Symposium on energy research highlights future challenges, opp...(red and transmitted due to controlling m...)

Our whole present-day pattern of energy production and use goes back to two key inventions in the 1870s: the incandescent light bulb and the internal combustion engine, Orbach said. Although the light bulb was a revolutionary invention in 1879, today it is a symbol for inefficiency. Only two percent of the energy in a bulb emerges as light; the remaining 98 is lost primarily as heat.

As inefficient as the light bulb is, it doesnt compare to the underutilization of solar energy, said Nathan S. Lewis, Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at California Institute of Technology. Solar power today provides less than one tenth of one percent of the worlds primary energy even though more energy from sunlight strikes the Earth in one hour than all the energy consumed by global human activity in one year. A major problem inhibiting the use of solar technology is cost, which will decrease over time. The availability of sunlight will help solar power become a viable alternative source, Lewis said.

Another intriguing source of energy is nuclear power, which accounts for 19 percent of the United States electricity. It is a carbon-free, pollution-free form of energy. But a controversial issue surrounding its use is spent nuclear fuel, said James B. Roberto, Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The disposal of radioactive waste has been a source of concern, and other critics point to the possible spread of nuclear weapons as a result of the technology, Roberto said.

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