EVER WONDER HOW A REAL-LIFE NUCLEAR FUEL ACCIDENT WOULD BE HANDLED? Wonder no more. Last September, a truck en route from an Exxon uranium mill in Wyoming to a processing plant in Oklahoma overturned on a rural highway and spilled 10,000 pounds of radioactive "yellow-cake" (uranium oxide) onto the road. Health officials didn't arrive until 12 hours later ... cleanup was not initiated until three days after the accident ... and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials waited a full week to visit the site. Meanwhile, the surrounding area's background radiation level increased 44-fold.
NEW MILEAGE STANDARDS FOR PICKUPS. The U.S. Department of Transportation has reportedly proposed that pickup trucks, vans, and four-wheel-drive vehicles be required to get one to three more miles per gallon of gasoline by 1981. The proposed standards (which DOT claims would have the effect of saving 12 billion gallons of fuel) would require that four-wheel-drive vehicles average 17.7 miles per gallon and pickups 20.5 mpg in three years.
ENERGY-RELATED WATER USE WILL INCREASE SIX FOLD over 1975 levels-and represent 10% of the nation's total water use-by the year 2000, according to a report from ERDA (now the Department of Energy). New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the Midwest will (the report says) each "consume as much water in 2000 for energy purposes as they consumed for all purposes in 1970". Nuclear reactors are expected to account for half of all energy-related water use by the turn of the century.
THE HUGE WIND PLANT SLATED TO BE INSTALLED THIS YEAR NEAR BOONE, N.C. (about 75 miles from MOTHER's offices) is not the same as the 2.5-megawatt behemoth being built by Boeing (see Energy Flashes, MOTHER NO. 47), despite recent press reports to the contrary. Although both machines are federally funded, the G.E.-designed Boone windmill will have a rotor diameter of 200 feet-in contrast to the Boeing windplant's 300-foot rotor span-and will put out 2.0 megawatts of power (as opposed to the Boeing plant's 2.5 Mw). As of this writing, a site for the larger machine had not yet been selected by the Department of Energy.
WHAT MAY SOON BE THE FIRST SOLAR UTILITY IN THE U.S. is now being planned by a group of Palo Alto, California residents who would like to put a roof over a nearby medical center's parking lot, mount solar collectors on the roof, and distribute hot water to everyone on the block. The city-owned utility company is reportedly working with neighborhood residents on questions of design and financing. For more information, write Edward K. Aghjayan, Director of Utilities, City of Palo Alto, Palo Alto, Calif. 94302.
THE FEASIBILITY OF USING THE GREAT SALT LAKE AS A HUGE SOLAR COLLECTOR is being studied by Dr. Gad Assaf of Israel's Weizman Institute of Science. Dr. Assafwho was recently on a three-month assignment with Utah State University's Water Resources Lab-believes that Utah's Great Salt Lake and portions of the nearby desert could supply as much as 30 billion watts of power.
"COAL AND OIL ARE GOING UP and are strictly limited in quantity ... the world's annual consumption has become so enormous that we are now actually within measurable distance of the end of the supply." No, this statement does not come from James Schlesinger, Amory Lovins, or any other modern-day energy expert ... it comes from none other than Alexander Graham Bell, who made the prescient comment on February 1, 1917. Bell also offered a possible solution to the fossil fuel exhaustion problem: alcohol, made from agricultural waste.
ENERGY SQUEEZE BRINGS JOBS TO SOME: Continental Oil Company reports that its hiring of college grads has more than doubled (to 408 per year from 200) since 1973. Conoco personnel manager Robert Dorcheus explains, "Our accelerated hiring of college graduates is a direct result of the massive dollar investments we are making to find and produce new energy reserves."
DON'T DROP THE OTHER SHOE. Last December, the Tennessee Valley Authority was forced to shut down one of three nuclear units at its Brown's Ferry plant when a workman's protective shoe cover slipped loose and fell into a water-filled reactor. The plant shutdownwhich lasted two weeks-cost $2 million ... and officials still haven't found the lost shoe cover. Underwater television cameras and fiber optics failed to turn up the piece of footwear, which the TVA now says it assumes has disintegrated.
UNITED AIR LINES WILL DO AWAY WITH FIRST-CLASS SEATING on all of its Boeing 737 jets by June. This way-United saysthey'll be able to fly an extra 1.7 million passengers a year on the same amount of fuel .... The Department of Energy has been informed that its 5,000-person staff CAN'T MOVE INTO ITS WASHINGTON, D.C. HEADQUARTERS BUILDING (now occupied by Defense Department agencies) until at least 1980 .... Firestone is introducing A NEW RADIAL TIRE THAT CAN IMPROVE AUTOMOBILE MILEAGE 9% TO 12%. Unlike other new high-pressure (35 psi), high-mileage tires, Firestone's product can be used on standard wheels .... The U.S. Department of Energy and the Research Association of Danish Electricity Supply Undertakings (DEFU) have announced that they will jointly spend $300,000 TO RESTORE A 20-YEAR-OLD EXPERIMENTAL WIND TURBINE IN GEDSER, DENMARK . The windplant has been inactive for 10 years .... Mobil Oil says it stands ready to produce HIGH-OCTANE GASOLINE FROM COAL under a special, patented process as soon as petroleumderived gasoline goes above $1.10 to $1.20 a gallon .... The Parti Quebecois government of Premier Rene Levesque stated late last year that it was calling A HALT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR POWER IN QUEBEC UNTIL 1981 ... Bob and Jane Janssen of Energy Bookstores, 4525 Comber Ave., Encino, Calif. 91316 have come out with an ALL-NEW EDITION OF THEIR POPULAR SOLAR BOOKS CATALOG. Send $1.00 per catalog (refundable on your first order).
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