Word: solarity
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...what he terms "last resort" moves of gas rationing and wage and price controls. More recently, Kennedy "defined" his position on nuclear power, coming out in favor of a moratorium on new plant construction. To audiences across the state, he proudly displays his own energy plan, which stresses conservation, solar and low-head hydro power...
What was remarkable about the event -and what confounded the skeptics -was the fact that the electricity for the lights was generated not by a conventional or nuclear power plant, but by a shallow, briny pool of water-a solar pond. Easy to create, using existing technology, and apparently harmless to the environment, these ponds may be one of the brightest ideas yet for tapping the sun's radiation as an energy source...
Unlike some other solar energy schemes, the ponds can operate year round, on cloudy days as well as sunny ones, even at night. They are also cheap, consisting essentially of a sheltered, shallow body of salt water that acts as a solar collector, plus a heat-exchanging system and turbogenerator. The pond's operating principle is simple. When sunlight strikes a fresh-water pond, it heats the water and stirs up convection currents; cooler water sinks to the bottom while warmer water rises to the surface, where its heat quickly escapes into the atmosphere. In a solar pond, these...
Just 2.5 meters (8 ft.) deep and 7,000 square meters (70,000 sq. ft.) in area, the Ein Bokek pond produces 150 kilowatts of power. To generate more power, significantly larger ponds would be needed. Physicist Harry Tabor, chief architect of Israel's solar pond program, notes, for instance, that surfaces of large solar ponds must be crisscrossed with plastic baffles. These gridlike barriers prevent winds from churning up the water, which would mix the critical layers and diminish the pond's effectiveness as a heat collector. But Israeli officials, who hope to build a five-megawatt...
...initial success of the Israeli program has awakened enthusiasm for solar ponds in the U.S. Under an agreement with Israel, a group led by Southern California Edison is planning a five-megawatt demonstration facility at the Salton Sea, in Southern California's Imperial Valley. Under Government funding, scientists will investigate other potential U.S. solar pond sites, including San Francisco Bay and Utah's Great Salt Lake. Though their estimate may be somewhat optimistic, solar pond boosters figure that the new technology could eventually meet as much as 12% of U.S. energy needs and even more in Third World...