Re: Re: Summary A

[Brian Mansur <bmansur@oc.edu>]

 ----------
From: KellySt
To: bmansur; David; hous0042; jim; lparker; rddesign; stevev; 
T.L.G.vanderLinden; zkulpa
Subject: Re: Re: Summary A
Date: Sunday, March 03, 1996 7:01PM

Brian 4:20 CT 3/4/96

Previous group discusion:
>>You probably meen fusion.  Maybe eventually, but in the present political
>>climate not a chance.  Renewable  produces too little power and has too
many
>>health and safty problems.  Utilities here are figuring on natural gas
fueled
>>fuel cells as the next big wave in power plants.  Probably the basic power
>>for the next 40 years or more.

>Yes, I meant fusion. What kind of health problems does renewable energy
>have? Are solar-panels also dangerous?

>Kelly
>Mainly industrial accident problems.  Solar especially causes a lot of
>induystrial accident per amount of power since its a lot of little
>distributed systems.

>Renewable is a grab bag term.  So the problems would depend on the >system.
>Bio mass obviously would take up a lot of land and have ecological impacts,
>and polution effects from burning.  Wind and tide systems tend to chew up
>animals that get in the way and take up a lot of relestate, and of course
>have cronic relyabilty problems (you ever try to schedule a selected wind
>speed?).

Brian
What we need to do is difinitively establish the health risks involved in 
beaming power via microwaves to Earth.  If it is safe (and the public and 
congress can be convinced of this), we should have companies falling over 
themselves to get huge arrays into space where power can be tapped almost 
twentfour hours a day if the orbit is geostationary.