see it's about two hundred thousand years this reactivity is going to last which is above the natural radioactivity of iron ore sorry uranium ore and that problem has been minimized to reduce considerably by minor actinides separation by those plutonium americium fish and productive these are separated curium then we come back to 300 years so this is one thing where India's course much better than rest of the country orders of the country the world because we have already done this in our plants and again not far away from here in Taba poor so crying to the thorium application India has already designed reactors for use of thorium this is the design again this reactor has now been when the site selection for this reactor has already been done the government approval is existing and it will come again in Tarapore so you'll see that very close to your town of Surat you'll be having these major developments which is sort of our kind of showcasing the ability of Indian scientists and technologists in the world on this one where we are completely self-sufficient let me come to the best basic point paradigm shift there is a big shift in the paradigm what is the shift shift is that so far we were all these years of human civilization we are we have been using energy from the fossil fuel when we first saw the humanity Homo sapiens at that time there are humans at that stage Homo sapiens saw the forest fire all other animals what did they do they fled there from that place because of the fire Homo sapiens just not fled we also try to understand what is this fire where from it is coming where from this energy is coming and how to create fire they discovered what is known as the fire stone if you hit them each other you click a small spark and then you can create fire you can control fire and that is how we have been providing human civilization grew up over the last 6,000 years to provide that energy to build all that that you have done so far it's about a story of about 6,000 years now we have perhaps done little too much result is this second picture which is here the thermal power is generating so much of carbon dioxide now our existence itself is at stake because climate change or the environmental factor will finally kill all of us unless we control that the solution is here use the primary energy Sun wind and nuclear which can actually provide us enough of energy to sustain the growth - to actually have the dreams of the developing countries to improve their quality of life at the same time not to disturb the environment now I'll ask one simple question again since we are talking of building the question is country's large a country of our size which is one fifth of the humanity will it always remain as a market why I'm asking this question today we are talking of solar energy but how much effort we are giving for production of solar silicon see the number the total 3 lakh crore of photovoltaic cells are to be important but the effort that we are talking you're building but this building is something which is lacking we have the technology strengths we have the entrepreneurial strengths this country is famous for this intrapreneurial strength why are we missing in these and if we can really take the thing on our stride and advance in each of this area just now you heard about the the robotic brain surgery in the medical equipment building the Indians core is at a poor very poor if in a digital x-ray machine is not being built in the country we're importing practically everything of all your cell phones not a single one is with the Indian technology so there is a demand for that we have to build technology we have to build on our own resources then only this country can one day be rich and one day is prosperous and we can see the smiles in the faces of all our people so that is what is the building requires so build on indigenous resources and technologies this is what is but there is a pain step it's not something which is easy it's not a question of only some financial manipulations to just get something from other countries it is a tedious work tedious work for generations fortunately I have been in an organization but this has been going on over few generations so I have seen how this is done it's never a process that can be done by single individual again taking the example of the brain surgery by robotics I just now just about a month back I saw a development where there actually did not own the human but on the models how exactly the robotic surgery can be done and build that equipment so that is the spirit that we have to have many of you are young here could have a bright future but see it in that angle that India builds each of these with their own technology and that will really bring us prosperity to this country thank you for your attention [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 10,126

Rating: 4.8021979 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, India, Science (hard), Alternative energy, Energy, Nuclear weapons, Science, Solar energy, Technology

Id: WH6hTu1gW98

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2017