Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1982-04-01

Special
Energy Issue

I

S wart h m ore
P
v urill
u cpop
g t

In this issue:
2 The Energy Dilemma
By Ruth Patrick, Hon. 75
5 An interview with Vincent Boyer ’39
8

Why do we fear nuclear power?
By Christoph Hohenemser '58

14 Swarthmoreans in energy today.
24

On campus: Swarthmore offers an
energetic program of conservation
and education.

28

The College

30

Class Notes

Editor: Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Managing Editor: Nancy Smith
Assistant Editors: Kathryn Bassett '35
Kate Downing
Editorial Assistant: Ann D. Geer
Designer: Bob Wood
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (USPS
530-620), of which this is Volume LXXIX,
number 5, is published in September,
October, December, January, April, and
July by Swarthmore College, Swarthmore,
PA 19081. Second class postage paid at
Swarthmore, PA and additional mailing
offices. Postmaster: Send address changes
to Swarthmore College Bulletin, Swarth­
more, PA 19081.
Cover: The solar dryer shown on the cover
is one of several energy-related projects
involving the combined talents of Swarth­
more faculty and students. The experi­
mental device was designed by James
Murdock (at left, facing camera, in the
photo) who is the brother of Jean Murdock
Warrington ’72. Photo by Bob Wood. Turn
to page 27 for the story.

nergy is everyone Ip
I
I
^ we find mostliQ
nutions; there is not even
grou p of Swarthm ore alumn
1n o t u/ith on t y>ontrnvprsi
IO C

lc to

m ■m

I

'”

/•

ie’Iproblem. Looking for answers to the dilemmas,
>tliquestions. The variety of choices is confusing, and
reion the best course to follow. There are no simple
/eifmuch consensus. In this special issue on energy, a
mjexpress their concerns and convictions. Their views
rsland partisanship, but when the energy problem
neJSwarthmoreans will have been part of the solution.

nnnn
m in

Lf

ii-*i n r r i p i
3

Tnnnnnnr

B y R uth Patrick, H on. 75
n the early days of this century, we
had boundless natural resources.
Electricity, just becoming a reliable
energy source, was not a common
household commodity. We had no
motor cars, and “pollution of air and
water” was an unknown expression.
Human safety and health matters were
seldom discussed.
Then, as today, we had people who
were rich and poor, educated and
ignorant. We had public-spirited leaders,
as well as arrogantly selfish people of
influence in our communities. We had—
and we have today—a land of great
opportunity.
Our goals were to develop and to con­
quer and to use this great country.
Today, our goal must be to use without
abusing our natural resources—the air,
water, and land. One of our most criti­
cal problems is energy—for industry,
for transportation, and for our homes.
The problem is complex. However, it is
vital that we solve it or mitigate it if we
are to have a sound economy now and
in the future. Many nations of the world
depend upon a viable economy in the
United States, which means a sound
energy policy. Thus we have at least two
important mandates: (1) a viable econ­
omy and (2) a healthy environment—
that is, one that man can enjoy now and
in the future.
The question is, what mix of energy
sources should be used? We must match
energy sources to our use; at the same
time, we must conserve energy. In Ger­
many, a well-developed nation, the per
capita use of energy is about % that of
the United States; in Japan, it is y%.
Many authorities have stated that in­
dustry can save 15 to 20 percent of its
energy use (from a 1973 base) by
conservation.
We must seek less energy-intensive
methods to manufacture products and
develop new products that will use less
energy in our daily lives. We must find
methods of accomplishing our work by
using hot water instead of steam, re­
cycling waste heat by re-using it, and
taking the waste air or steam from in­
dustry and using it to heat everything
from office buildings and homes to
greenhouses and fish tanks.
Since all sources of energy have an
environmental impact, one important
criterion is the size and location of the
energy producer in terms of the par­
ticular environment—mountainous or
flat, with large or small waterways. Our

I

APRIL 1982

large streams are relatively few in
number. Therefore it is important to
limit the size of power plants and indus­
tries on smaller streams where the
topography is somewhat hilly, and put
large power plants only in areas that
have a sufficient amount of available
water for intake and outfall and a
topography that is rolling or flat. Large
plants that use coolant towers should be
located where inversions are relatively
few, allowing an upward draft of wind
to carry away the vapor plumes.
The Department of Energy has
advised us to use more coal in the future.
Coal mining produces acid mine wastes
in the East and large amounts of sedi­
ment in the West. The acid mine wastes
also carry varying amounts of heavy
metals which are harmful to aquatic life.
The acid should be neutralized and
metals removed as quickly as possible to
reduce the stream-mile damage. The
burning of coal pollutes the atmosphere
with particulates, sulfur oxides, and
nitrogen oxides and also produces con­
siderable amounts of CO 2 which may
have climatic effects. (At present such
effects, if evident, are very local.)
Organic compounds, such as alphabenzopyrene (known to be carcino­
genic), are released in the burning of
coal and oil. Some of this material can
be prevented from entering the atmos­
phere if the coal is washed at the mine.
The precipitates now are being removed
by electrostatic precipitators or by the
use of a baghouse. Sulfur scrubbers are
used to remove sulfur from gases in the
flue stacks. However, aerosols of sulfur
oxides and nitrogen oxides often escape
and are carried many miles into the
upper atmosphere. Eventually they fall
out as acid rain. New research methods
appear very promising for the removal
of sulfur in the burning process and for
the treatment of stack gases.
Nuclear energy has both similar and
different impacts upon the environment.
The mining problems are much like
those of mining coal in the West. How­
ever, less extensive mining of uranium is
required to produce a given amount of
energy. Therefore, the effect on the
overall environment is less, although
just as intensive at the mining site.
We have not had enough time to eval­
uate truly many of the accumulative
problems related to the use of nuclear
power. All nuclear power plants release
radioactive materials, such as tritium,
and *we do not know their potential

impact. Tritium does not seem to be
accumulated by organisms and tritiated
water behaves like ordinary water, but
we do not know possible long-range
effects on human health or on the health
of organisms that make up our environ­
ment. At this time, it appears that other
kinds of normal released radioactive
materials are extremely small and probbably will not damage the health of a
person during his lifetime. Of course
accidents may occur which produce
much larger releases. We do not know
whether such materials will accumulate
in the environment over the years with
extensive use of nuclear power; much
depends on the operation of the power
plants. Since nuclear power uses much
more water than other energy sources to
produce the same amount of electricity,
the effect on our surface water is greater.
Geothermal energy is available in
relatively small areas. When it is pro­
duced by hot dry rocks (as in Iceland),
the environmental impacts seem very
small, because the water is cycled over
and over again through pipes. When
geothermal energy is in the form of
steam it can be well-managed, as in
California, or it can be very poorly
managed, as in Rotorua, New Zealand,
where considerable amounts of foul­
smelling sulfide-rich water vapor enter
the atmosphere. Brine waters are usually
a problem in the use of geothermal
waters, but the impact may not be so
severe near a coast location as is the case
when the brine is released into inland
rivers.
Some forms of solar energy have
great promise; others are limited in
practical potential. We already see solar
energy used for heating and cooling;
utilization of the sun’s direct rays plus
heat pumps can heat small buildings,
especially when used as a supplemental
resource. One form of solar energy at­
tracting great attention involves photo­
voltaic cells, which use the sun’s energy
directly to generate electricity. Other
types of reflectors or concentrators
focus the sun’s rays to heat water and
generate steam and electricity. The cost
of these methods, which are very expen­
sive now, can be reduced. The environ­
mental impact of photovoltaic cells is
different from that of coal or nuclear
power. These banks of cells or reflectors
cover a large space and the areas under­
neath receive greatly reduced amounts
of light and less loss of moisture by
evaporation. The desert is the best place
3

for these solar units, but colonization of
areas under the banks of photovoltaic
cells by vegetation, insects, and other
organisms that can withstand shade and
more moisture may have a deleterious
effect upon fragile desert vegetation and
natural animal life. Also, the manufac­
turing of these solar units may produce
wastes harmful to the environment.
Recent studies at the Stanford Re­
search Institute indicate that windmills
can provide one of the most feasible
uses of solar energy. These windmills,
very different in shape from traditional
ones, have large torqued steel blades.
An eight m.p.h. wind is sufficient to
start generating electricity. Windmills
might be concentrated in the wind belt
of the Great Plains, from Texas to the
Dakotas, or on the coast of New Jersey
where there are strong winds, especially

Nicknamed the “Ralph Nader of Water
Pollution,” Ruth Patrick is one of the world’s
foremost authorities on the study of fresh
water ecology (limnology). She was the
founder and former chairman of the Depart­
ment of Limnology at the Academy of
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia where she
continues to serve as senior curator of the
Division of Limnology and Ecology. One of
the few women ever elected to the National
Academy of Sciences and to the American
Philosophical Society, her work with the
physical and chemical aspects of fresh water
has taken her from the streams of Pennsyl­
vania to the piranha-infested headwaters of
the Amazon River. Dr. Patrick has been
water pollution advisor to the White House
and to the Department of the Interior as well
as to two Pennsylvania administrations. Her
efforts as “Doctor of the Rivers” have earned
her numerous national and international
awards, including an honorary degree from
Swarthmore.

4

during the winter. The electricity gen­
erated could be fed into the network as
peaking power and also help supply
needs of remote areas. The windmills
could be useful for irrigation. Of course,
the great problem with all solar energy
involves the storage of electricity. There
is promising research, but, as yet, no eco­
nomically feasible solutions. Therefore,
the best use of windmills now is as a
supplementary resource and for those
processes that do not require a con­
tinual, steady source of electricity.
Tides and the use of the heat differen­
tial from various depths of the oceans
are other potential sources of energy.
Research has not progressed far in this
area.
The use of biomass as an energy
source offers interesting possibilities.
Brazil plans to begin using waste sugar
cane as a source of energy, anaerobically
digesting it and creating alcohol for
transportation. Brazilian scientists hope
this method will supply about 30 percent
of their total future energy needs.
Similar ways of generating alcohol
could be used in this country, but at the
present time they are not economically
competitive. The impact of this energy
source is that, by removing the harvested
sugar canes from the farms instead of
plowing them back into the soil, more
fertilizer is necessary to produce subse­
quent crops. Also, there is the ultimate
problem of disposing of the wastes.
The paper industry has great potential
for self-sufficiency in energy. Some
industries are already about 40 percent
self-sufficient; they can become much
more self-sufficient by utilizing tree
branches and leaves. However, if these
are removed from the forest floor, an
important natural nutrient would dis­
appear. As happens in the burning of
fossil fuels, this use of wood and leaves
would increase the CO 2 in the atmos­
phere and add other pollutants, such as
alpha-benzopyrene.
The potential use of biomass as an
energy source is being pioneered by the
General Electric Company and Exxon
by growing algae in the sea. One of the
most interesting projects is the harvest­
ing, off the coast of California, of the
large kelps (Macrocystis) for use in
drugs and as food sources. These algae
may be converted to ethylene and then
to alcohol, polyethylene, or various feed
stocks for plastics or fibers. While this
type of biomass use does not involve
land needed for agricultural purposes,
the adverse potential is uncertain. For

