STRUGGLE FOR POWER

we're entering a stage in this country now when we're having to get used to the idea that resources are not endless our history has been a whole psychology of endlessness of resources of unlimited wealth I think we can feel now that that psychology is beginning to change in this country it's going to have to change we live in a finite little planet and it's got limits and we're bumping up against the edge of those limits now in the mid-1970s for the first time in history the United States came face-to-face with a shortage of power in all its forms power for transportation power to spin the turbines for generating electricity powerful light heating communications power to manufacture the thousands of products that have become necessities of the American Way of life the energy resources we had always taken for granted as somehow limitless were in fact dangerously close to inadequate the depletion of our energy reserves was accelerating we heard predictions that the next generation would find America's energy resources near exhaustion and the most optimistic of the experts agreed that coping with energy shortages would require a national effort from now on that for the rest of this century at least all of us will be involved in a struggle for power we're entering a stage in this country now when we're having to get used to the idea that resources are not endless water oil gas space you name it we've assumed that there was always plenty and that we'd never run out we live in a finite little planet and it got limits and we're bumping up against the edge of those limits now what are the limits to our capacity to produce and consume energy here in the United States to what extent can we meet our own energy needs without critical over dependence on foreign supplies in short what are the prospects of our winning the coming struggle for power on our own in the next few minutes we'll examine these questions will explore our energy resources actual and potential and try to assess our options in terms of the present and the future from the start we must assume that imports will continue to supply a part of our energy fuel needs but political and economic reality dictates that we rely more on our own power resources what are they what means do we have in store nationally to produce the power we need an inventory shows the vast majority of our energy production comes from fossil fuels the big three oil natural gas and coal together they provide ninety percent of our total u.s. energy needs this year the United States will consume nearly 17 quadrillion BTUs of both foreign and domestic natural gas for home heating and industrial use and for power generation this year we will go up over six billion barrels of oil to answer our transportation petrochemical and heating needs and will unearth nearly 590 million tons of coal in America sixty percent of which will go to helping produce the 400 billion kilowatt hours of electricity will use this year other than fossil fuels our energy comes from only two significant sources atomic power gradually increasing but now supplying only about five percent of our electrical power needs and hydroelectric facilities providing five percent of our power supplies those are the major sources of our power and our demands on them increase each day most authorities agree that by 1985 our nation's power requirements will have doubled the question is do we have enough fuel in reserve to meet this energy challenge again according to our best estimates there are national and international proven resources of 562 billion barrels of crude oil the US has six percent or 36 billion barrels we're using our own oil at a rate that will exhaust our known supplies within 15 years new discoveries of course can alter this outlook and exploration is underway in areas previously considered less than economical one huge potential oil source for the future is the oil shale of the Rocky Mountains the Bureau of Mines has estimated that there are 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in place in this formation now much of this oil shale is a relatively low quality and is quite thin the higher grade material probably amounts to 600 billion barrels of oil in place much of this it would be difficult to mine with present technology but if we consider only the recoverable oil from the minable scenes of 30 gallon per ton shale which is 30 feet thick or thicker there is a total recoverable amount of about 77 billion barrels the amount of oil locked in the shale of the Rockies is actually greater than the total known oil reserves of the word today but there is little prospect of getting it out in substantial volume for 10 years or more but the technology is proven well this is an experimental operation but it's going to be at the earliest 1979 or nineteen eighty under our present program before the first commercial plant would be in operation so the immediate outlook for oil in the United States dwindling supplies in the face of rising demand and the story on natural gas is much the same the known us reserves of natural gas amount to 266 trillion cubic feet enough to last 15 years or less at our present rate of consumption there is a tremendous increase in exploration today offshore installations like this one in the Gulf of Mexico will deliver more natural gas but at higher and higher costs to consumers and probably at best new discoveries will do no more than replace production from older fields as they're exhausted the third of the big three fossil fuel energy sources is cold our known reserves in this country are fifteen