TED演讲:恐惧核能是怎样伤害环境的(2)

 Now, you might wonder, "Come on, how much could five percentage points of global electricity be?" 现在你可能会问，“拜托，全球5%的电力能有多少？”

Well, it turns out to be quite a bit. 事实证明还蛮多的。

It's the equivalent of 60 nuclear plants the size of Diablo Canyon¹, California's last nuclear plant, 这些电力等价于60个核电站的产量，每个都有加州核电站“代阿布洛”的大小，

or 900 solar farms the size of Topaz, which is one of the biggest solar farms in the world, and certainly our biggest in California. 或900个“托帕石”大小的太阳能发电厂，“托帕石”是世界上最大的太阳能发电厂之一，当然也是加州最大的。

A big part of this is simply that fossil fuels are increasing faster than clean energy. And that's understandable. 主要原因仅是化石燃料的使用率在逐年增加，要比清洁能源的速度快。这是可以理解的。

There's just a lot of poor countries that are still using wood and dung and charcoal² as their main source of energy, and they need modern fuels. 因为还有很多贫困国家，它们还在把木材、粪便和木炭作为主要的能源材料，他们需要现代燃料。

But there's something else going on,  但是，还有另一件事情正在发生，

which is that one of those clean energy sources in particular has actually been on the decline in absolute terms, not just relatively³.  那就是有一种特定的清洁能源的使用量的绝对值正在下降，而非仅仅是相对占比。

And that's nuclear. You can see its generation has declined seven percent over the last 10 years.  那就是核能。你会发现，在过去的10年里，核能的发电量已经下降了7%。

Now, solar and wind have been making huge strides, so you hear a lot of talk about how it doesn't really matter,  当前，太阳能和风能正在飞速发展。所以你听到了很多言论，表示核能下降不是问题，

because solar and wind is going to make up the difference.  因为太阳能和风能会弥补这一缺失。

But the data says something different.  但数据却告诉我们事实不是这样的。

When you combine all the electricity from solar and wind, you see it actually barely makes up half of the decline from nuclear.  当你把所有由太阳和风创造的电力总量相加时，你会发现这仅弥补了核能发电缺失的一半。

1 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

2 charcoal   

n.炭，木炭，生物炭

参考例句：

• We need to get some more charcoal for the barbecue.我们烧烤需要更多的碳。
• Charcoal is used to filter water.木炭是用来过滤水的。

3 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。