Aucbvax.1608 fa.energy utzoo!duke!mhtsa!eagle!ucbvax!RWK@MIT-MC Wed Jun 10 19:15:56 1981 Energy Digest Energy Digest per capita breakdowns life cycle costs of nuclear V. alternate power sources Clipping Service - Nuclear Industry Series, part 6 Solar cells ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 2 June 1981 01:33-EDT From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: per capita breakdowns To: cjh at CCA-UNIX cc: ENERGY at MIT-MC You really thinking it's easier to dispose of a few million windmills than to dispose of one nuclear power plant that served a few million people before it ended its useful existance? ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jun 1981 10:47:16-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock) To: REM at MIT-MC Subject: Re: per capita breakdowns Cc: ENERGY at MIT-MC In response to your message of Tue Jun 2 10:24:00 1981: You aren't reading very carefully; I specifically said that windmills serve more than one person (in fact, \\current// designs serve some thousands of people). Also, windmills may wear out, piece by replaceable piece (does anyone have real figures on lifespans for modern windmills?), but the broken pieces can at least be recycled for their mineral contents, as someone recently (and arguably) proposed doing for the contaminated pieces of a nuclear plant. ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jun 1981 2145-EDT From: KING at RUTGERS Subject: life cycle costs of nuclear V. alternate power sources To: energy at MIT-MC cc: king at RUTGERS If we are going to talk about resource usage of nuclear power plants v. alternate energy sources, we should use an equal basis. We should talk about ALL the resources the nuclear plant will use during its life v. ALL the resources the other sources will use. The nuclear power plant requires all of the following in addition to the resources used in its construction: A share of a Uranium mine A share of an isotope separation facility A share of an interim waste storage facility, and A share of an ultimate waste disposal facility. The windmill requires a share in a spare parts factory. In addition, I understand that the isotope separation facility is rather energy intensive. Does anyone out there know how much of the power plant's output should be reserved for the isotope separation process? The energy of the mining process also should be considered. Although small quantities of enriched Uranium are required to run a power plant, larger quantities of pure Uranium are required to get that enriched Uranium, and relatively vast amounts of Uranium ore have to be processed to get that Uranium. Ordinarily I would end this submission with a plea for concrete figures. In this case I won't because I think we should reduce internal AND EXTERNAL costs to money (our standard method of correlating different kinds of resources) and talk about that. This produces reasonable answers IF EXTERNAL COSTS ARE CONSIDERED. ------------------------------ Date: 4 June 1981 01:38 edt From: Schauble.Multics at MIT-Multics Subject: Clipping Service - Nuclear Industry Series, part 6 To: energy at MIT-AI This is the sixth in a many part transcription of a Phoenix Gazette series on Three Mile Island and the nuclear industry. All material is by Andrew Zipser, Gazette reporter. [Note: the comment about light water reactors being the only type in commercial use is outdated. The current issue (June) of Scientific American contains an article on the gas-cooled reactor at the Fort St. Vrain Nuclear generating station in Colorado. This article nicely explains the chief operational advantages of this type of reactor. One of them deserves mention: In a light water reactor, if there is a major failure resulting in loss of pressure and flow in the primary cooling system, there will be major core damage within 30 seconds to 2 minutes. The same accident in a gas cooled reactor will not cause core damage for about TEN HOURS. The article is well worth reading. PLS] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nuclear Power: dream or pipe dream? Why build nuclear plants? Why, as some have argued, flirt with a potentially destructive genie that forever must be bottled up in a flask of steel and concrete -- a flask that, in the final analysis, is a rather fragile membrane? In the beginning, it can be argued, the nuclear path was attractive because it held out the promise of cheap, clean power. Those were the days when nuclear energy, its proponents promised, would be "too cheap to meter." There may have been other, less tangible reasons. We were the world's most technologically advanced nation; perhaps we felt compelled to use that technology to maintain out status. We were the only nation in the world to have dropped a nuclear bomb on another people; perhaps we were moved by conscience to find other, more productive uses for this awesome power. So in 1957, only a few years after President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations, the country's first commercial reactor went into operation at Shippingport, Pa. Small by today's standards, it nevertheless produced enough power to supply the needs of a city of 60,000. Cheaply. Silently. Without visably polluting the air or water. Over time, however, the initial bloom faded. Accidents happened, although without observable effect on the public, requiring stricter safety standards. Radiation limits were challanged as too high and were lowered, causing additiional expense. Questions were raised about the probability of truly devastating mishaps, of how to dispose of the radioactive wastes, of what to do with the nuclear plants once they outlived their design factors. Then came the oil embargo of 1973. With the price of oil quadrupling and the availability of natural gas declining, a new and more compelling reason to take the nuclear path presented itself. The energy-use projections were frightening, and at least partially on target: by 1977, for instance, almost 49 percent of all energy consumed in the United