example, nutrients for the growth of
these algae will be obtained by pumping
up waters from several thousand feet
below the sea surface. This process
alone requires little energy because of
the differential pressures. However, the
water, once brought up, will cause a
great deal of difference in the local sur­
face temperature -of the ocean. The
algae may not utilize all of the nutrients
brought to the surface and this excess,
as well as the shifts in surface tempera­
ture, might affect the nutritious species
of plankton.
We must depend much more on fish
in order to feed the world. The largescale production of beef and lamb, espe­
cially in small areas, is very energyintensive. It has been estimated that
about five pounds of feed are required
to produce one pound of beef; two
pounds to produce one pound of
chicken, but only a little over a pound of
nutrients (mostly produced by the sun)
to produce a pound of fish. We must not
interfere with the productivity of the sea.
Careful hydrological studies must be
made before putting tubes into deep
water to bring up nutrients for algae
beds. Some deep waters lack rapid
current, without which nutrient-rich
waters could be exhausted and less
algae produced. Secondary waste ef­
fluents are being used experimentally in
Florida to supply nutrients for algae.
The use of garbage wastes directly (or
by conversion into fuels of different
form) would help solve both problems—
providing energy and reducing waste.
The Department of Energy recently
made a study of different scenarios for
the most efficient use of energy. These
scenarios were (1) no new initiatives, (2)
improved efficiencies through conservavation, (3) manufacture of synthetics
from coal and shale, (4) increased elec­
trification with more nuclear power
usage, (5) limited nuclear power, (6) a
combination of all technologies. It was
found that the greatest saving in energy
consumption by the year 2000 could be
obtained by using technology most
effective for a specific use and by
employing all methods of conservation.
Problems involving energy and the
environment challenge those of us in the
humanities as well as in physics, chem­
istry, and biology. Imagination and
creativity, as well as technical expertise,
are needed to match energy sources to
the environment, to inform the public,
and to make value judgments which
affect every living thing.
SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Is there an efficient, clean, and safe way o f producing abundant energy
using existing resources readily available in the United States?

Yes!
And that, says Vincent Boyer, is nuclear
power. As senior vice president for
nuclear power for the Philadelphia Elec­
tric Company (PECO), he speaks not
only as a man directing the company’s
on-going ventures in nuclear power but
also as an engineer who gained knowl­
edge of the industry as manager of one
of the earliest nuclear plants.
We spoke with him in his office in
Philadelphia.

Q Mr. Boyer, why is it necessary to
build nuclear power plants? Won’t
the nation’s efforts toward conser­
vation offset the need for such
facilities?
Even though conservation will have
** an important effect on energy use in
the years ahead, it can’t offset the need
for new power facilities. Between 1982
and the end of the century, the labor
force in the U.S. will increase from 105
million to about 140 million people.
Also, the desire of most of us to improve
our living standards calls for increased
energy use and productivity. When it’s
all added up, our energy use in the year
2000 is expected to be at least 50 percent
greater than it is today, with electricity
bearing the largest part of the load.

Q How many nuclear plants are
currently in use in the U.S. ?
APRIL 1982

A Today there are seventy-one nuclear units operating in this country,
capable of generating more than fifty
million kilowatts. Their output is about
equal to the total electrical generating
capacity of the U.S. a few years after my
graduation from Swarthmore. By the
1990s, another seventy-five plants will
be in service which will supply almost a
third of the nation’s electrical energy.

Q

Since our nation has an abun­
dance of coal, why not use it to
generate the electricity we need?
A The use of coal is increasing, but
environmental regulations relating
to air and water pollution have slowed
its growth and markedly increased its
cost. Coal is also hazardous to mine, as
evidenced by accident statistics and by
the $2 billion per year in governmental
compensation for black lung disease.
It’s also bulky to transport and, despite
expensive cleanup systems, releases
some potentially harmful products into
the environment. Nuclear plants are
much cleaner although they attract
great attention and controversy over
normal radioactive releases and poten­
tial releases under abnormal conditions.
Peach Bottom units two and three

An interview with
Vincent S. Boyer ’39

have operated very successfully since
1974 and have saved the customers of
PECO about $600,000,000 since that
time (compared to not having the plants
or to purchasing energy from outside
utilities). For example, in 1981 the fuel
cost for producing a kilowatt hour of
electricity was .4c, compared to 1.6c for
coal and 6.4c for oil. It’s really inflation
that has made nuclear power economi­
cally attractive, because the cost of fuel
has gone up so dramatically that the
lower cost of nuclear fuel is undeniable.
There’s no question in my mind that
nuclear power can be more efficient and
result in lower fuel bills for customers
and, at the same time, be environmen­
tally acceptable to the community.
What we have to do is convince the
public that it is so, and gain their
confidence.

Q But what about safety for the
public?
A Every form of generating energy
involves some public risk, but there
has never been a serious injury or death
to a plant employee or member of the
public caused by a commercial reactor
accident or radiation exposure. At
Three Mile Island, the maximum and
average radiation exposure to the
public was very small and far below the
levels to which we are exposed in our
5

everyday life. From the beginning of
commercial nuclear power, plants have
been designed using redundant safety
systems to assure that under no circum­
stances would an accident release
significant quantities of radioactivity
into the environment. In addition, all
the vital components of the nuclear
steam supply system are housed in leaktight containment buildings surrounded
by five-foot-thick concrete walls to
protect against the possibility of a
catastrophic failure.

Analysis Center. These are chartered to
establish training programs of excel­
lence, to review and analyze operational
events with pertinent results being cir­
culated to the industry, and to conduct
independent audits of plant manage­
ment and operation against the highest
standards. The industry has definitely
effected changes to enhance the health
and safety of the public and will con­
tinue to make improvements in the
areas of plant design, operation, and
maintenance.

Q Then what happened at Three

Q

Mile Island?

What measures exist to prevent
a major accident?

A While the Three Mile Island accident
was the worst commercial nuclear
power plant accident to date, analysis
indicates that even had the core melted
and caused failure to the reactor vessel,
the containment would not have been
breached and the much publicized
China Syndrome would not have oc­
curred. Reports of investigations by the
Presidential Kemeny Commission and
others have been studied by the nuclear
industry. These, together with investi­
gations conducted on the industry’s
own initiative, have resulted in many
improvements to enhance further the
safety of nuclear plants. Two new
organizational programs have been
initiated: the Institute of Nuclear Power
Operations and the Nuclear Safety

A Attempts have been made to estimate the probability of a serious
accident involving the meltdown of the
reactor core, but in the absence of
experimental evidence it’s impossible to
obtain highly accurate results. Best
estimates place the risk on the order
of one every million years, well
below that from other manmade or
natural disasters. The risk is low pri­
marily because of the strict adherence to
nuclear safety principles. The use of
redundant backup systems, indepen­
dent design review, quality control and
quality assurance programs, extensive
training programs, qualified operating
and maintenance personnel, rigid work
procedures, and strong engineering sup­
port services are all important safety

6

functions which minimize the likelihood
of power plant accidents.

Q

If all this is so, why is the public
afraid of nuclear power?
A Well, for a couple of reasons. One,
they are not well versed in the
technology and, two, nuclear power
was introduced through the weapons
program. That scares people. The press
is a large part of it, also. If the press
would emphasize the benefits and the
good points of nuclear power rather
than the frightening aspects, the public
would probably accept it.

Q

Mr. Boyer, a question that is
always raised when discussing nu­
clear power is that of waste disposal.
A The waste products of technological
activities have generally created
problems, and nuclear energy is cer­
tainly no exception. There are two
classes of waste to be considered: low
level and high level. Low level waste is
not the primary concern. It’s generated
in large quantities by hospitals and edu­
cational and research facilities and
represents about 99 percent of the
volume but only two percent of the
radioactivity. High level waste, consist­
ing of fission products from spent
nuclear fuel, presents the major issue.
High level waste production is not
SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Vincent Boyer joined PECO after his graduation
from Swarthmore in 1939 with a degree in mechanical
engineering. He rose through the corporate ranks to
become superintendent in 1960 of the company’s Peach
Bottom Atomic Power Station, the first high-tempera­
ture gas-cooled reactor demonstration plant in the
nation.
Before he was named to his present post, Boyer was
vice president of engineering and research for twelve
years during which time he supervised his department’s
activities in the licensing and construction of two large
boiling water nuclear reactor facilities.
He is past national president and a fellow of the
American Nuclear Society. Among his many honors,
Boyer was named by the American Society of Mechan­
ical Engineers to receive its James N. Landis Medal for
his “outstanding contribution to the development of
nuclear power plant design, active support to industry
groups, leadership in professional societies, and
service to the academic community.”

Sat

m

mm

M

ISPtí
m

ra js

¡3

Ü
N

fM jkW S B f.

At left: Peach Bottom nuclear generating station.

limited to commercial nuclear plants
but has been produced at governmentowned weapons facilities since 1944.
Wastes have been generated also in
connection with the reprocessing of
naval and other reactor fuels for the
past twenty years. The predominant
volume of wastes existing today and for
some time in the future will come from
these programs.

Q

Is there a safe way to dispose of
these wastes?
ik There is general agreement among
responsible groups that the tech­
nology exists today to design a safe
waste repository. After conversion to a
solid form, basically a glass or ceramic
material, the cylinders would be placed
underground in a repository constructed
of a suitable geologic material, such as
salt or granite. The combination of these
techniques would immobilize the wastes,
prevent leaching of the material by
ground water, satisfactorily dissipate
the decay heat generated, and isolate the
material from the biosphere for cen­
turies. After a period of several hundred
years, the radioactivity of the waste will
have decayed to a level corresponding
to that naturally occurring.
Archaeology has given us an example
of the natural immobility of fission pro­
ducts. In Gabon, Africa, the site of a
naturally occurring nuclear reactor was

APRIL 1982

discovered in what is now a uranium
mine. Billions of years ago, when the
U-235 content of the uranium was
about the same as it is in commercial
reactors today, uranium and water
mixed in the bed of an ancient river and
a fission reaction began which lasted for
about half a million years. Tons of waste
and plutonium were produced in the
process. Except for the water soluble
materials, the waste products were con­
tained within the reactor site for a
billion years. No engineered barriers
were present, but the insoluble nature of
the waste and plutonium prevented
these materials from emigrating from
the site. Modern engineering techniques
and the use of multiple barriers can
most certainly duplicate and improve
on the security provided by nature.

Q

Many people are curious about
the reality of nuclear fusion. D o you
foresee fusion as an alternative to
the more unstable fission process?
A Well, fusion has not yet produced a
*** self-sustaining reaction. We will
have to wait certainly until the next cen­
tury before fusion is developed to the
point that it can produce reasonable
amounts of electrical energy. The his­
tory of nuclear fission is an example.
Fission was discovered in 1939 and it’s
only today, forty years later, that any of

the nation’s energy (about 11 percent) is
being supplied by the fission process.
The same sequence, the same time
frame, will be required for fusion. Be­
sides, development of the fission
process was spurred on by the war pro­
gram. Fusion doesn’t have the same
impetus.

Q What about other alternative
forms of energy that exist today?
A Advanced power generation systems
based on solar energy, fission, geo­
thermal and synthetic fuels are certainly
worth exploring, but predictions for
their extensive use in this century are
based more on wishful thinking than on
reality. Solar energy, even at its lowest
cost estimate, will not displace coal and
nuclear power as an electric generating
source, mainly because of its intermit­
tent availability. A strong nuclear
future is predicted as public understand­
ing increases and a clearer picture of the
energy demands is obtained. The cost of
delaying ongoing projects is tremendous,
and when these delays are created by
groups which do not have a vestige of
responsibility, they are damaging to the
economic welfare and development of
our nation. With government support, a
stabilized licensing process, and a re­
sponsible press, nuclear power will
continue to provide us with a clean,
economic, and safe source of energy.

