Text 2. Hydrogen – source of power

1. Translate the text into Russian

Scientists consider hydrogen a very promising energy source. The reserves of hydrogen are practically unlimited. Per unit of weight it contains almost three times more thermal energy than benzene. Besides, hydrogen can be used as fuel in transport, industry and home.

Hydrogen is easy to transport and store. It can be transported over large distances using conventional pipelines. It can be accumulated and kept for a long time either in conventional or natural reservoirs.

Scientists have found many ways of producing hydrogen – basically from ordinary water. And large volumes of this fuel can be obtained from coal, whose global reserves are tremendous. There is also an idea of using nuclear power plants to generate hydrogen. Scientists hope to use the energy of the sun, wind and tides to obtain hydrogen.

In several countries car engines fed by hydrogen have been tested successfully. Tests have also shown that adding five to ten per cent hydrogen to benzene increases engine efficiency by 40 - 45 per cent.

What is still holding back the use of hydrogen as fuel, and what has to be done in order to apply it extensively in the economy? The main reason is that now it is more expensive than mineral fuels, but in the near future hydrogen can be made cheaper to obtain. This new kind of energy opens up new prospects in aviation, metallurgy and some other industries.

2. Translate from Russian into English:

Ученые полагают, что…

запасы водорода неиссякаемы

в три раза больше тепловой энергии

транспортировать и хранить

большие расстояния

обычный трубопровод

собирать и хранить

много способов производства водорода

запасы огромны

двигатели, работающие от водорода

добавление от пяти до десяти процентов водорода

намного дороже, чем

открывает новые перспективы

Text 3. Atomic energy

1. Translate the text into Russian.

There are many sources of power. Wind and water are the oldest ones. For centuries coal, oil, wind and water were widely used by man. They were used to produce steam and electricity.

Our time is the age of atomic energy. Scientists of many countries have been working hard for more than a century to find out the secret of the atom. Now the energy of the atom is applied to all the fields of man's activity.

The atom is the smallest piece of the substance which can exist independently. Atoms are electrically neutral, having no electric charge in their normal state. An atom consists of electrons, protons and neutrons. An electron is very small and it has a very small mass. It is negatively charged. The nucleus consists of a number of protons, each with a single positive charge and one or more neutrons, which have no charge. The amount of electricity of any proton is exactly the same as that of an electron. That is why all the atoms are electrically neutral. The electrical nature of atoms is only evident when one starts breaking them into pieces, electrons and others.

At the same time with large atomic stations smaller mobile electricity producing units have been created based on the discovery of radioactive sources – isotopes. Mobile nuclear installations may be carried by rail and then by transporters to the out-of-the-way regions even in areas having no roads. Such a station according to estimates can operate without being recharged for two years.

Today scientists are looking for new more efficient nuclear processes of producing energy. But it was only lately that the physicists understood that the process of producing tremendous energy by stars, including our Sun, was the very process they were looking for. Now we know that this thermonuclear process is called fusion and it takes place at fantastically high temperatures. It can be done only by imitating on the Earth the process that makes the Sun shine.

There are many difficult problems to overcome before thermonuclear power stations based on this process can become a reality, but the problem of fuel supply is the least of them: the oceans of the Earth are practically an inexhaustible source of deuterium which plays the decisive part in the fusion process and its extraction from sea water is neither complicated nor expensive.

In short, peaceful uses of atomic energy are vast – but we must stop using it on weapons of mass annihilation.