The SPS, fusion, and central-station terrestrial photovoltaics technologies have received less engineering design and R&D than the other technologies examined in this assessment. Therefore, they are subject to larger uncertainty as well as greater optimism. Furthermore, the life cycle costs of these three technologies are reduced, since the R&D and infrastructure costs are not addressed explicitly, in keeping with the second part of the first assumpt ion. The third assumption tends to exaggerate cost overlap, but taking correlated characteristics into account was not feasible in this study except in a theoretical way. The choices made under the fourth assumption tend to favor the two solar technologies and fusion. The intent of the data derived under these assumptions is to compare SPS to each of the other six technologies, or to subsets of the six, or to all six technologies together. The limitations resulting from the assumptions preclude other comparisons. Within these assumptions and ground rules, the six limited but representative energy technologies were selected, characterized, and documented. These data were normalized to unit bases, such as dollars per megawatt or environmental residuals per megawatt, and alternative futures were compared (i.e., possible technology mixes, supply and demand cases, and resultant environmental, resource, and cost uncertainties). The technology alternatives selected for comparison with the SPS were limited to the following: • Improved conventional coal technology • Light water reactor (LWR) • Coal gasification/combined cycle (CG/CC) • Liquid-metal, fast-breeder reactor (LMFBR) • Central station, terrestrial photovoltaic (TPV) • Fusion (magnetically confined) These selections were considered to be the most representative set of year- 2000 energy technologies for comparison to the SPS reference system. It should be noted that the selections were not made by DOE, but by the Concept Development and Evaluation Program. A six-step comparative methodology is described briefly in this report and more thoroughly in a companion report.2 This assessment included only five of the six steps (i.e., selection of alternatives, issue selection, system characterizations, side-by-side analysis, and alternative futures analys is). This assessment represents an update of the preliminary side-by-side comparative assessment^ and has added an alternative futures analysis. The update includes changes in the technology descriptions as well as improvements in the comparative analyses. Included in this document are a brief description of the comparative methodology, brief characterizations of the alternative technologies,
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