0

Why do we
¿V fear nuclear
fe V power?

g t» *

V

ikes a f]
nucleai
>ots an<

B y Christoph Hohenemser *58
uclear power is in trouble. Over
the last decade it has become an
object of fear and distrust for
many Americans. The distrust
of nuclear power is puzzling since many
cost advantages over coal and oil-fired
power plants, and its ability to replace
foreign oil sources, should encourage its
rapid adoption.

N

A troubled history
Intense concern and controversy about
nuclear energy have now been with us
for thirty-six years. The early effort to
achieve international control in the late
1940s has evolved to the present world­
wide debate on nuclear power and its
safety.
When commercial nuclear reactors
were first introduced in the late 1950s,
fears about weapons effects were trans­
ferred to the emerging power plant tech­
nology. These fears were realized in the
first serious reactor accident at Windscale in Great Britain, and were further
amplified by the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission’s 1957 report on the poten­
tial consequences of nuclear reactor
accidents. Yet throughout the late 1950s
and early 1960s the bulk of public con­
cern remained focused on the control of
nuclear weapons. (My own initial con­
tact with these issues came at that time
when, as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, I joined with fellow students Tim
Shopen ’59 and Irene Tilenius ’60 to
testify in Congress on the spread of
nuclear weapons.)
By 1963, when the debate on weapons
was capped by the signing of the nuclear
test ban treaty, the government had
managed to provide something for each
side: The anti-nuclear people got an end
to nuclear weapons tests, at least in the
atmosphere; the pro-nuclear people got
a substantial beginning for a commer­
cial reactor program. Interestingly, in­
dustry took a skeptical stance and,
despite vigorous government promotion
of commercial nuclear power, held back
significant investments until the late
1960s. Thus, by 1970, there were only
seven operating nuclear plants in the
United States.
At left, a vertical view o f workmen construct­
ing a cooling tower at the nuclear power
plant in Limerick, Pennsylvania. Photo by
Martin Natvig.
APRIL 1982

The present wave of concern about
reactors had its roots in the late 1960s
when construction of early plants
brought costs down and led to the pro­
jection of 1,000 plants by the year 2000.
As a first response, critical scientists
worried about routine radiation emis­
sion from such a large number of plants.
When it was recognized that routine
emissions from reactors are very small
compared to other sources of exposure,
the critics turned to questions about
reactor safety. In 1973, with the entry of
Ralph Nader into the fray, the debate
broadened to economic and siting ques­
tions. By the mid 1970s, when the first
large anti-nuclear power demonstra­
tions took place, public opinion was
almost equally divided, pro and con.
Today nothing is settled. Because
energy conservation has brought de­
mand down and regulatory delays have
driven costs up, we are not going to have
1,000 reactors by the year 2000; but we
are also not shutting down nuclear
power plants. We have lived through a
major nuclear accident at Three Mile
Island, but have not achieved through
this, or through a now vast literature on
theoretical risk calculations, a consen­
sus on reactor safety. We made a na­
tional decision to forego reprocessing of
spent fuel in order to avoid a “plu­
tonium economy,” but then reversed it
as it became clear that West Germany
and Japan are becoming the world’s
chief suppliers of advanced nuclear
technology. We continue to waffle on
nuclear wastes as states and local
governments create a web of restrictive
legislation on waste transport and
storage which, simply translated, says
“please, not in my backyard.”
Two measures of public concern with
nuclear energy are shown in Figs. 1 and
2. The first, based on work done at
Clark University, graphically illustrates
the two waves of public debate that I
have described. The second, based on
public opinion surveys, illustrates the
growing polarization of opinion in the
1970s and the effect of the accident at
Three Mile Island. (See page 12.)
In my continuing effort to under­
stand the fear and distrust of nuclear
power I still emphasize heavily the
troubled history of the technology. I
attribute the growing polarization of
the 1970s to additional factors, how-

ever, including the consistent failure of
science to provide an acceptable risk
assessment and the unique structure of
nuclear risk, which combines high cata­
strophic potential with the threat of
long-term, chronic human health effects.
The risk of catastrophic accidents
The hazards of reactor failure were
foreseen twenty-four years ago, when
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
outlined the consequences of conceiv­
able catastrophic accidents for a 150
MWe (megawatts-electric) reactor in its
report entitled “Theoretical Possibil­
ities and Consequences of Major Acci­
dents in Large Nuclear Power Plants.”
The report, which applies to plants onesixth the size of present day plants, pro­
jected as many as 3,400 deaths and
43,000 injuries. An updated version,
prepared in 1965, described conse­
quences for present day 900-1000 MWe
plants, and showed as many as 45,000
deaths and a disaster area the size of
Pennsylvania. Neither the original re­
port nor its update had a major public
impact, the former because it was over­
shadowed by the test ban debate, the
latter because it was suppressed for
eight years to “avoid great difficulties in
obtaining acceptance of nuclear energy.”
n the early 1970s, as questions
about catastrophic reactor failure
escalated, the absence of actual
failure probabilities in these early
assessments made for a volatile situa­
tion. The AEC argued, without signifi­
cant supporting evidence, that the prob­
ability of catastrophic accidents was
very low. Critics, on the other hand,
were free to assume or imply the worst.
In 1973, to remedy the situation, the
AEC commissioned a new study. Pub­
lished in final form in 1975 as the
“Reactor Safety Study” (RSS), it pro­
vided the first substantiated estimates of
catastrophic accident probabilities. Spe­
cific findings were:
• The probability of core meltdown is
estimated at 1 in 20,000, significantly
higher than previous AEC estimates
of 1 in 1,000,000.
• The most likely post-meltdown re­
leases of radioactivity are much
smaller than those considered in the
1957 and 1965 analyses.
• The annual fatality rate predicted for

I

9

Table 1.

PÜ M 1

Individual fatality risks.

Cause of Death

111,

Accident risk per year
(deaths per million)

NON-CATASTROPHIC RISKS
Motor vehicles
30(
Falls
9(
Fires and hot substances
4(
Drowning
3(
Poison
21
Firearms
1<
Machinery
1<
Water transport
1
Falling objects
1
Electrocution
1
Railways
Lightning
1
CATASTROPHIC RISKS
Air travel
Tornados
Hurricanes
Fires
100 nuclear reactors, prompt deaths
100 nuclear reactors, all deaths
SHV-v' ■'• I

i i i i i t r A: : ! : -r''’

100 reactors is much smaller than the
experienced average rates for man­
made and natural catastrophic ha­
zards, such as air crashes and hurri­
canes.
As illustrated in Table 1, the latter
finding particularly appears to settle the
debate of nuclear reactor risk. The esti­
mated annual nuclear fatality risk for an
individual is estimated at the extremely
small value of two in ten billion!
Today it is widely agreed that RSS
was a ground-breaking theoretical cal­
culation. The history of nuclear risk
assessment since 1975, however, is the
story of how RSS was first criticized
and dissected, then partially or wholly
redone, and eventually sidelined as a
credible guide to policy. The American
Physical Society led off by striking at
perhaps the worst sin of the study: the
exclusion from the executive summary
of delayed fatalities. Other groups quar­
reled both with detail and with under­
lying structural assumptions. Typical of
the latter was our group at Clark; we
saw three shortcomings:
10

l(b)

0.021(c)

(a)Adapted from the Reactor Safety Study,
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, (Wash­
ington, 1975).
based on the 15 million people that live
within 25 miles of 100 nuclear plants.
(c)Risk as calculated in Reactor Safety Study,
based on a reference population of 200
million people.

• Completeness. It is impossible to
know whether RSS has identified all
failure modes, particularly those that
involve failure of two independent
pieces of equipment due to a common
cause.
• Design adequacy. Probability analy­
sis of failure can not deal with
inadequacy of design, as distinct
from statistical component failure.
For example, experience in the air­
craft industry shows that unsuspected
design problems (e.g., the cargo door
on the DC-10) are responsible for
most early crashes of a given model.
• Human failure. As used in RSS,
probability analysis does not deal
adequately with certain types of
human actions, such as sabotage or
misinterpretation of instruments.
On March 28, 1979, the accident at
Three Mile Island presented American
society and the world with dramatic
proof that nuclear reactors can fail cata­
strophically. Millions of us, watching
on television, were able to see for the
first time the anatomy of a major nuclear

nightmare. Though no one was killed,
and the major health effects were
anxiety and stress, in the ten days after
the accident, the part-in-a-billion prob­
abilities of the AEC’s Reactor Safety
Study were largely forgotten; and
today, three years after the accident,
cleanup is just beginning and the even­
tual cost is estimated at several billion.
To the critics of RSS, Three Mile
Island illustrated the conceptual short­
comings of the analysis. Though the
accident sequence that occurred there
was included in RSS, and even assigned
a reasonably large probability, the
actual failure was brought about by
human error and design inadequacy in
entirely unanticipated ways which RSS
had no way of quantifying. In its de­
scription of the accident, the Presi­
dent’s Commission on Three Mile
Island concludes:
“We are convinced that if the only
problems were equipment prob­
lems, this Presidential Commis­
sion would never have been
created. The equipment was suffiSW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Table 2

Group 2
College
Students

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22

1
5
2
3
6
7
15
8
4
11
10
14
18
13
22
24
16
19
30
9
25
17

8
3
1
4
2
5
11
7
15
9
6
13
10
23
12
14
18
19
17
22
16
24

20
1
4
2
6
3
12
17
8
5
18
13
23
26
29
15
16
9
10
11
30
7

23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30

26
23
12
20
28
21
27
29

21
20
28
30
25
26
27
29

27
19
14
21
28
24
22
25

Nuclear power
Motor vehicles
Handguns
Smoking
Motorcycles
Alcoholic beverages
General (private) aviation
Police work
Pesticides
Surgery
Fire fighting
Large construction
Hunting
Spray cans
Mountain climbing
Bicycles
Commercial aviation
Electric power
Swimming
Contraceptives
Skiing
X-rays
High school & college
football
Railroads
Food preservatives
Food coloring
Power mowers
Prescription antibiotics
Home appliances
Vaccinations

ciently good that, except for
human failures, the major acci­
dent at Three Mile Island would
have been a minor one.”
In short, since the publication of RSS
in 1975, it has become clear to many
scientists, and—independently—to the
public at large, that the emperor has no
clothes, that the likelihood of cata­
strophic reactor failure is not negligible,
and that scientists do not have a reliable
way of estimating it.
The special structure of nuclear risk
Beyond the uncertainty in cata­
strophic failure rates, a serious question
remains. Why is it that nuclear power,
which has been responsible for rela­
tively few deaths, is so widely feared,
when other technological hazards, like
automobiles (50,000 deaths / year) or the
use of coal (as many as 10,000 deaths/
year) are regarded with equanimity?
Why, in short, the double standard? The
question can be interpreted psycho­
logically by placing the emphasis on
“fear”; it can also be interpreted physiAPRIL 1982

Group 3 Group 4
Active
Experts
Club
Members

Group 1
League of
Women
Voters

Above right: Ordering o f 30 activities and
technologies according to perceived risk fo r
four groups. The ordering is based on the
geometric mean o f risk ratings in each group.
Rank I represents the most risky activity or
technology.

