Kilowatt-hours

Plutonium has assumed the position of dominant importance among the trasuranium elements because of its successful use as an explosive ingredient in nuclear weapons and the place which it holds as a key material in the development of industrial use of nuclear power. One kilogram is equivalent to about 22 million kilowatt hours of heat energy. The complete detonation of a kilogram of plutonium produces an explosion equal to about 20,000 tons of chemical explosive. 

However, the iadustry s popular terminology is the energy consumption expressed ia terms of kilowatt hours per ton of (Pq[) oi of NaOH An estimate of this value requires a knowledge of cell voltage, current efficiency, and the efficiency of the rectifier used to convert a-c power to d-c. The energy consumption for producing a ton of is... 

Table 25. Energy Consumption of Operating Cells, Kilowatt-Hours per Ton of Chlorine...

Funding for developing commercial waste disposal faciUties is to come from the waste generators. In the case of spent fuel disposal, a Nuclear Waste Fund is accumulating based on an assessment of one mill per kilowatt-hour of electricity. For low level wastes, surcharges on waste disposal and direct assessments of utiUties have been imposed. 

In contrast with electrorefining, there is a minimum cell voltage of ca 1.67 V, below which there is no appreciable current flow. Hence, the energy yield is only ca 0.3 kg of copper per kilowatt hour, as contrasted with about 3 kg/kWh for electrorefining. 

In the membrane process, the chlorine (at the anode) and the hydrogen (at the cathode) are kept apart by a selective polymer membrane that allows the sodium ions to pass into the cathodic compartment and react with the hydroxyl ions to form caustic soda. The depleted brine is dechlorinated and recycled to the input stage. As noted already, the membrane cell process is the preferred process for new plants. Diaphragm processes may be acceptable, in some circumstances, but only if nonasbestos diaphragms are used. The energy consumption in a membrane cell process is of the order of 2,200 to 2,500 kilowatt-hours per... 

Kilo-hertz, n. kilocycle per second, -watt-stunde,/. (Elec.) kilowatt-hour. 

Kwst., abbrev. (Kilowattstunde) kilowatt-hour. KW-stoff, abbrev. (Kohlenwasserstoff) hydrocarbon. 

Here of the cost of conserving a kilowatt hour is much less than the typical residential electricity price 0.08/kWh. 

In the future, if the criterion for selecting new generating capacity was solely fuel cost, coal will be the number one choice. But the much greater costs of coal-fired plants (primarily to meet local and federal emission standards), as well as the potential of tighter standards, will make gas more attractive in many cases. And although natural gas prices may rise, the fuel costs per kilowatt-hour for gas-fired power plants should remain unchanged as efficiency gains offset the rise in fuel prices. 

The amount of heat input, measured in British thermal units (Btu s), needed to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity with steam turbines decreased by almost 40 percent between 1925 and 1945, and by 35 percent during the period 1945 to 1965. During this period, scale became an important factor in power... 

In a free market, the absence of these subsidies might make the green pricing premium prohibitive for consumers. In California, for example, a 1.5-cent per kilowatt hour (kWh) subsidy for green-pricing customers has led to over 100,000 customers for green power. There are serious questions about what will happen when the subsidy is reduced nr expires. This subsidy is over and above other favors that have led to the construction of high-cost renewable capacity in the last decade—subsidies that may nr may not continue in the future. 

In that case, protests caused delays that contributed to large cost overruns. But Seabrook was an exception most nuclear utilities got into financial trouble with little help from protesters. Although oil prices rose dramatically in the 1970s—a spur to nuclear development—the stagflation of the times drove down demand for electricity from 7 percent to 2 percent per annum and drove up interest rates into the double digits. Between 1971 and 1978, nuclear capital costs rose 142 percent, making them more expensive to build per kilowatt-hour of capacity than new fossil fuel plants. 

Producers of electricity from nuclear power plants are assessed a fee of 0.1 cent per kilowatt-hour to pay for future storage of spent nuclear fuel at a federal facility. Receipts from this fee are allocated to the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund and arc appropriated by Congress to cover the costs of developing and constructing a permanent storage facility. 

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