FLASHES IN THE DARK

First, I had been under the impression that nuclear power was the only energy branch that had a law setting a liability limit on its insurance. But after the Valdez spill Congress rewrote the oil tanker insurance law in a bill that is now in conference, and if you read the details¾news flash!--you will see that there has been a liability limit for oil spills all along, now to be increased from its present value of $1,000 per gross ton of the vessel. In many cases the limit will be effectively abolished, since the new federal law will no longer preempt state law, and several states do not recognize any limit. That, incidentally, is fine with me, because I believe any liability limit is immoral and (for nuclear) unnecessary, though I would like to see the government use the exorbitant taxes on the oil companies (paid by you at the pump, of course) to help pay for the cleanup¾if it must tax them at all.

Next, on 1/11/90 an explosion and fire took place in the LUZ company's 80 MW solar plant in Barstow, Calif., which had been on line for less than two weeks. A heating unit containing Ther-minol, a synthetic oil used as the working fluid at a nominal 735 degrees F, caught fire. And this¾news flash !--is the first I ever heard that solar plants use a combustible liquid as the working fluid. (After the Browns Ferry fire hundreds of miles of cable had to be reinstalled in nuclear plants to make even insulation fire-retardant; the working fluid is water.) Four hundred plant workers had to be evacuated, two were hospitalized. The fire burned for more than 5 hours and sent smoke to a height of 2,500 ft in the air, causing damage estimated at $10 million. Yet the news was reported only once on CNN, and on none of the radio networks (I had to fish it out by searching UP dispatches and am now using a small clipping from the Los Angeles News). Just like TMI, eh?

Weeks later (2/20/90) Forbes published an article on the plant, gushing unmitigated praise without breathing a word about the accident, though in the past it rarely missed an opportunity to knock nuclear power for much smaller incidents. Please under-stand that I am not knocking solar power, least of all when it is operated by a private company (though taking advantage of the taxpayer subsidy provided by federal and state legislation, perhaps even¾I am not sure about this¾receiving direct DoE funds). But I will knock Forbes's sleazy reporting in comparing it with a nuclear plant. What few meaningful numbers it contains tell their own story, if you can read between the lines. The 80 MW plant sits on 810 acres, which means that for a usual (coal or nuclear) unit of 1,000 MW it would take up 16 square miles instead of 25 acres for the same peak power; if it were to reach the capacity power of a regular plant, it would have to store energy to be able to provide that power at any time when it is in demand. That would mean raising its average output by a factor of at least 6, which brings us to an area of around 100 square miles. They have that kind of area in the Mojave desert; and I hope Forbes finances the transmission line to New York to take advantage of it.