Possible topics - but don't restrict yourself to these! I encourage you to find and suggest your own ideas. Feel free to talk with me if you're not sure about a topic. This is just a few right off the top of my head... Some will be overly ambitious, and after a little work you'll realize you have to *tighten* the topic. You only have 10 pages max, after all! Some of these may turn out to be not broad enough - you'll need to think carefully about the SCOPE of your topic. That's part of why we go through this project in stages, we'll work together on it. Most important, pick something you're interested in. If you choose something controversial, great! It makes it much easier to be critical :-)
A former student (who lives in Nederland) got a flyer from United Power which challenges wind as a power source. They argued that
1) Wind costs more than other sources
2) It's not there when you need it
3) It requires 100 times the space of conventional electric plants, in pristine wildlife areas
4) They are a hazard to birds
5) Recently they have been the subject of a $100 M cleanup/resotration project in California.
How would you respond? Can you get some data and make some calculations to back up your own position?
Future of cars... There's a lot of hype out there about fuel cells. If you write a gushing term paper quoting a few articles that say fuel cells will "save the world", you're missing the point - can you make some rigorous arguments? How many miles per gallon do electric (or hydrogen fuel cell) cars really get? (That is, if you count all the fossil fuels consumed in order to generate the electricity and build the car) Where does the hydrogen come from? Suppose every car in America became fuel cell powered. How would that impact our total fossil fuel consumption? Pollution? (There are several scenarios for where the hydrogen comes from and how it gets transported, you might consider a couple different ones) If your next car purchase is a hybrid rather than an SUV, how much does it save you in $$? How much does it cost you? What are other advantages/drawbacks? (All together, this is probably much more than one paper!)
Energy use in underdeveloped countries - present and future. What are the numbers, what are the likely technologies, what are the physical/environmental/$$ costs? Again - this by itself is surely too broad for a small paper like this. Zoom in a little - e.g., if the Chinese were to approach the contemporary American standard of living in, say, the next 30 years, where would the energy likely come from? How would this impact the global environment (including e.g. the rate of CO2 emission into the atmosphere?)
Will we (the US? the world?) ever "run out of oil"? What exactly would that mean? How is this decided? Related questions: What is the expected amount of oil that the US will produce in the next decade? How much will ANWR produce? How much do we consume? Where/for what does it all get used? How have those numbers changed over time? What geophysics is required to make oil reserve estimates ? How about replacing "US" with "world"?
Population growth and estimation: when the last person from our class dies: (when will that be?) What will the population of the earth be? What are the confounding variables? How reliable are such estimates? If you wanted to broaden this - where will the energy supply come from /what will the energy mix be like?
Is plutonium really "arguably one of the most toxic materials on the planet"? How dangerous is a Rocky Flats Recreation Area? What are the risks and dangers of radioactive waste disposal in general? You might go into specific nuclear safety issues (or nuclear waste disposal, or nuclear weapons proliferation...?) Which produces more radioactive waste, a nuclear power plant or a coal power plant? What are the cancer issues? (Can you separate physics from hype? )
Read "Voodoo Science" (title of a recent book by Bob Park, highly recommended, a quick and easy but valuable read - I'm certain you will enjoy it!) How do you make rational decisions about controversial issues, how do you decide if evidence is "scientific"? For your paper, you might then follow the example of Bob Park to research and analyze some single other example of voodoo science he didn't have in his book.
What is the nominal cost and "payback" time (and what are the "hidden costs") for
1) Changing all the windows in your house to double pane
2) Adding solar panels (photovoltaic) to your roof
3) Adding solar panels (hot water) to your roof
4) Replacing 75% of the bulbs in your house with CF's.
5) Going off the grid.
etc, etc. (Whatever you're personally interested in)
What are the costs and benefits of the US shifting its energy balance radically towards
Windmills/PV solar cells/Coal/Nukes (etc etc, what are you focused on)? What fraction of US power could likely ultimately come from each? Why can't any one of these solve our energy problems? (Could all of them, put together, solve our energy problems?!)
Compare energy costs and energy usage of a typical American, Canadian, Japanese, Dutch citizen. (or whatever) Consider electrical and fuel. Try to take into consideration climate, population, standard of living. (Whose is higher? How is it defined?)
Future prospects of... you name it, something interesting/important- fusion, solar thermal, CO2 sequestration, ocean thermal conversion, batteries, global climate change.... (Some of these, like the latter, are BIG projects! Zoom in - set the scale appropriate to a 10 page paper!)