full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Michael Shellenberger: How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment

Unscramble the Blue Letters


The raseon isn't hard to understand. Solar and wind pdrvoie power about 10 to 20 percent of the time, which means that when the sun's not shining, the wind's not blowing, you still need power for your hsoapitls, your homes, your cities, your factories. And while batteries have made some really cool improvements lately, the truth is, they're just never going to be as efficient as the electrical grid. Every time you put eelccttiriy into a battery and take it out, you lose about 20 to 40 percent of the power. That's why when, in cnrlfaiioa, we try to deal with all the solar we've brought online — we now get about 10 percent of electricity from solar — when the sun goes down, and ppolee come home from work and turn on their air cdnooenitirs and their TV sets, and every other appliance in the hosue, we need a lot of natarul gas bkcuap. So what we've been doing is stuffing a lot of natural gas into the side of a mountain. And that worked pretty well for a while, but then late last year, it sprung a leak. This is Aliso Canyon. So much methane gas was released, it was the equivalent of putting half a million cars on the road. It basically blew through all of our climate cminmmetots for the year.

Open Cloze


The ______ isn't hard to understand. Solar and wind _______ power about 10 to 20 percent of the time, which means that when the sun's not shining, the wind's not blowing, you still need power for your _________, your homes, your cities, your factories. And while batteries have made some really cool improvements lately, the truth is, they're just never going to be as efficient as the electrical grid. Every time you put ___________ into a battery and take it out, you lose about 20 to 40 percent of the power. That's why when, in __________, we try to deal with all the solar we've brought online — we now get about 10 percent of electricity from solar — when the sun goes down, and ______ come home from work and turn on their air ____________ and their TV sets, and every other appliance in the _____, we need a lot of _______ gas ______. So what we've been doing is stuffing a lot of natural gas into the side of a mountain. And that worked pretty well for a while, but then late last year, it sprung a leak. This is Aliso Canyon. So much methane gas was released, it was the equivalent of putting half a million cars on the road. It basically blew through all of our climate ___________ for the year.

Solution


  1. california
  2. people
  3. natural
  4. hospitals
  5. conditioners
  6. reason
  7. electricity
  8. commitments
  9. backup
  10. house
  11. provide

Original Text


The reason isn't hard to understand. Solar and wind provide power about 10 to 20 percent of the time, which means that when the sun's not shining, the wind's not blowing, you still need power for your hospitals, your homes, your cities, your factories. And while batteries have made some really cool improvements lately, the truth is, they're just never going to be as efficient as the electrical grid. Every time you put electricity into a battery and take it out, you lose about 20 to 40 percent of the power. That's why when, in California, we try to deal with all the solar we've brought online — we now get about 10 percent of electricity from solar — when the sun goes down, and people come home from work and turn on their air conditioners and their TV sets, and every other appliance in the house, we need a lot of natural gas backup. So what we've been doing is stuffing a lot of natural gas into the side of a mountain. And that worked pretty well for a while, but then late last year, it sprung a leak. This is Aliso Canyon. So much methane gas was released, it was the equivalent of putting half a million cars on the road. It basically blew through all of our climate commitments for the year.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
clean energy 15
nuclear power 5
bill gates 3
nuclear plants 3
united states 3
natural gas 3
energy revolution 2
global warming 2
energy sources 2
global electricity 2
solar farms 2
power plants 2
climate commitments 2
provide power 2
climate crisis 2
big problem 2
advanced nuclear 2
energy crisis 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
clean energy revolution 2
clean energy sources 2
nuclear power plants 2
clean energy crisis 2

Important Words


  1. air
  2. aliso
  3. appliance
  4. backup
  5. basically
  6. batteries
  7. battery
  8. blew
  9. blowing
  10. brought
  11. california
  12. canyon
  13. cars
  14. cities
  15. climate
  16. commitments
  17. conditioners
  18. cool
  19. deal
  20. efficient
  21. electrical
  22. electricity
  23. equivalent
  24. factories
  25. gas
  26. grid
  27. hard
  28. home
  29. homes
  30. hospitals
  31. house
  32. improvements
  33. late
  34. leak
  35. lose
  36. lot
  37. means
  38. methane
  39. million
  40. mountain
  41. natural
  42. online
  43. people
  44. percent
  45. power
  46. pretty
  47. provide
  48. put
  49. putting
  50. reason
  51. released
  52. road
  53. sets
  54. shining
  55. side
  56. solar
  57. sprung
  58. stuffing
  59. sun
  60. time
  61. truth
  62. turn
  63. tv
  64. understand
  65. wind
  66. work
  67. worked
  68. year