WM
ITj

P

11

cally by focusing on the structure of
hazards. In the past several years both
forms of the question have been ap­
proached in collaborative work in
which I have been involved.
The cognitive psychologists Baruch
Fischoff, Sarah Curtis Lichtenstein ’55,
and Paul Slovic, working at Decision
Research in Eugene, Oregon, find that
among thirty technologies and activities
(see Table 2) nuclear power is assigned
the highest perceived risk by most lay
people; risk experts, in contrast, rank
nuclear power twentieth of thirty. This
suggests that lay people are either mis­
informed or are judging risk according
to criteria different from those used by
risk experts (who rely largely on annual
mortality estimates). To explore this
question, subjects were asked to rank
the thirty technologies and activities
according to nine qualitative risk char­
acteristics such as voluntariness of risk,
immediacy of effect, and controllability.
Through a technique (factor analysis)
which combines related qualities of risk,
the results were represented by two
composite dimensions (Fig. 3). This
shows that nuclear power is alone in
being high in both factors, while motor
vehicles and most other technologies

and activities are extreme in neither.
In psychological terms, Fig. 3 goes a
long way toward “explaining” the
special character of nuclear power. It
also explains the widely different risk
ranking assigned by lay people and
experts as illustrated in Table 2, i.e.,
experts judge risk mainly according to
mortality, whereas lay people include
many other qualities.
The special qualities of nuclear power
have been independently approached
via causal structure analysis. Through
quantitatively expressed social, physi­
cal, and biological variables, my col­
leagues and I at Clark University have
derived a five-factor description of
technological hazards which is analo­
gous to the two-factor description of
perceived risk shown in Fig. 3. The five
factors are:
• Intentionality, associated with a
number of intentional biocides (nu­
clear weapons, handguns, rat poison);
• Persistence/ Delay, associated largely
with long-lived toxic materials that
have chronic and/ or delayed effects
(DDT, mercury, x-rays, nuclear
power);
• Catastrophic Potential, characterized
by the possibility that a large number

of people are killed through one
hazard release (large dams, nuclear
power, commercial aviation);
• Annual Mortality, principally asso­
ciated with a number of common
technologies with high death rates
(handguns, automobiles, private avi­
ation);
• Global Diffuseness, associated with
hazards that involve broadly dis­
persed releases of energy or materials,
and place large populations at risk
(deforestation, fossil fuel burning,
nuclear weapons testing).
Our five-factor profile, which we term
“hazardousness,” considerably extends
the conventional definition of “risk” as
mortality. As in the case of the risk per­
ception work described earlier, nuclear
power turns out to be special because it
ranks high on three of the five factors—
Persistence/Delay, Catastrophic Poten­
tial, and Global Diffuseness. Other
hazards that have high Catastrophic
Potential, e.g., dams, do not share
nuclear power’s high ranking on Persis­
tence/Delay and Global Diffuseness;
and hazards which are high in Persis­
tence / Delay, e.g., some toxic chemicals,
do not share nuclear power’s high Cata­
strophic Potential. In short, if one is

Fig. 2. The growing polarization of public opinion on nuclear power is indicated by
this compilation of surveys covering the period from 1975 to 1980. Note that the
opposition grew largely from the undecided population, and that much of this
growth occurred before the accident at Three Mile Island. Source: R. C.
Mitchell, Discussion Paper D-60, Resources for the Future (Washington,
February 20, 1980).
Fig. 1. The ups and downs of the U.S. debate on nuclear
energy as reflected in the number of articles published in the Fig. 3. Qualities of perceived risk for 30activities and technologies. Ninequalities
New York Times. Note the double peaked distribution of were collapsed by a statistical correlation technique called factor analysis into
the debate on nuclear safety and reactors, and the single two (linearly independent) composite dimensions indicated by the graph. The
peak expressing weapons concerns. Extension of the data to role of nuclear power is seen to be unique in that it lies alone in the upper right
1981 would probably show a new peak concerned with hand quadrant. The verticles of the triangles represent results from three differ­
nuclear weapons. Source: C. Hohenemser, R.E. Kasperson ent groups—League of Women Voters, students, and young business men—all
residing in Eugene, Oregon. Source: P. Slovic, private communication.
and R. W. Kates, Science 196, 25 (1977).
12

SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Chris Hohenemser is professor and
chairman of the Department of Physics
at Clark University where his profes­
sional time is divided between experi­
mental solid state physics and science/
technology policy analysis. He is co­
author of the newly published Risk in
the Technological Society (Westview,
1981). This article is an updated version
of a lecture given to the Swarthmore
chapter of-Sigma Xi in April, 1980.
willing to drop one’s fixation on the
expected mortality rate and adopt a
broader definition of hazardousness,

understanding the special character of
nuclear power is not difficult.
To illustrate the utility of our fivefactor profile, consider the comparison
between coal-fired and nuclear electric
energy. In most current discussions
such comparisons are based strictly on
mortality estimates. A well-known
recent example (Fig. 4, top) indicates
that coal has fifty times the mortality
risk of nuclear power. In contrast, our
analysis (Fig. 4, bottom) shows that
nuclear power far exceeds coal in two
factors, even though coal scores mod­
erately high in all five factors. We
believe our analysis better captures the
complexity of choice in energy risks,
and raises an interesting, largely norma­
tive question: Just how should society
assess the different dimensions of
hazardousness?
Conclusion
Because it was born out of a feared
and distrusted weapons effort, nuclear
power is easily cast as the symbol of all
that is wrong with high technology. The
continuing link to nuclear proliferation,
together with unresolved and perhaps
unresolvable questions about cata­
strophic failure probabilities, amplifies

this distrust. Yet by themselves, a
troubled history and undetermined
catastrophic failure probabilities do not
explain the apparent double standard
by which nuclear power is judged. There
are many accepted technologies that
cause more deaths and provide more
apparent reasons for fear.
The special qualities of nuclear power
become clear in both the risk perception
and the causal structure studies we have
described, and are illustrated by the
factor plot of Fig. 3 and the coal-nuclear
comparison of Fig. 4.
My prognosis is that the distrust of
nuclear power will persist, and that in­
creasingly negative qualitative judg­
ments will continue to enter significantly
into elections, court cases, and the
writing of laws in which nuclear power
plays a role. For physicists, engineers,
and conceptual colleagues who judge
risk by the expected mortality rate
alone, the actions of society will con­
tinue to appear irrational, not only in
the case of nuclear power, but also in
other special technologies such as re­
combinant DNA. Their problems will
not be resolved until they recognize that
there are important dimensions of risk
and hazard that they have missed.

A.
NUCLEAR

MORTALITY

COAL

0.1

1
10
DEATHS / 1,000 MW-YEAR

loo

B.
■

INTENTIONA L / BIOCIDAL
H

i

PERSISTENCE/DELAY
CATA
STROPHIC

NUCLEAR

MORTALITY
GLOBAL/DIFFUSE

CUMULATIVE FACTOR SCORE
Fig. 4. Comparison of nuclear and coal fired
electric power using Inhaber’s analysis (top) and
our hazardousness concept (bottom). In Inhaber’s
analysis the comparison is made directly in terms
of an appropriate mortality scale. In our analysis,
ratings are obtained for five composite dimensions
on an arbitrary scale. (For the 93 hazards included
in our study the scale has been normalized to have
a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one).
Source: C. Hohenemser and R. W. Kates, “The
Nature of Technological Hazard,” forthcoming.
APRIL 1982

13

Swarthmoreans in energy today

m
m
feto
l

Catherine
Good Abbott 72
Natural gas deregulation:
a mid-course correction.
atural gas has been the subject of con­
troversy in U.S. energy policies for
over forty years, and the heart of the
debate is in natural gas pricing. One person
deeply involved in the debate is Catherine
Good Abbott, currently serving as director
of the Division of Energy Deregulation,
Office of Policy, Planning and Analysis,
Department of Energy.
A religion major at Swarthmore, Abbott
worked with the World Without War
Council (Midwest) for two years after grad­
uation. Responding to a growing personal
interest in public policy issues, she enrolled
in the John F. Kennedy School of Govern­
ment at Harvard where she earned a
master’s degree in public policy and from
which she went to a job at the Environ­
mental Protection Agency. Four years ago,
she moved to the Department of Energy
where she began to work on issues related
to the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978. “The
NGPA, which outlined a plan for partial
deregulation, was hailed as the end of the
debate,” says Abbott. “But I, and quite a
few others, felt that there were fundamental
flaws and contradictions in the law: Under
the Carter administration we began a
detailed analysis.” In March of 1981 she
was asked by the Reagan administration to
head a study of alternatives to the NGPA, a
study which was completed and submitted
as a report last November.
“Getting gas out of the ground and to the
user involves complicated procedures and a
lot of suppliers,” says Abbott. “There are
producers who explore, drill wells, and
extract the gas; there are interstate pipeline
companies which purchase gas from pro­
ducers and transport it across vast portions
of the country; and there are the nearly
1,500 local utilities that, in turn, buy the gas
from the pipelines and resell it to endusers.”
In 1938, the Federal government began
to regulate the transportation of natural gas
across state lines. After World War II a
complex network of regulation developed
for interstate gas at state and federal levels,
eventually subjecting every member of the
interstate system—from producers to users

N

m

14

4

“

ü

m

Æ

—to regulation of price and supply.
“In 1954,” Abbott continues, “regulation
was extended to the wellhead prices, but
only for gas sold to interstate pipelines. An
odd system resulted. Two separate markets
developed—the m isstate market, for
which a federal agency determined the price,
and the intrastate market, which allowed
price to be set by the free interaction of
supply and demand.
“By 1967, basic flaws in the system
emerged: Gas reserves had begun to decline;
gas shortages developed in the interstate
market, and prices in the two markets
started to diverge.”
The NGPA of 1978 was drawn up to try
to reconcile some of the conflicting effects
of the tangled web of regulations. It out­
lined three major changes: First, it provided
for phased deregulation of wellhead prices
of “new” gas (discovered after 1977) over a
seven-year period, until 1985, when it will
be completely deregulated. “Old” (pre-1977)
gas remains subject to controls even after
1985. Second, the NGPA put intrastate gas
under federal regulation for the first time,
ending the two-tier market. Third, the act
tried to protect residential and commercial
customers from the initial burdens of well­
head price increases by requiring industrial
consumers to absorb those costs first.
The escalation of oil prices after the 1979
Iranian revolution created a gap between
oil and natural gas prices. Policymakers
fear that when the deregulation of new gas
occurs in 1985, as scheduled under the
NGPA, a huge price leap will occur rather
than the planned smooth transition to
higher prices.
The questions addressed in the report just
completed by Abbott and her colleagues
include: How high might prices go? How
will new legislation affect oil imports? What
is the best way to implement new regula­
tions or procedures? Since November, she’s
been consulting with administrators, legis­
lators, and consumer groups, studying the
options available through new alternatives
and calculating the effects of those options.
The object is to determine what kind of
compromise legislation might be written.
“It’s not so much marketing research,” she
says, “as ‘reality testing.’ Our basic concern
(the basic concern of all public policy,
really) is to look for unintended effects—
and the NGPA had a lot of unintended
effects. We want to correct some of those
effects. You might call this stage of the
effort a sort of ‘mid-course correction’ in
the progress of natural gas deregulation.”
SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Richard I. Ortega 73
Steven I. Rood-Ojalvo 73
“The best intervention fo r an
old building is the least
intervention.”

