Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

196National Energy Securityproprietors keep a fuel stockpile amounting to about nine or ten months’ supply.The Norwegian Parliament has asked that government housing loans be usable forensuring that each new house is equipped with a chimney (no longer usual on electricallyheated Norwegian houses), so that a fireplace or stove can later be used ifnecessary. U.S. planners have developed a Multi-Fuel Program to make militaryvehicles adaptable to a wider range of emergency fuel supplies. (The Third Reichfound such flexibility essential: by March 1944 more than eighty percent of thelarge German vehicles could burn alternative liquid, gaseous, or solid fuels. 62Diversity is a familiar means of increasing reliability. Multiple diesel generators,though numerically redundant, lack diversity. They can be and oftenare simultaneously disabled by contaminated fuel or by identical errors indesign or maintenance. This vulnerability is a source of hazard in U.S. reactors,which depend primarily on either offsite (grid) power or onsite emergencydiesel power for safe shutdown and control. In contrast, British designersfeel that their own inability to think of a failure mode does not mean thesystem cannot come up with one. On general principles, therefore, they favora deliberate diversity of reactor shutdown devices: perhaps centrally suppliedelectricity in one part of a reactor, local battery power in another, gravity inanother, springs in another, and local compressed-air bottles in still another.By the same reasoning, broadcasting stations and telephone exchangesoften back up their emergency diesel or gas turbine generators, not with moreof the same, but with banks of batteries. (This also provides buffer storage:once the batteries are charged up, they can “float” on the output of the emergencygenerator, remaining fully charged for instant use if the generator subsequentlyfails.) Commercial computer installations, too, tend to have batteriesto ensure a few minutes’ grace for shutting down without losing data, evenwhere back-up generators are not big enough to operate the air conditionerswhich the delicate computers require for sustained operation. 63A striking example of the value of diversity occurred in 1980 in WestChicago. On the day that an Amoco‚ gas station powered by an array of solarcells was being dedicated by Department of Energy officials, a violent thunderstormcut off all power in the area. The solar-powered station was the onlyone able to pump gas that day. 64 Likewise, the American Petroleum Institutehas published an excellent guide to nine emergency methods of dispensinggasoline in a power failure without relying on grid electricity. 65 The diversemethods use motor vehicles, lawnmowers, portable engines, bicycles, or handoperatedcranks. The last two of these methods offer the most diversity, inthat they do not depend on the fuel which the pump itself is dispensing.Such functional redundancy—being able to carry out the same function via severalphysically diverse components—is common also in military hardware. A