Where does Antarctica get its power and energy sources from?
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Transcript
- Question:
- Where does Antarctica get its power and energy sources from?
- Donald
-
Everything has to go down by ship. Really, all their diesel and fuel actually arrives years beforehand. There’s years and years of planning in order for it to arrive really in January and February, so really everything has to be on site. There was a nuclear reactor at McMurdo in the early days but that has been removed. And if you are in the field like I’ve been, I’ve spent 6 months in the field in Antarctica away from Scott Base, and really you might have a solar panel to keep your batteries charged, but that’s it. So it’s basically diesel, and some solar power as well. And there is a wind generator, there is a wind generator in the dry valleys. But the trouble with wind generators is that the katabatic winds, the winds that blow off the polar ice cap and down, very difficult to design a wind generator to cope with that.