t
t

i

IN

teve Rood-Ojalvo and Rick Ortega
first met between their junior and
senior years in high school at a
summer program run by the National
Science Foundation at Brown University.
Steve was from Mexico City, but born in
Washington, D.C., Rick from Omaha,
Nebraska. They met again at Swarthmore
and remained friends throughout their four
years there, both graduating with degrees in
engineering (Ortega earned a B.A. in art
history as well).
Steve went on to graduate studies in
energy management at the University of
Pennsylvania, beginning just a few months
before the Arab oil embargo. “It was a fas­
cinating time to delve into energy ques­
tions,” he says. “My interests shifted grad­
ually from energy and the environment to
energy in existing buildings.” He stayed on
at Penn, first as a research assistant in the
Energy Center, later as assistant director in
the Department of Management, and most
recently as research associate at the Analy­
sis Center of the Wharton School. Currently
he is on leave, working full-time writing his
dissertation on “Understanding Energy
Consumption in the National Housing
Stock.” (“Stock,” for the uninitiated, refers
to the eighty-plus million existing residen­
APRIL 1982

tial units in this country.)
Rick studied urban planning at Cornell,
where he specialized in historic preserva­
tion. His first job after graduate school was
compiling the List of Classified Structures
for the midwest region of the National Park
Service, headquartered in Omaha. (“I
couldn’t believe it,” laughs Rick, “after
Brown, Swarthmore, and Cornell, my first
job took me back to Omaha.") He next be­
came a cultural resources specialist with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Then, with
the help of a Fulbright grant, he went to
Rome to study architectural conservation
at the International Center for Conserva­
tion, an institute managed by UNESCO.
True to his habit of retracing his steps, Rick
has made his way back to Swarthmore. He
worked for two years with restoration
architect John M. Dickey ’32 in Media, and
now works with Daniel M. Honig ’72,
owner of Structures, an engineering firm in
the ville.
As they have pursued their respective
careers, the two have often been surprised
at how much common territory is touched
by their two areas of expertise. They use
many of the same techniques, such as ther­
mography, and they share an interest in
improving existing buildings: Rick by
conservation and renovation of the building
fabric, and Steve by improving energy effi­
ciency in an era of rising energy costs.
“But most importantly,” says Ortega, “we
have come to the realization that many

aspects of a building are so interrelated that
you can’t alter one without affecting others.
In particular you cannot solve a building’s
energy problems without examining the
solution’s effect on the structure and
historic fabric.”
With the present emphasis on cutting
energy costs, many people and institutions
are rushing to “improve” the energy per­
formance of their buildings. Yet not all
accepted or standard conservation measures
work on all buildings. Measures that save
energy may also cause structural problems
or ruin a facade. “Installing storm windows
is a case in point,” says Ortega. “Storm win­
dows may affect the fabric adversely in two
ways: They may alter the historic appear­
ance, and they may result in structural
damage to the window framing, especially
sills, by trapping moisture against the wood.
Even more serious damage can be caused
by poorly placed insulation.”
Rood-Ojalvo claims the problem deserves
more study, that alternative methods of
conserving energy may work as well or
better. “For example, replacing the single
pane of glass with double panes that look
the same may save as much energy. Incor­
porating a reflector system on the interior
of the new windows may generate additional
savings by maximizing the use of day light­
ing,” says Steve.
“Often the best intervention for an old
building is the least intervention,” says
Ortega. “I’ve seen too many cases of over­
reinforcement or overinsulation. People
rush in to insulate, caulk, seal up, and you
just can’t do that with old structures. Often
you upset the equilibrium the building has
achieved with its environment through the
years. All year long, over their entire life­
times, buildings expand, contract, and shift
in response to the movement and direction
of the sun, to wind, to changing shade
patterns. There are daily cycles and
seasonal cycles; there are thermal problems
and structural problems. These cannot be
ignored.”
Ortega and Rood-Ojalvo recommend
that old or historic buildings be monitored
for at least one full year before any steps are
taken or alterations made. According to
Rood-Ojalvo: “Many people can tell you
how much energy their houses use, or main­
tenance departments of institutions can give
you a good idea of energy consumption in
the aggregate, but not many people know
how that use breaks down—how much is
used for heating, how much for cooling,
how much is accidentally lost. They don’t
15

“I believe in conservation through efficiency,
not through suffering.”
STEVE ROOD-OJALVO

know the effects of cloudiness, shade, or
pollution, or what effects result from people
using the building. You have to get actual
energy consumption information and use it
intelligently to develop procedures or deter­
mine the best methods. We believe a full
Do-it-yourself solar heating.
year of monitoring is essential to diagnose a
building’s problems, be they structural or
a s part of a continuing education prothermal, because it takes at least that long
^ gram for adults at Arizona State Unito discover how the building acts in and
y m . versitv. Lincoln (Pitt) Pittinger plays
reacts to its environment. Such monitoring
a major role in a special course which
is a fertile source of data not usually avail­
teaches people how to construct their own
able to the designers.”
solar hot water heating systems.
One can then use the information derived
In the twelve-hour course, which includes
from the monitoring program in two ways:
a lecture and an eight-hour workshop,
first, as direct design input for any work to
students first study the principles of solar
be done on the building; second, as the
heating, then build with their own hands a
basic data for eventually developing a cycli­
solar heating device which they can attach
cal maintenance manual for the building,
to their home hot water systems.
not unlike the maintenance schedules in the
Pitt and his colleagues in Suncor, Inc.,
owner’s manual of a car.
supply hardware kits for the project. They
Ortega and Rood-Ojalvo are anxious to
also travel around the country helping to
test their theories and design skills on an
establish similar programs at other
existing building. In fact, they have
institutions.
proposed to use Parrish Hall as their
Since the Community Solar Water Heater
“energy laboratory.” “It meets several of
Workshop program was first devised at
our criteria,” says Ortega. “It is a large,
ASU three years ago, it has been adopted
multi-use building with considerable
by nearly 100 other colleges and universities
architectural and historic merit; it is a large
in twenty-four states from Tennessee to
energy user; it is used and occupied year
California. Pitt himself has been most active
round; it is notorious for its uneven heating
in Arizona, California, Colorado, and New
and cooling patterns; it has extensive south
Mexico. Since Suncor started operations in
and north exposures; and most importantly,
1978, over 12,000 people have taken the
it is typical of thousands of such buildings
course. “If you were to buy this equipment
around the country.”
and have it installed commercially,” notes
In the meantime, for the last two years
Pitt, “it would cost about $3,000.” The
they have done some work together on
ASU course, including tuition and materials,
Ortega’s 1885 house in Media. “Sometimes
we disagree about procedures,” says Steve,
“but generally we find we learn from each
COLD FROM
other. We share a basic philosophy of
HOUSE MAIN 3/4"
approach.” In terms of both residences and
HOT TO HOUSE
3/4”
institutional buildings, he notes, “I believe
in conservation through efficiency, not
through suffering. I’d rather put in insula­
tion than turn the thermostat way down,
though I don’t believe there is anything
wrong with wearing sweaters in the winter.”
Both men extend their interest in energy
conservation and preservation beyond the
sphere of their immediate jobs. Ortega is a
partner in a growing mail order business,
Preservation Resource Group, Inc., which
specializes in books on, and instruments
DRAIN
and tools for, historic preservation. RoodVALVE
Ojalvo is professionally active as chairman
LOWER
of the energy conservation committee of the
HEATING
ELEMENT
Philadelphia chapter of ASHRAE, the
DISCONNECTED
American Society for Heating, Refrigerat­
ing, and Airconditioning Engineers.

A. Lincoln
Pittinger ’37

16

comes to only about $650. In addition,
installation entitles owners to a 40 percent
federal income tax credit—and some states
have state income tax credits as well. “Not
only is this program extremely successful,”
says Pittinger, “it’s also the biggest bargain
around.”
It is possible to purchase a pre-assembled
kit without taking the course, but Suncor
does 90 percent of its business with the stu­
dents. “We aren’t really interested in a mail­
order business,” says Pitt, “not yet anyway.
We are closely tied to the course, and 1
believe the educational value is as
important as the savings.”
Pittinger, a mechanical engineer by train­
ing, does not seem to know what the word
“retirement” means. The former founder
and president of Dynatech, Inc., he retired
as vice president of Talley Industries, Inc.,
in 1970. In 1975 he was back serving as
president of Solar Building Systems, Inc.
Today he heads a limited partnership,
Quantum Research and Development Cor­
poration, and works as a freelance consul­
tant, in addition to putting about threequarters of his time into the solar heater
workshop program. Five years ago he
patented his own invention, the Energy
Roof, a solar product which can both heat
and cool the structures it covers. This roof
was initially tested on an experimental
house built at ASU, but it is about to have
its first commercial trial at the Frank Lloyd
Wright Foundation (an architectural plan­
ning cooperative near Phoenix) where it
was recently installed on the employees’
recreation center.

SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Benjamin S.
Cooper ’63
Energy policy: “a demolition
derby o f opposing interests. ”
ow is energy policy made? Who
makes it? Can it in fact be made at
all? Benjamin Cooper, professional
staff member with the U.S. Senate Com­
mittee on Energy and Natural Resources, is
one of the people responsible, in part, for
making such policy.
Cooper is part of Washington’s “hidden
government,” that special cadre of scholar/
experts who make sure the legislators have
the information they need to make the deci­
sions for which they are responsible.
Cooper writes papers and speeches on such
topics as petroleum policy, the forces which
affect the political environment of nuclear
power, natural gas policy options, and stra­
tegic petroleum stockpiling. He conducts
background research on issues before the
Congress and organizes hearings which
result in the composition of laws on energy
policy. Says Cooper, “We follow the
process from the time the idea is just a
gleam in someone’s eye right up through
presidential signature.”
In setting the stage for making policy, he
must concentrate on what is best for the
country, but also be aware of skirmishes
taking place on the political battlefield. His
job is largely pedagogic. “Perhaps the
toughest aspect in making energy policy,”
says Cooper, “is convincing people who
think they are experts—economists, physi­
cists, attorneys—that they don’t really have
all the facts they require for making deci­
sions. Then we have to remind everybody
that they aren’t making policy in a vacuum;
real human beings will be affected by what
they do.”
In 1973 Cooper, who has a Ph.D. in
theoretical nuclear physics, was appointed
one of the first Congressional Science
Fellows under a program sponsored in part
by the American Physical Society. He was
placed with the Committee on Interior and
Insular Affairs, chaired by Senator Henry
Jackson. When the term of the fellowship
ended, Cooper resigned his faculty position
at Iowa State University in order to con­
tinue working for the government. It is very
different from university life, he finds. “Not
better, but more exciting; you don’t have to

