SRC-536

Comparative Health and Safety Assessment of the Satellite Power System and Other Electrical Generation Alternatives; DOE/ER-0091; December 1980

Commissioned by U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Research, Solar Power Satellite Projects Division; Under Contract No. 31-109-ENG-38. Who paid for a study is recorded because it bears on how its conclusions should be read, not because it makes them wrong.

Published claims resting on this source

• CLM-1056 Measured in expected deaths per year for a big power station's worth of electricity, the programme found coal far the worst and everything else, including space solar, about equal within the error bars; space solar's risk sat in building it, not running it, and its open questions were long-term microwave exposure and a rocket coming down on a city.
• CLM-1057 The safety study's own picture of the system: about $13 billion of hardware per satellite in 1978 money, 640 people in orbit for six months to build each one, forty heavy launches per gigawatt, a launch site loud at six kilometres and windows rattling at 125, and one rocket failure that could kill a thousand.

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