ASSESSMENT OF FUTURE ELECTRICAL DEMAND In order to assess the needs for large electrical power plants and to foresee their limitations, we wish to recall computations of the future distribution of electrical demand in the world, which we have previously published (2,3,4,5). These computations are done for geographical zones of 10° latitude by 10° longitude, for years 2000 and 2020/2025. Sizes of such zones, with 700 to 1000 km sides, are related to electricity transport technology possibilities. They use, as energy demand predictions, input from two well known models, chosen for their very conservative scenarios about future energy growth: (a) the lower growth model of the Case Western Reserve University, (b) the H5 model of the conservation commission of the World Energy Conference. For each of the ten energy-homogenous world regions considered in these scenarios, the predictions made for energy and electrical demands in years 2000 and 2020/2025 are depicted in Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4. These tables have been the basis for the calculation of distribution of electrical demand, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. In a previous work (10), we have shown that these future electrical demands will create a need for a tremendous number of large electric power plants (nearly 1000, 5 GW plants in the year 2025) associated with centralized grids, but that a large part of humanity (between 20% and 30%) will, however, have to relate on decentralized small scale electrical power plant to fulfill its electrical needs. Table 5 gives the numbers of LEPP needed in each region for CWRU data (years 2000 and 2025) and WEC data (years 2000 and 2020). With a LEPP park of 752 (WEC) or 942 (CWRU), the market for such large plants is clearly tremendous, particularly during the period 2000/2020-25 during which 394 (WEC) or 548 (CWRU) are to be built. We have also tried to evaluate a reasonable demand for SSPS systems in “noncentrally planned” countries (3). Assuming a scenario with a 50% market penetration of industrialized countries demand and 10% penetration of developing countries demand, we have obtained figures of 73 (WEC) to 141 (CWRU) in Western countries and 9 (CWRU) to 14 (WEC) in developing ecountries (excluding OPEC countries where oil and natural gas should still be preferred in the 2000-2025 period). This park of approximately 100 SSPS would save each year the equivalent of 900 million tons of oil (6700 million barrels) or 1400 million tons of coal or 70,000 tons of uranium (in PWR type reactors). This oil saving is about a quarter (25%) of the maximum anticipated world production of oil (around 4 billion tons of oil). Savings of the same order of magnitude could be obtained by socialist countries if they choose SSPS as dominant technology. LIMITATIONS TO SSPS WORLDWIDE USE This market for SSPS (or other equivalent large electrical power plants) is huge, but it has been assessed, in an arbitrary way, as a percentage of the total needs of LEPP. So we have tried to go further in evaluating possibilities of use of SSPS on a worldwide basis by assessing possible limitations of the use of SSPS due to their very large power output and land requirements. Limitations Induced by Land Requirements A first obvious limitation could come from the impossibility to find suitable place
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