D. Health and Safety Impacts by the Microwave Beam During Normal Operation This potential threat to the public is being Increasingly discussed as a serious concern. Discussion on this subject started already before the public learned about the potential SPS- system, due to the introduction of microwave ovens and more recently by publications on the potential threat of high power radars. E. Potential_Weather_Changes_by_SPS30oeration Although this is an impact being considered as minor important in the literature, some concerns were issued argueing that the waste heat of the rectenna and the large uniform area might affect slight local weather changes. 1.2.12.3 Non-Environmental Impacts by SPS and the Public The most commonly referred concerns within this sub-cate- gory are the communication disturbances, the high development cost, the high demand for terrestrial resources, the potential military utilisation , and the SPS as a centralised hard energy option being held by utility monopolies which might dominate solar R&D budgets at the expense of decentralised solar technologies. 1.2.12.4 Arguments of SPS Proponents Proponents of a SPS-system point out, that such a system has a very high efficiency compared to terrestrial solar applications, that such a system could help to solve the long term energy crisis, that SPS’s would improve the balance of payment of the industrialised countries, that a SPS programme would create many jobs, that it would advance most space programmes and that SPS's would be environmentally preferable to alternative power generation technologies. 1.2.13 Microwave Impacts (References: 76/2,76/3,77/18,78/11,78/37,78/58,78/71,79/2.) 1.2.13.1 General This category implies all potential interactions of the microwaves along their way from the antenna to the rectenna. 1.2.13.2 Interactions between the Beam and the Ionosphere One of the most serious problems of the microwave beam to the quality of life on Earth is a possible "thermal runaway" by intense radiation on the ionosphere. This effect is naturally dependent on the power density. In the ionosphere (and especially at altitudes higher than 200 km = F-layei) some of the RF- energy is transferred to the ambient electrons and thereby the local temperature of the ionosphere may raise to levels where
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==