H

APRIL 1982

make your own action. The dilemmas that
come to the national legislature are ones
which are too difficult for other institutions
to handle. The problems I tackle are tough,
and I like it that way.”
Cooper and his colleagues are guided by
a fundamental policy: Energy problems will
be most rapidly and efficiently solved by an
energy industry which remains generally
free of government intervention. This
philosophy implies a strategy for dealing
with energy shortages which relies on prices
to control and reduce demand, and profit
accumulation to stimulate supply.
According to Cooper, “our failure to find
rapid solutions to the problems of energy
dependence on other countries has its roots
in the nature of our political system. That
system does not respond well when faced
with demands for rapid change. And I’m
not sure that that’s a bad thing. It is not
clear that speed is called for when you are
seeking solutions to problems of energy
availability. I think we need a less feverish,
more reasonable approach.”
On the other hand, Cooper does not
believe that long-range planning is the best
method to employ in establishing energy
policy. “If we tried to decide what would be
the best residential fuel ten years from now,

we’d probably guess wrong. We just don’t
know the future well enough.” In the actual
process of policy-making, he favors a
method which he describes as “an openended demolition derby of opposing inter­
ests.” He helps supervise an open forum of
interested parties—corporations, utilities,
citizens, regulatory bodies, etc.—letting
them juggle, balance, and discuss their way
to concensus. “It’s a sort of calculated
clash,” he says, “but it ensures that no one
entity has enough power to determine the
results; everybody gets something of what
they want and in the process they share
information and resources.
“I distrust ‘comprehensive plans’ and
‘crisp policies.’ The answers are always too
pat. For a while it was very popular for
planners to use mathematical models, to
try to quantify their results in advance, but
it really doesn’t work. I prefer to follow the
path of consensus; at each stage we push a
little farther ahead, then we stop to see
where we are. We study the ramifications,
then push on a little farther still. The beauty
of this system is that it forces us to think
about people, and it gets the largest number
of participants into the act. This country
still makes important decisions
democratically.”

feet. More immediate would be the altera­
tion of air currents and rainfall; world agri­
cultural patterns might be drastically
affected.”
All of these effects, so detrimental to the
environment and the human condition,
would become more serious if the U.S. were
A look at the human and
to launch a program to produce synthetic
environmental costs o f
oil and gas. “The technologies available are
expensive and inefficient,” says Barbour.
producing coal.
“They require large amounts of water and
s s
oal reserves are much more
generate huge quantities of waste. Environ­
• • m
abundant than oil, and coal is
mentalists have said that such a massive
cheaper per unit of energy.
program would absorb funds and technical
United States coal could fill all our energy
talent that could be better directed to
demands for several centuries at current
conservation and solar energy.
levels,” says Ian Barbour, professor of reli­
“In short, coal reserves are adequate to
gion and physics at Carleton College in
sustain an expansion of coal production,
Northfield, Minnesota. “Coal, however,
but the expansion should be minimized by
entails much higher human and environ­
strong conservation measures. Current
mental costs than oil.”
standards for mine safety and strip-mining
Barbour is one of the designers of Carlereclamation should be strictly enforced, and
ton’s program in Science, Technology, and
scrubber requirements extended, despite
communities
to
supply
housing,
schools,
Public Policy (along with physics professor
the economic costs to the consumer. How­
and health services. Native American life
Barry M. Casper ’60). In this program, and
ever, coal should be used only for a few
would
be
particularly
vulnerable
to
disrup­
in his book Technology, Environment, and
decades as a transition fuel, because of the
tion, and coal leases offer little protection
Human Values {Praeger Publishers, 1980),
possible effects on the global climate. Coal
to tribal lands.
Barbour examines the difficult trade-offs
can help reduce our dependence on oil, but
Air pollution: “The burning of coal
we face among environmental preservation,
it cannot be a long-term source for the
inflicts even greater social costs than mining
economic growth, and human health. On
United States, much less for other
it,” says Barbour. Sulfur dioxide in stack
the topic of coal, the book discusses the
countries.”
emissions produces sulfates which aggra­
following social costs of production and
vate respiratory diseases. It also interacts
combustion:
synergistically with other pollutants, creat­
Deep-mining fatalities: According to
ing “acid rain” which harms fish, forests,
Barbour, “The long history of mine acci­
and agricultural yields.
dents and black lung disease is a classic
The 1977 Clean Air Amendments require
instance of high risks falling on one group
“the best available control technology,”
while benefits accrue to other people.” The
which at the moment means limestone
Grass roots activism: keeping
Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969
scrubbers. Scrubbers add to capital costs,
legislated major improvements in mine
the
frogs out o f hot water.
decrease energy output, and require daily
safety; fatalities decreased, but in 1977
15,000 disabiling injuries were reported and disposal of 80,000 cubic feet of sludge from
s s
ur commitment must be to less
a typical plant. Utilities have opposed the
the industry still suffered an average of 139
* * ■ ■ energy-intensive lifestyles, more
added
expense.
In
1979
the
Environmental
deaths per year.
in harmony with the world.
Protection Agency announced a compro­
Strip-mining damage: Coal from western
Higher-mileage cars or solar-heated, tight
mise regulation: strict requirements for new
surface mines is safer to produce, cheaper,
houses don’t lower our standards of living;
plants, lax standards for old plants. Envi­
and lower in sulfur than eastern under­
they simply make better use of resources.”
ronmentalists have urged the requirement
ground coal, but environmental costs are
Van Talmage, who lives twenty-five miles
of
scrubbers
in
all
plants.
higher. Reclamation costs (estimated at
north of Poughkeepsie in the rolling hills of
' Climate changes: The greatest potential
$.35 per ton of coal) add very little to the
New York State, works hard at practicing
risk
(but
also
the
most
uncertain)
is
the
price of delivered energy, but reclaimed
what he preaches.
effect of carbon dioxide from burning coal
land often can be used only for pasture, and
Five years ago Talmage and a group of
and
oil.
If
present
trends
continue,
the
con­
in semi-arid regions it will take decades for
concerned
residents of Dutchess County
centration of CO 2 in the earth’s atmosphere
natural plant life to be restored. In some
formed Citizens for Safe Power Transmis­
could
double
by
the
middle
of
the
next
fragile eco-systems, as in the Southwest,
sion, an organization devoted to fighting
century. But scientists are divided about the
reclamation will compete with other
the proposed installation of very high
effect
on
climates.
According
to
Barbour,
demands for scarce water.
voltage transmission lines across the county
“CChcuts down on heat radiation (the
Social impacts: Increases in coal produc­
and the construction of what would have
greenhouse
effect)
and
temperatures
might
tion in some parts of the West could create
been the world’s largest nuclear power plant
rise
as
much
as
6°
C
in
a
century.
If
polar
ice
a large influx of population. “Boom town”
only four miles from the Talmage house.
sheets
melted,
ocean
waters
would
rise
200
growth could exceed the capacity of many

Ian G.
Barbour ’43

John Van Neste
Talmage ’67

SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

18

The burning o f coal inflicts even greater social costs than m ining it. ”
IAN BARBOUR

Jean Elliott
Golden ’55
Cooperation and
competition become weapons
in the energy war.
n an effort to reduce energy consump­
tion at Spring Hill College in Mobile,
Alabama, Jean Elliott Golden was given
the challenge of trimming the $300,000
annual utility bill generated by 650 resident
students and faculty on the twenty-six
building campus.
In the newly created position of energy
conservation director, she worked through­
out a recent school year managing a series
of projects designed to educate faculty,
staff, and students on the energy facts of
life.
“I outlined a program to achieve overall
reduction through both physical changes
and involvement of the campus community.
The physical changes recommended were
often the same that any energy-conscious
homeowner or plant operator would use:
caulking, weatherstripping, and improved
insulation.”
Because of the large number of individ­
ually controlled air conditioners, heaters,
and radiators on the campus, central con­
trols could not reduce the budget effectively.
Numerous methods had to be devised to
involve all users on campus. Those involved
in planning the use of buildings were
encouraged to schedule consolidation of
plant use, such as grouping evening classes
to allow air conditioning and heating sys-

I

“Some of the members were opposed to the
lines because they didn’t want those mon­
strosities in their back yards—steel towers
as high as seventeen-story buildings. I
shared that view, but I am also a believer in
the future and that means stopping the
‘bigger and bigger’ philosophy of the Amer­
ican establishment. It means understanding
that the technologies to solve our energy
problems exist today. It means understand­
ing that the battle is to change from the
concepts of centralized power supplies and
transmission grids to the more efficient,
lower cost, people-oriented approach of
auxiliary energy units (solar-heated hot
water), energy-efficient equipment (deepchested refrigerators), and decentralized
power supplies (per neighborhood, per
factory). The struggle involves political
resistance on one hand, and positive efforts
to re-orient people’s views on energy on the
other.”
While neither the powerlines nor the
plant have yet become realities, the projects
have not been abandoned. Talmage and his
friends have become more sophisticated in
their activities and more politically power­
ful in Dutchess County and the surround­
ing area. They joined with two other groups
to form a more potent and broadly-based
organization called Hudson Valley GREEN
(Grass Roots Energy and Environmental
Network). “We are listened to by the state
legislature,” says Talmage. “They have
begun to see us as we see ourselves—as part
of the public debate, as an articulate voice
for a particular point of view.”
That voice is heard primarily through the
APRIL 1982

pages of Green Times, a well-written and
crisply-designed newspaper which is pro­
duced eight times a year and has a circula­
tion of over ten thousand. Green Times, for
which Talmage is a regular writer, keeps its
readers abreast of developments pertaining
to state utility companies, air and water
pollution, toxic dumping, chemical spray­
ing, and rising energy rates. It reports on
windfarming, the proposed New York State
bottle bill, woodburning stoves, and other
environmental concerns at the local,
national, and international level. The
paper (which carries no advertising, is not
for sale, and receives no grants) is supported
entirely by voluntary donations.
Talmage worked for IBM for nine years
after leaving Swarthmore. He is now assis­
tant director of computing at Dutchess
County Community College, and is cur­
rently involved also in starting up his own
computer software company. Despite these
pressures, he remains one of the two dozen
or so hard-core activists who direct the
activities of Hudson Valley GREEN. He
sees his efforts, and those of his colleagues,
as a continual public education campaign.
“We have to be on our guard,” he says. “We
must not slowly allow environmental
degradation to worsen our world while we
mildly adjust and ignore the conditions.”
To illustrate this danger, Talmage relates a
short parable: “If you take a frog and put it
in a bucket of very hot water, it will squirm
and jump out, and save its life. If, however,
you set the frog in cold water and then
slowly raise the temperature of the water,
the frog will stay put until it dies.”

19

“I f we don’t do som ething about the energy crisis, we’ll be
fa ced w ith unem ploym ent, econom ic disaster, and probably war.”
IRIS MIROY OVSHINSKY

terns in many buildings to be shut down
before nightfall. Faculty members were
requested to keep windows closed in rooms
where heating or air conditioning units
were in use, and staff members were
encouraged to report repairs and improve­
ments needed in their offices.
Most crucial in her plans, Golden said,
were the students who had control over
hundreds of individual room air condition­
ers, heaters, and “other appliances deemed
necessary for the complete dorm life. For
them we devised a ‘kill-a-watt’ contest. In
each of the five dormitories, previous gas
and electric usage was compared to current
use, and the dorm with the greatest per­
centage of decrease was declared the winner
of the $500 prize. Competition became
quite keen,” she said, “with the winning
dormitory reducing its consumption by
nearly 10 percent. Although a number of
circumstances, including a devastating
hurricane, made it impossible to gather a
full calendar year of figures for final
comparison, we did note an appreciable
reduction in overall usage and considered
the program a success.”

