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" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 May 1981 02:07-EDT From: Robert Elton Maas 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. ------------------------------ 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). ------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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.