hundred billion tons enough according to most estimates to last from 200 to 400 years the two remaining sources of power in our national inventory today are nuclear and hydro electric hydroelectric facilities serve a dual purpose to provide electricity and water management but major expansion of our hydro electric capacity appears unlikely at the present time we can say that the most desirable hydroelectric sites have been exhausted for all practical purposes that doesn't mean to say that we're not going to have more hydro development we can increase the capacity in the existing plants for peaking service and we also have the possibility of building pure pump storage plants much as this plant here at ludington a pure pump system generates electricity by water power where there is no natural flow here at ludington water from Lake Michigan is pumped at night into this reservoir by day it flows back to produce power for peak periods but such a system is in fact as much a consumer of power as a producer rounding out our inventory of resources is nuclear power our present atomic power plants account for five percent of our electrical power production these plants use uranium is fuel and uranium supplies are dwindling known uranium reserves are estimated to be sufficient for 20 years or less and while most people view atomic power as the energy source of the future there are questions which must be answered before it is totally accepted there is a great debate going on in the country right now over whether any nuclear power plants ought to be built because the consequences of a major accident are so grave I think these reactors are safe I think they're very safe and the record shows that we've had nuclear reactors operating in this country for 25 years a quarter of a century and no one's ever been hurt the public has never been harmed by one so far we've been lucky and there have not been any major accidents in nuclear plants but we haven't had very many of them in operation either if there is an accident of major proportions all of the studies have concluded that it would really be a catastrophe on a scale of a major war we're talking about plants which have redundant backup systems in them to take care of any reasonable and in some cases unreasonable assumptions of failure that can be made the kinds of malfunctions that are now in current debate I suppose the principal one is a loss of coolant in which the system which is supposed to flood the core with the substitute coolant doesn't work that's called the emergency core cooling failure the emergency core cooling system only comes into play if a major accident is already underway the emergency core cooling system is on backup for dunen safety system it may never be required to be utilized it has not been required in the past we know it will work because there's no doubt that this kind of debate has slowed the development of atomic power production a major accident in one of these plants could block future development for years and planning and building a single plant takes seven to nine years so our inventory of power sources adds up to this hydroelectric power is operating near peak efficiency atomic power is limited by uranium supplies and other problems known reserves of us oil and gas are estimated to last about 15 years of all the fuel sources for energy only one is in abundance apply Kohl the known coal reserves of the United States are estimated at more than forty percent of the total coal in the Western world there are problems of getting at and using it environmental technological and economic problems but the fact does remain that the coming decade will see a growing shortage of every traditional fuel except coal but if we've learned anything from our past experience with production and use of energy it's this dependency on any single energy source is a mistake we must utilize every possible weapon if we're to win the struggle for power this means developing a mix a variety of alternate energy sources wherever and whenever possible these would include new and old forms of energy such as geothermal power heat from below the earth's crust well we're at the geysers power plant about 90 miles north of san francisco where p genie of essentially is harnessed nature's own teakettle to produce 343,000 kilowatts with nine units and by 1977 we hope to be producing nine hundred and eight thousand kilowatts there's geothermal potential all over the western United States unfortunately in most of these locations it's not dry steam as existed the geysers but hot water which has dissolved impurities and brine which must be disposed of before it can be put to use wind power an antique energy source is now receiving new attention regionally like in New England I feel that we could get practically all of our electricity and some of our home heating from wind power for many many years to come there are in this concept wind generators 200 feet in diameter would be linked together in windy areas such as offshore it would require an estimated four thousand of these machines to supply the electrical needs for the six states of New England the winds are one potential source of power another is direct use of the sun's energy should be thinking about solar energy it's the only real income the earth receives is a member of the solar system everything else is capital and we've been eating it up wasting it using it we try to recycle it sometimes we succeed other times we don't but the one thing that keeps coming to us day in and day out that we just almost literally ignore and waste except in agriculture is solar