Aucbvax.1480
fa.energy
utzoo!duke!mhtsa!ucbvax!RWK@MIT-MC
Mon Jun 1 20:20:11 1981
Energy Digest
Per capita breakdowns
TV series: "Nuclear power and you"
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Date: 31 May 1981 02:07-EDT
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Clipping Service - Nuclear Industry Series, part 4
To: Schauble.Multics at MIT-MULTICS
cc: ADMINISTRIVIA at MIT-MC, energy at MIT-AI
Note that the Egyptian pyramids served only a very few people, one Pharoh
and his immediate family. Thus the per capita expense was immense.
But a nuclear power plant is like several ESSs (Electronic Switching
Systems) in that it serves many many people so the per capita expense
may in fact be rather small. It isn't fair to compare a nuclear power
plant, or any other mass-service device or system, with a single-family
tomb such as a pyramid.
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Date: 30 May 1981 11:58:30-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
To: energy at mit-mc
Subject: per capita breakdowns
As long as we're doing this, how about doing the same thing for alternate
energy sources, which REM conspicuously fails to do. As a once-professional
constructor, I would estimate that a windmill of several kilowatts capacity
could be placed and anchored entirely on a pre-existing one-family home,
thus requiring no concrete at all. Going a little further up the scale,
today's GLOBE shows a group of three windmills expected to provide enough
electricity for "2400 homes" (my guess is that this is intended to be
anywhere in the range 7-10K people, and that the allowance is for more than
1 kw/person, but these figures they didn't provide); the design shown could
probably be executed with a proportional amount of concrete. I think you'd
find the same to be true of most of the other possibilities; single-family
units fit on the dwellings, while larger units come in at reasonable figures.
(There's also the fact that, while the usable lifetimes of nuclear plants
and alternate energy sources may be about the same (I'd even bet on the
plant since its sheer mass would help to preserve it), there's much less
problem disposing of a dead windmill or solar collector.)
It shouldn't be necessary to point out that in the area discussed by
the current clippings a much more urgent question is \\water// (e.g.,
the Colorado was divided up in years of abnormally high flow; the only
reason states haven't come to blows over this before is that some
are just now wanting their full entitlement).
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REM@MIT-MC 06/01/81 09:45:54
To: ENERGY at MIT-MC
There's a nice series called "Nuclear power and you" from Univ. of Michigan
on ABC tv early in the morning (was on just now here San Francisco, KGO-TV).
It even mentionned how after a few hundred years the radioactivity of
byproducts from fission plants has decreased to level of natural ore
from which it came. -- In discussing varius sources of energy, they
showed an artist's conception of a space power station,with this little
teeny space-shuttle alongside it for comparison.
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