Theodore K.
Osgood ’53
Solar-electric pumps fo r
developing countries.
n many areas of the Third World, solv­
ing problems of raising agricultural pro­
duction from small farms depends
heavily on providing reliable irrigation.
Traditional power sources, however, are
often neither matched to the irrigation
pumping requirements of small farms nor
affordable by the farmers involved. The
application of solar (photovoltaic) energy
systems to water pumping appears to offer
a promising solution, and for the past three
years Tedd Osgood has been working on
such applications. “The output of a solar
pump is closely related to a crop’s need for
irrigation,” says Osgood. “The solar inso­
lation which drives a living plant’s trans­
piration is also the source of the electricity
generated by a photovoltaic array.” With
most applications of solar energy, battery
storage is required if power is to be avail­
able during hours of darkness or periods of
inclement weather. There is, by contrast,
generally little need to operate an irrigation
system at night or when it is raining. In the

I

20

Tedd Osgood checks a portable 250-watt sun pump near Gujranwala in the Pakistan Punjab.
case of potable water, cheap and efficient
storage of the product itself, rather than of
the intermediate electricity, can be
arranged.
Having identified the problem and
defined the solution, two of Tedd Osgood’s
friends—an irrigation engineer with the
World Bank and an engineer with the MIT
Lincoln Laboratory—developed a 250watt, portable, solar-powered micro­
irrigation system which was suitable (in
terms of its pumping capacity, as well as its
operation and maintenance requirements)
for individual small farmers.
Late in 1978 they formed a company^—
Solar Electric International (SEI)—to
commercialize this device which was to
become popularly known as the “sun
pump”. The first sun pumps were assembled
in a basement in Lexington, Massachusetts,
and shipped to India and Egypt the
following spring. This low-lift unit, capable
of irrigating from two to ten acres, has
undergone a number of changes and
improvements since then, and other, larger,
solar-pumping systems have been developed.
Approximately a year after the first solar
pumps were successfully tested, and follow­
ing shipment abroad of several score more,
the group reorganized and established
TriSolarCorp (TSC), which specializes in
the design, engineering, and manufacture of
a wide range of photovoltaic energy sys­
tems, including deep-well pumps for drink­
ing supplies and stock watering. Together,
SEI and TSC have installed well over 100
pumping systems in this country and in
some twenty developing countries in Asia,
Africa, and the Caribbean.

Osgood has been associated with these
ventures—first with SEI and more recently
with TSC—almost from the start. “At the
time SEI was launched, I was working “on”
Pakistan at the World Bank. Even before
the sun pump made its successful debut in
India, my friends suggested that I help
introduce solar pumping technology into
Pakistan. When officials of the Pakistan
Agricultural Research Council expressed
interest in testing a number of solar pumps,
I assisted their staff in arranging for finan­
cial assistance from an agency specializing
in the dissemination of appropriate tech­
nology.” An on-farm demonstration and an
evaluation of solar-powered micro-irriga­
tion systems were begun, giving all con­
cerned an opportunity to observe how solar
pumps perform and can be maintained
under field conditions in the hands of indi­
vidual small farmers. The project has been
underway for about a year and according to
Osgood, “the results have been encouraging
and informative.”
Looking back over the past three years,
Osgood is pleased with what has been
accomplished by SEI and TSC. “As of mid1981, the two firms together could take
credit for having designed, built, and
installed nearly half the solar-powered
pumps then operating in the world.
“One measure of development over time
and between countries is the amount of
energy used per capita in the production of
goods and in the satisfaction of human
wants. The advent of solar power promises
to bring within man’s grasp—especially in
rural areas of developing countries—plenti­
ful supplies of cheap renewable energy.”
SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Iris Miroy
Ovshinsky ’48

alternative energy from the sun and from
waste heat would become a necessity and
that amorphous materials could be the
instruments for this energy revolution.
You know, it takes an average of nineteen
years for most inventions to reach the
On the barricades o f the
marketplace. We seem to be right on
schedule.”
revolution in synthetic
Iris, who is vice president of the com­
materials.
pany, majored in zoology at Swarthmore.
She earned a master’s in biology from the
peaking at Swarthmore in 1980, inven­
University of Michigan, and later a Ph.D.
tor Stanford Ovshinsky said, “It will
from Boston University. Stan has no such
take more than good intentions and
credentials; he attended high school and
federal policy-making to solve the energy
trade school, where he found “school
crisis. It will take innovation, radical leaps
uninteresting and learning fascinating.”
forward in research, and creative technology.”
What Ovshinsky does have, according to
Ovshinsky and his wife, Iris Miroy
one colleague, is “a sixth sense about the
Ovshinsky, are true pioneers in that
materials he is working on. It’s almost as
creative revolution. They are co-founders
if he can visualize how the atoms in each
of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc., a
of the materials he creates will behave. He
firm based in Troy, Michigan, which,
has an intuition at which we marvel.”
since 1960, has been involved with
Ovshinsky opened his own machine
research and development in the fields of
shop at 21, and took out his first patent
both energy and information. A perpet­
(for an automatic lathe) when he was only
ually erupting volcano of ideas, ECD
26. “I couldn’t get a Ph.D., so I married
holds 120 U.S. patents on products rang­
one,” he says happily. In Iris Miroy he
ing from microfilm, switches, and memory
married as well the perfect companion
devices to solar cells and thermal energy
and business partner. ECD is the Ovshin­
devices. Scientists in the company are
skys, and though the company has grown
actively working on hydrogen as an alter­
to over 300 employees, the impression is
native for gasoline and the development
that Stan and Iris could probably wing it
of non-silver films for a variety of
on their own.
applications.
The Ovshinskys and ECD started
“Maverick” is a word frequently used
making headlines in 1968 when Stan
by the press to describe ECD, and indeed
announced the development of “Ovonics,”
the Ovshinskys do not run with the herd.
a radical new form of semiconductors—
But there has been nothing erratic about
used in computers and calculators—made
their progress, which, from the beginning,
from amorphous materials. He claimed to
has followed a clear and direct course.
have achieved transistor-like electronic
“We felt that the traditional materials,
switching in cheap, easy-to-produce
which had taken millions of years to form
materials. To the world of solid-state physics,
by natural processes, not only were
this sounded like heresy.
depletable but had locked-in barriers
which kept them from meeting the new
problems of an industrial society,” says
Iris. “In 1960 we set out on what appeared
to be a quixotic quest to set up a company
with the express purpose of developing a
new field of science and technology—
disordered and amorphous materials. For
twenty-one years we have been developing
those new materials.”
Solid substances can be divided into
two basic categories, crystalline and
amorphous. In crystalline materials, such
as salt or diamonds, the atoms are linked
together in a neat lattice-like arrangement.
The atoms in amorphous substances (such
as window glass) are scattered and
jumbled. Stan explains: “We thought that

S

APRIL 1982

In the early days of the transistor,
physicists had explored the use of amor­
phous materials and concluded that they
could not be utilized. Ovshinsky said they
could, and that he could do it. What
bothered the critics most, apparently, was
not that he had challenged the conven­
tional wisdom, but that such unorthodox
theories came from an unknown inventor
who had no formal college education.
Vindication, however, came quite
quickly. In 1977 English physicist Sir
Nevill Mott shared the Nobel prize in
physics in part for his theoretical explana­
tion of how amorphous semiconductors
work; in his acceptance speech, Mott
credited Ovshinsky’s groundbreaking work.
Ovonics was just the start. In 1975
ECD signed an agreement with the
Burroughs Corporation for joint licensing
of an Ovonic memory device. In 1976
ECD demonstrated the MicroOvonic File,
a desktop machine which allows for con­
tinued updating of microfiche and micro­
film. But the project that turned ECD
from a small outfit into a major force in
the energy field blossomed in 1980. In
that year, ARCO Solar, Inc., an Atlantic
Richfield subsidiary, committed $28.3
million to ECD to accelerate development
of Ovshinsky’s version of a solar energy
cell using amorphous materials and to sup­
port other energy-related work. If success­
ful, this project could lead to commercial
solar electric cells cheap enough to com­
pete with conventional methods for
generating electric power. The main
advantage is that amorphous materials
can be produced in large, thin films at
very low cost. Crystalline materials have
to be chemically “grown” at considerable
expense and can be produced only in rela­
tively small sizes—a major drawback in

21

solar energy conversion since the cells
would have to cover many square yards
or even acres to gather enough useful
energy from sunlight.
According to the Wall Street Journal,
the Ovshinskys’ experiments indicate that a
cell made of their material could convert to
electricity at least 10 percent of the solar
energy striking it. This is below the 18
percent efficiency reported for crystalline
cells, but the cheapness of the new alloy
more than offsets the lower efficiency. Esti­
mates indicate that the material could pro­
duce electricity at a cost of about $.05 per
kwh. This contrasts with at least $.50 and
probably $.77 for crystalline cells. Recent
work indicates that amorphous materials
can have even higher efficiencies than
crystalline materials.
In 1981 ECD formed a partnership with
Standard Oil of Ohio to develop and pro­
duce photovoltaic devices to convert sun­
light directly into electricity. In January of
1982, American Natural Resources Co., a
Detroit-based pipeline company, formed a
joint venture with ECD to develop devices
to convert waste heat directly into
electricity.
“Our work in the field of information is
very exciting,” says Iris, “but it is not so
important socially as our work on alter­
native energy, Stan and I believe that if
we don’t do something about the energy
crisis, we’ll fee faced with unemployment,
economic disaster, and probably war. It’s
a rare opportunity to be involved with
creating products which can change the
world.”

Susan Schultz
Tapscott 7 2
Homespun practicality in a
corporate setting.
o produce oil and gas, scientists and
engineers must search in the geologic
folds where nature has hidden them
and devise methods to extract them from
the ground. One such engineer is Susan
Tapscott, who works with Exxon Produc­
tion Research Company in Houston. Her
work involves research related to offshore
systems used to help recover oil and gas
reserves from locations which are not only
underground but also under water.
“My colleagues and I don’t physically
extract oil or gas (or coal or uranium)