energy the problem with solar energy is the enormous expense and technological problems to be solved however the heating of homes with solar energy may not be far in the future five to ten years time we might be generating as much as ten or twelve percent of our heating requirements by solar energy the problem of power generation through solar energy is a much longer range problem but the problems of utilization of solar energy through a solar farm such as this are dominantly that large area is required it requires a large capital expenditure the these collectors which are 40 feet long there would have to be some five hundred thousand of these to develop a 1000 wat power system now 1000 megawatt power system is about thirty percent of the energy used in the Minneapolis st. Paul area but it but highest on the list of energy sources for the future say the 21st century on is nuclear power conventional atomic plants now supply about five percent of our electrical power but the nuclear power of the future will probably not be the conventional type it will be produced by breeder reactors or fusion or both a breeder reactor simply stated is the technology of greeting atomic fuel in other words the splitting of uranium atoms creates plutonium which is also an atomic fuel and can be used in other reactors this means in effect a never-ending supply of nuclear fuel whether the concept of breeder reactors become commercially viable or not it depends on the evaluation that will be made by the utility industry when the demonstration plant is constructed and built in the 1980s the second long-range nuclear power possibility and perhaps the most promising economically and environmentally is fusion I have two bottles of water here that look just alike but they were different this is ordinary water h2o this is d 2 o heavy hydrogen water which contains of course deuterium the Tyrian would be the fuel for fusion deuterium is easily separated from ordinary water this bottle might cost a few dollars yet the energy content of the deuterium this bottle if you could burn it in a fusion reactor would be enough to power your home for a hundred years electricity the steps the one has to carry out to obtain control fusion are are simple to describe and difficult to do a central scientific problem for fusion research is the question of isolating this very hot a very dilute gas and mid air inside of the chamber that holds it and this problem has now been attacked for 20 years and substantial progress has been made to the point where we feel sure the problem will in fact be solved our problems are shifting away from the scientific toward the engineering the scientific phase of it we we estimate now and this is a sort of a worldwide estimate should be done or nearly done by 1980 meantime we're beginning to think seriously about some of the things that lie beyond a scientific phase how do you get a reactor how long would it take how big would it be how much would it cost the twin obstacles to any new or alternative energy source are of course cost and time I think it's unrealistic to expect fusion power to provide an alternative source of energy for quite some time to come and I think that's also true of geothermal and of wind and tidal power but there may be a mix that develops of all these sources in one location or another we can't face our energy policies on any one energy source but what do we do over the years until these new sources become economically and technologically feasible clearly we'll have to depend on traditional energy sources only one of which is not in short supply in terms of known reserves we've got to make better utilisation of our coal resources we have not been using these resources because of a variety of reasons the environmental problem pollution problem the mine safety problem so we have to look at our policies our governmental policies first what do we have to do as a government the stimulate increase mining and production are cold what do we have to do to provide the transportation is to transport coal and more importantly from the standpoint of the research capability to government what kind of technological improvements have to be brought about and can be brought about to utilize coal to its fullest extent optimistically with help from the government regulations with help from legislators with the laws that we can live with we feel that the coal industry could double production very easily by 1985 and maybe even get up to a 1.4 billion the increased use of coal will have both immediate and long-range effects first greater use of coal will free our critical power supplies for primary applications oil for transportation gas for heating of homes coal will take on an increased role in the generation of electrical power at least for the balance of this century well at the moment I would say from one third to a half of the annual production of coal in this country is from surface mind operations the impact of the need for coal is increasing the demand for the surface mining operation but the nation will not tolerate the environmental abuses of the past simply because of coal is abundant Cole has to be produced in a way that does not permanently damage the land well the new regulations in Ohio I consider them to be quite effective they must say the topsoil they must restore the land to approximately its original contour with whatever variances he may see fit to give them if they don't then they have to present an alternative plan which is better than the original contour which could be terracing and some of the steep berries and they have to