• The development of a composite cost of power generated by a hybrid system in this time frame that included an SSPS. 1) The Research and Development Investment Required In the first category, the research and development investment required, the issues that have to be addressed are: • The R&D investment required to develop an SSPS, including a portion of the development cost of interrelated programs; and • The expected yield of research and development projects of this magnitude in order to support expectations of success. The order of magnitude of the investment required to do the research and development for the SSPS will be comparable to the actual costs of developing nuclear power or any other large undertaking with a similar potentially significant impact on a national and eventually worldwide basis. These cost estimates will have to include the cost of tooling and manufacturing facilities, the space transportation system as well as the cost of development efforts needed for certain components, to apply particular technologies or to further develop certain concepts. The apportioned development costs of interrelated programs that are mutually dependent upon one another for their overall justification will also have to be included. In assessing the risk associated with a development project of this magnitude, it is important to differentiate from the total budget that portion which is truly “risk money.” In the case of the overall development budget, it is conceivable that the risk portion is about 10% of that total with the remainder of the expenditures being for items such as tooling and manufacturing facilities and other hardware which could be provided on a time-phasing commensurate with increasing confidence in the positive outcome of the project. A breakdown of the total R&D budget in these terms will give greater insight into the level of risk that is being incurred. Another means by which the level of risk can be assessed is to look to other research and development projects that were of similar magnitude to gauge their success rate in order to support the expectations of success in the SSPS project. 2) The Standard of Comparison SSPS should be evaluated as part of a total power generation and distribution system. This is necessary for two reasons. First, preliminary cost estimates for the SSPS indicate that they are extremely capital-intensive and that the cost of power generation in mills per kilowatt-hour is almost directly coupled to the capital charges on the plant investment. Since capital charges are calculated on the basis of load factor, it is important that the SSPS plant be evaluated as part of a power supply system.
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