Of the various systems considered, the coal technology has the largest overall quantified risk, primarily due to coal extraction, processing and transport, and air-borne emissions, although large uncertainties remain in the actual effect of the air-borne emissions. On the other hand, additional issues that are potentially major but remain largely unquant ifiable were not identified for the coal system. Quantified risks from the remaining technologies (fission, fusion, SPS, and centralized terrestrial photovoltaic) are comparable within the range of quantified uncertainty. The occupational risks for component production, both direct and indirect, are a substantial fraction of the total risk, in particular for the advanced, capital-intensive solar and fusion technologies. ENVIRONMENTAL WELFARE Environmental effects not related to health and safety are classified here as environmental welfare effects, e.g., weather modification by carbon dioxide, materials degradation, electromagnetic interference with communications, aesthetics, and noise. Welfare effects were identified at each part of the fuel cycle and were categorized by the environmental impact (e.g., air pollution) that produced the welfare effect (e.g., crop damage). In summary, each technology produces environmental effects that affect society in different ways. With the exception of the CO2 climatic effects from coal combustion, all the technologies appear to be equivalent with regard to environmental welfare problems. RESOURCES/MACROECONOMIC/INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES Three areas important in the comparative assessment of energy technologies are resource requirements, macroeconomic effects, and institutional considerations. The scenarios (alternative energy futures) developed as part of the SPS Concept Development and Evaluation Program were used to provide another perspective on the land and water resources required; macroeconomic results followed from the scenario development activity. The institutional analysis, completed before development of the scenarios, focused on regulatory issues. Land requirements were first derived on a normalized basis for each of the energy technologies. The land requirements (in km^ per 1,000 MW of installed capacity) used in this study are: 10 for coal, 3 for light water reactor (LWR), 2 for liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR), 20 for terrestrial photovoltaic (TPV), 35 for SPS, and 2 for fusion. These amounts include (where appropriate) land requirements for resource and fuel extraction, processing, the power plant site itself, and waste disposal. Transmission requirements are not included because they have been shown to be about the same for all technologies, particularly in view of studies indicating that 60 SPS rectennas can be sited within 300 miles of a load center. Scenario- driven results shown in Fig. 4 for the 1980 to 2030 time period indicate that total land use (excluding transmission) increases 0-500% without SPS and 100-900% with SPS, whereas electrical energy demand increases 75-850% by the year 2030. The land required by SPS alone in the year 2030 is 2-6 times the total land in use for electrical generation in the United States today. The availability of additional land for power plant sites has not been determined.
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