seat it and it has to be approved well I think the motivations to have a national enforced policy of Reclamation are two one it is the problem of all Americans and we're going to see a day in fact we are at the threshold of the day right now when we're going to need every acre that's one motivation the other is that that's a practical one that I should think most coal companies would be understood and certainly one's no higher getting interested in it and that is it they have a tough lon of high which costs them some money to live under and they would like to see their competitors in other states living under the same kind of law and this is no more than just an equitable and it accomplishes two things it puts them on an even competitive basis and it affects the conservation that all of us think we ought to have the area that we're visiting at this moment represents roughly 900 acres of the surface mined land which prior to mining was quite a steep terrain with second-growth vegetation and not a very productive area however it's quite apparent that since the mining operation and the resulting grading the topography has been reduced drastically to a nice gently rolling degree of slope quite favorable to a pastor type of complex reclamation of surface mined land is only one requirement in the utilization of our coal resources the second is to minimize air pollution when coal is burned much of our coal is high in sulfur content which results during combustion in sulfur dioxide a major air pollutant I'm very optimistic that the technology that our researchers and our people have at this time that's available will be able to come up with a method of making the burning of fossil fuels coal even high sulfur oil environmentally acceptable where it will not affect the public smoke scrubbing devices to remove pollutants produced by combustion are being developed some are already in use like the one installed in this General Motors plant in Ohio intensive research is also underway to develop means of reducing the sulfur content of coal before it's burned a goal that may prove much more difficult to reach but regardless the environmental problems of coal must and can be solved if we're to take full advantage of its abundance and if we're to make use of its other great asset versatility for coal is not only a primary fuel it's also the base for the production of other fuels in short supply oil and gas the gasification process technologically is fairly well advanced the igt high gas process has four basic steps are coal from the mine is crushed and dried and pretreated crust about the size of table salt it is then put into our guess ification reactor where as contacted with this hydrogen rich synthesis gas and a large part of the carbon and volatile matter of the coal is converging methane the synthesis gas is then cooled and purified and passed through a catalytic methanation process to produce the final high BTU high methane content pipeline gas the cost of synthetic pipeline gas produced from coal with the new technologies that are being developed will be equal to or slightly lower than the cost of LNG other imports by the time the plants are built this is let's say at the end of the 70s / 1980 liquefaction the process of converting coal into oil is also being researched at various pilot plants such as this one in Princeton New Jersey synthetic oil made from cold should someday ease the demand for natural petroleum products and thus extend the supply but more time and research money will be needed before liquefaction becomes commercially feasible so here's the outlook on energy in the United States according to the most objective consensus today oil in spite of new discoveries the prospects are that US conventional petroleum reserves could be virtually exhausted by the turn of the century production of oil from shale is not expected in quantity for 15 years natural gas we cannot realistically count on present known reserves lasting beyond the 1980s nuclear power the most promising forms breeder reactors in fusion unlikely to be practical realities for another 20 years hydroelectric power already nearing its practical limits coal in great abundance and versatile in its convertibility into gas or oil coal has environmental and technological problems but with ongoing research and legislation these can be solved sokol from all evidence will be our most reliable energy bridge to the future we're faced in this country with buying 10 to 15 years energy time energy has become really our principal medium of exchange and is almost replacing money the country is blessed with perhaps forty to fifty percent of the world's cold reserves and coal therefore will have to be used as extensively as possible indeed coal our oldest fossil fuel may well be our newest strongest ally in the coming struggle for power but the ultimate victory in that struggle will depend on more than expanding production of any one energy source it will also require conservation of energy however it's produced we can no longer afford or tolerate a waste of power nor can we count on the rest of the world continuing to deliver to us more than our share of energy fuel at a time when every nation's needs are growing as fast as our own ideally and hopefully all countries will have free trade access to all the world's energy resources regardless of political considerations but practically and economically we had better developed the option to meet the energy challenge mostly on our own with all the resources we have and all those we can develop this is the only sure way to win our struggle for power