States came from oil; an additional 26 percent was provided by natural gas. By 1979 the United States was consuming almost 24 percent more energy than it was producing -- with the difference made up entirely through oil and natural gas imports. With a newer and more compelling reason to tap the atom, interest in nuclear plants took off: 1973 was the nuclear industry's biggest year ever, with utilities placing orders for 41 reactors. If the nation was to be squeezed by foreign powers, at least it had an alternative energy source to fall back on. But just how much energy do we really need? One useful way to understand the nation's energy consumption patterns is in terms of "quads", defined as one quadrillion (that's a one followed by 15 zeroes) BTU's. BTU is the commonly accepted abbreviation for British Thermal Unit, roughly the same amount of energy released when you burn a wooden match. In 1979, total U.S. energy consumption was 78 quads. During the last quarter of this century, according to a 1976 projection by the Energy Research and Development Administration, the United States will consume a total of 2,400 quads if energy conservation measures are implemented, 2,900 if they are not. But the country's known reserves of natural gas are only 775 quads, and of oil 800 quads. How are we to make up the difference? Two ways, ERDA planners say: through light water reactors (the only kind in commercial operation today) [See note below.], for which the known uranium reserces amount to 1,800 quads. And through coal, with U.S. reserves now estimated at 13.300 quads. There is another way to look at energy figures, and that is to see how energy is used. Of all the energy consumed in the United States, roughly 26% goes for the generation of electricity. Another 25% is consumed by transportation, 28% goes to industrial heating, and 20% is used for domestic space and water heating. The remaining percentage point is for miscellaneous uses. How is that 26 percent of the total energy pie produced? In 1979 the largest share came from coal, at 48%. An additional 12% was generated by hydroelectric facilities, 11% by nuclear power plants, 14% by oil, and 15% by natural gas. So, in terms of the total energy picture, nuclear power plants generate less than 4 percent of all the energy we produce. And the percentages of total energy production coming from natural gas and oil generation of electricity are only slightly greater -- by far the greater share of these non-renewable resources is devoted to heating our homes and hot water or to powering our cars and other forms of transportation. Against this backdrop, it should be noted, U.S. oil consumption rose from 33.5 qauds in 1974 to 37 quads in 1979 -- a year in which domestic oil *production* stood at 19.2 Quads. You know where the difference came from. It should be obvious from the foregoing that nuclear power has made only the slightest impact on total energy consumption and has had little effect on oil imports. And its contribution will forever be limited by its narrow applicability: nuclear power can't be used for anything except to generate electricity. But is that the solution? Could increased electrification of our society, with electric water heaters and stoves, electric cars, and other applications yet to be discovered, increase the slice of the energy pie served by electricity? If, say, 50% of all energy was in the form of electricity, and if half of all our electricity was generated by nuclear power plants, could the peaceful atom finally fulfill the dream first dreamt 20 years ago? The answer, apparantly, is no. One reason is that the rate at which we have electrified the nation has slowed dramatically. For the decade prior to 1973, the amount of electricity generated in the United States increased by an average of 7% a year. In the next eight years, however, that increase was more than halved, to 3.2%. A more convincing indicator, however, is the industry's own response to market and energy-demand conditions. If 1973 was a watershed year for the reactor business, the flush of success was short-lived indeed -- the bottom fell out within a year. In 1975 only four reactors were ordered; from 1975 through 1980, a total of only 13 -- with none at all in either 1979 or 1980. What happened? Obviously the accident at Three Mile Island, while resulting in cancellations and delays, is not to blame. The real problem is cost. The same oil embargo that made nuclear power look so attractive also made the cost of fossil fuels to run existing plants almost prohibitively high. This, in turn, reduced available funds for capital construction of *any* kind of power plant, directly resulting in the cancellation of 25% of all coal-fired plants and 50% of all planned nuclear plants. Why was a greater percentage of nuclear plants cancelled? Because increased energy costs also played havoc with the financial markets, boosting interest rates and making investment money scarce. And nuclear plants, although touted as cheaper to operate than their coal fired counterparts, are also significantly more expensive to build. The end result is that the construction of nuclear plants has peaked, at least for the foreseeable future. although slightly more than 100 plants are on the drawing boards or in various stages of construction, financial and regulatory uncertainties have pushed completion dates into the 1990's and beyond -- and many will undoubtedly never be finished. Estimates of less than a decade ago of how much nuclear-powered generating capacity would be on-line by this time were up to 200% too generous. The dream of the peaceful atom, as well as the hope that it will overcome the nation's dependence on foreign oil, has been thrown into jeopardy. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jun 1981 0119-PDT From: Barry Megdal Subject: solar cells To: energy at MIT-MC Anyone know of a good source (i.e. cheap) for solar cells and/or panels? And at what price? Thanx ------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.