NewsTracker Answers for week of Aug. 06, 2012

Q: More than 600 million people lost power in India last week when the country’s northern and eastern electricity grids failed. Where is India on this map?

Circle the area on this map

Q: The blackout affected an area encompassing about 670 million people, though tens of millions of those people were already living without access to a regular supply of electricity. What is ROUGHLY equal to 670 million people?

A. Twice the population of the U.S.

B. Half the population of China

C. 10% of the world's population

D. All of the above

D. The United States is the world's third most populous nation with nearly 314 million people, while China is the largest with 1.3 billion people. India is the second most populous with 1.2 billion. The world's population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be about 7 billion, about twice as large as just 50 years ago.

Q: India ranks fifth in the world in national consumption of electricity. Which nation uses the most electricity?

A. Russia

B. Japan

C. China

D. United States

C. China uses the most, followed by the United States, Japan and Russia. The United States uses more electricity per person than China, Japan, Russia or India. But, sparsely populated Iceland by far uses the most electricity per person with all of its electric power generated by renewable sources – geothermal and hydropower.

Q: India is struggling to supply enough electricity to supply its fast growing economy and increasing population. It uses coal to supply nearly 57 percent of its electricity. Which nation is more dependent on coal for its electricity?

A. Russia

B. Japan

C. China

D. United States

C. China gets nearly 69 percent of its electricity by burning coal, which also supplies nearly half of U.S. electricity. Natural gas supplies the largest share of Russia's electricity, and Japan relies most heavily on imported oil.

Q: The blackout in India was the largest in the world. How many people were affected by the biggest blackout in North America?

A. 105 million

B. 55 million

C. 25 million

D. 8.5 million

B. The Northeast blackout of 2003 affected 45 million people in the United States and 10 million in Canada. At the time, it was the second most widespread outage in history. But Indonesia, Brazil and now India have suffered larger blackouts.