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
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Date: 2 June 1981 01:33-EDT
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM MIT-MC AT>
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?
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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.
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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 <BARRY AT CIT-20>
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
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