T

22

from the ground. We do the research that
allows structures and equipment to be de­
signed so that others may do it, and do it
efficiently and effectively. A top priority is
that whatever we develop must be safe
and environmentally sound.”
Producing hydrocarbon resources is an
extensive and complex process. Once the
geophysicists have ascertained that a site
probably contains oil or natural gas, the
next step is to assess what is actually
there. How long will the supply last? Is it
feasible to get it out? Is there promise of
enough profits to make the effort worth­
while? And what technology will be
needed to do the job?
Susan Tapscott is involved with finding
answers to that final question. Her work
is in the area of offshore pipeline design,
and her job is a mixture of office, lab­
oratory, and field work. Before a pipeline
can be laid underwater, say from an off­
shore platform to shore, it is necessary to
determine what forces will be exerted on
the pipe from the water flowing past it
and from other external environmental
factors: Is it located in earthquake terri­
tory? Is it resting on mud? (Mud can be
heaved about by storms or currents.)
Could it be snagged by an anchor? Is
there a danger of debris falling on it?
Only when these and many other ques­
tions have been answered can the engi­
neers begin to determine how best to
protect the pipeline from environmental
hazards. On a recent project, Susan and a
team of specialists spent several years
organizing and conducting a field experi­
ment to provide information on the
hydrodynamic force acting on marine

pipelines. After a worldwide search for a
test location they selected a site in the
Strait of Juan de Fuca, a body of water
between Washington state and British
Columbia, just west of Puget Sound.
Susan and others spent two years com­
muting between Houston and the study
site.
After graduating with a degree in
mechanical engineering, Susan earned an
M.S. in ocean engineering and an Ocean
Engineers Professional Degree through a
program run jointly by MIT and Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution. She
taught mechanical and ocean engineering
at Southeastern Massachusetts University
for a year (“I enjoyed teaching immensely,”
she says, “and would love to do it again”)
before going on to do experimental stress
analysis for Brewer Engineering Labora­
tories, a small consulting firm in Massa­
chusetts. When her husband, Christopher
R. Tapscott ’72, finished his Ph.D. in the
MIT/Woods Hole Joint Program in
Oceanography, he was hired by Exxon
Production Research where he works as a
geophysicist specializing in research on
plate tectonics. A short time later Susan
was hired by the same company though in
a different division.
“The world’s supply of oil is not so
easily come by as it once was,” says Susan.
“Very few large, easily produced reservoirs
are being discovered anymore, and there
is a higher cost associated with recovering
oil or gas from depleted or smaller reser­
voirs. Therefore, a lot of the impetus for
our work now comes from a need to find
new, more economical ways to tap the
reservoirs and get the product to the
consumer. We can’t just look for any solu­
tions to the problem of potential energy
shortages; we must look for practical and
economical solutions. We could design
more massive structures or incredibly
intricate machinery, but the costs would
probably make it impossible for the con­
sumer ever to see the product, so those
aren’t solutions. Those of us in research
have to respond to the needs of the
industry, and the key need is for innova­
tive, efficient technical design. There can
no longer be a ‘bigger is better’ philosophy
in technical design. Rather, innova­
tive, efficient systems must be used to
recover resources that could not be re­
covered using yesterday’s methods at their
associated costs. And if we all adhered to
the Pennsylvania Dutch philosophy of
‘waste not, want not’ regarding energy
consumption, we’d all be a lot better off.”
SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

E. Kevin
Cornell ’63
“You can't recall a nuclear
power plant fo r repairs. ”
ive years ago, Kevin Cornell was an
academic physicist doing research
and teaching the normal graduate
and undergraduate physics courses as well
as courses on science policy to undergrad­
uates. Today, as deputy executive director
for operations of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, he’s embroiled in decisions
about nuclear policy.
The NRC, with five commissioners and a
staff of over 3,000, regulates most aspects of
the commercial nuclear industry, ranging
from overseeing the disposition of radio­
active waste material from hospitals to
licensing and regulating commercial nuclear
power plants. “This is a federal agency
which exists solely and principally for the
protection of public health and safety,” says
Cornell. “The NRC is not an economic
regulatory agency and it is not our job to
see that these industries make a profit. Few
constituencies love us; some see us as the
bane of their existences. It depends on
whom you talk to.”
About seventy-five nuclear plants are in
operation in the U.S. An equal number
have license applications on file at the
NRC. Most of these applications have been
on file for a long time, a few have been
withdrawn, no new ones have been received.
According to Cornell, this sluggish growth
rate is the result of several factors, including
a lessening demand for power, high interest
rates, and inability of utility companies to
pass these costs along to consumers.
The NRC is continually examining,
investigating, making analyses: Is this
method safe? Can that apparatus get the job
done properly? “The NRC’s job would be
easier if the technology were more mature,”
says Cornell. “But each plant is different,
each is one of a kind. If you discover a fault
or flaw in one plant or design, it will not
necessarily turn up as an area of weakness
in another. A power plant is not an assem­
bly-line product. Finding and correcting an
error in the design of one plant won’t neces­
sarily enable you to recall the rest for a
similar repair.”
Once the plants are licensed and built, the
NRC must oversee their operation as well
as the disposal of nuclear waste. As more

F

plants come into operation, this problem
will grow. In Cornell’s view, this is not so
great a danger as the public perceives it to
be. “It’s not so much a technical as a politi­
cal problem,” he observes. “Everybody
says, ‘not in my state,’ or ‘not in my valley,’
and we find ourselves more concerned with
where than how."
After graduating from Swarthmore with
a degree in mathematics, Cornell earned an
M.A. and a Ph.D. in physics from the Uni­
versity of Illinois. He joined the faculty at
Wayne State University, and later went on
to teach at American University. He began
his career on Capitol Hill in 1974 as an
assistant to Congressman Donald Fraser of
Minnesota and then was a Congressional
Science Fellow in the office of Senator
Gary Hart of Colorado. As a legislative
assistant for environmental and energy
issues to the Senator, he became a senior
staff member of Hart’s Subcommittee on
Nuclear Regulation when he joined the pro­
fessional staff of the Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works in 1977.
Two months after assuming his present
position at the NRC, Cornell was asked to
be executive staff director for the Commis­

sion’s investigation into the accident at
Three Mile Island. For nearly a year, he
directed a staff of seventy-five people, with
an operating budget of $3 million, to
prepare the Commission’s report.
Could there be another incident like
TMI? “Yes, it could happen again,” says
Cornell, “but because of TMI, it’s less likely.
The biggest damage, other than to the
prestige of the industry, was the loss of a
billion-dollar machine—a resource which
has remained out of commission ever since.
The TMI accident served to highlight a
difficult problem we as a society have with
nuclear power. As a society we don’t have a
very good way of dealing with low-proba­
bility but high-consequence accidents. The
overall risk from nuclear generation, i.e.,
the probability of a severe accident, which
we believe to be low, multiplied by the high
consequences of such an accident, is lower
than the comparable risks from other tech­
nologies such as electrical generation from
coal or automotive transportation. In spite
of these relative levels of risk, the high-consequence/low probability nature of nuclear
generation seems to render it a difficult
problem for society to deal with.”

APRIL 1982

23

On campus: Swarthmore offers
an energetic program of
conservation and education
An open letter to a parent:
cutting the high cost of
hogs and elephants
Last spring President Friend sent a
letter to the parents of current students
announcing a reluctant increase in tui­
tion for the 1981-82 academic year. From
one parent came a response expressing
consternation over the reason for the
increase. In part, he said: “My daughter
is getting an excellent education at
Swarthmore and I challenge anybody to
put a price on it. I am, however, candidly
distressed at the extent to which you
attribute these increased fees to ‘energy
costs,’ in light of my perception of sub­
stantial energy waste during various
visits to the campus.” He added in a
handwritten post script: “Since this
[letter] was dictated I drove my daugh­
ter back after spring vacation. As a
specific example of waste, how about
the window in room 31 Parrish which
appears to be permanently open. I sus­
pect the full cost of her tuition increase
went out that window!”
The following letter was sent in reply
by Vice President Lawrence Landry,
past chairman of the National Higher
Education Energy Task Force and the
College’s spokesman on matters of
energy management:
“President Friend has asked me to
reply to your recent letter in which you
expressed concern about the attribution
of rising student charges to increases in
energy costs. I should say at the outset
that numerous other factors were in­
volved in the decision to increase tuition,
fees, and room and board. However,
with utility costs alone representing
one third of the cost of maintaining the
physical plant and over 6 percent of the
total College budget, you are quite right
to identify this as a major area of con­
cern. The area also happens to be a par­
24

ticular interest of mine, so I would like address six basic subsystems at work in
to respond at some length to your letter. the College energy environment and
“Let me first mention that, under the discuss briefly some of the problems
circumstances, the College has re­ that we see and plans that we have
sponded reasonably well to the more implemented or are currently considerthan 1,000 percent increase in the cost of ing.
“The first of these subsystems is infor­
fuel oil and the 200 percent increase in
the cost of electricity over the last mation. Although the importance of a
decade. For instance, in 1970, with an good data base of consumption rates,
enrollment of 1,114 students, the Col­ fuel costs, degree days, and so forth
lege consumed 905,000 gallons of #6 may seem obvious, it is generally under­
fuel oil and used 6,038,000 kwh of emphasized by managers simply be­
electricity. At that time, we spent $130 cause of the technical orientation and
per student to heat and light 670,000 quantitative discipline required. Yet the
square feet of building space. Since then data base is critical not only for opera­
we have added 67,000 square feet of tional efficiency but also as a training
space but have reduced overall con­ device and as a source of credibility
sumption by 358,000 gallons of oil and when communicating recommended
1,348,000 kwh of electricity. Although changes to policy and behavior. At
the fuel cost per student grew to $476 in Swarthmore, daily logs are maintained
1980, we have avoided through conser­ to monitor all boiler functions, steam
vation efforts an additional average per- flow, and consumption of oil, gas, and
water. In addition, each building is
student cost of $325.
“This is the macro context for con­ visited once or twice daily to evaluate all
sidering some of our specific activities. operational aspects of inside heating
For your information I would like to components. This information feeds

Task force marshals College energy program
Reducing energy consumption in the
small community that is Swarthmore
College requires the help and coop­
eration of all its citizenry. In Vice
President Lawrence Landry’s words,
it takes “a conscious involvement by
every member of this diverse com­
munity to reduce expenditures and
energy usages.”
To increase that involvement,
Landry formed a campus-wide com­
mittee of faculty, administrative staff,
and students to plan ways of
implementing new programs. Called
the Energy Task Force, the commit­
tee has been charged with three areas
of concentration: scheduling vaca­
tions and classes to use energy more
efficiently, studying major capital
investments that can substantially
affect the amount of energy used, and

promoting individual conservation
through education, information, and
encouragement.
Among the Task Force efforts
have been a study looking into the
possibility of adding boilers which
could burn coal, and launching a
water conservation campaign during
the major drought that hit the
Delaware Valley last year.
One of the committee’s most suc­
cessful recommendations has been
the “energy holiday” taken between
Christmas and New Years for the last
two years. Coupled with normal shut­
down of the dormitories during that
period, the additional closing of aca­
demic and administrative offices re­
sulted in heating fuel and electric
savings of $42,631 in 1980 and
$33,997 in 1981.

SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

into a boiler reset schedule. As we enter
an accelerated energy management and
preventive maintenance phase, we will
be able to obtain even more detail on
individual buildings; and the complete
data base is soon to be maintained on
the College’s new computer system.
“The second and third subsystems
relate to procurement and generation. I
link them because underlying both is the
need for flexibility. In procurement, my
interest is not just to buy, but to control
purchases through anticipating costs,
understanding the fuel distribution
system and the rate-making environ­
ment, and looking for creative alterna­
tives, such as cogeneration and storage
of energy in off-peak hours. In genera­
tion, we have to date made our current
antiquated boilers more efficient. This
is primarily accomplished by knowing
when to turn them on and off, but we
have also converted one of the three
boilers to natural gas—a move which
saves the College $500 a day.
“Steam distribution is the fourth
energy subsystem, and it is one of the
more problematic. There will always be
heat loss, but sometimes the loss can
approach 25 percent. In addition, the
cost of digging and replacing com­
ponents of the system is extemely high.
What we are doing is minimizing leaks
by an ongoing inspection system within
buildings. Further, there is money in
next year’s budget for infra-red instru­
mentation to identify major leaks
underground.
“The fifth subsystem is the end-use
consumption, or the buildings them­
selves. On college campuses, buildings
have been classified either as hogs
(those built in the 1960’s without con­
cern for energy costs) or elephants (the
old ones that are big and drafty). I dare
say that we have our share of both. I
looked into Parrish 31 and the window
was closed, but I understand the prob­
lem: one of heating irregularities in a
building built more than 100 years ago.
We currently have three designs for a
Parrish renovation; but, in order to give
you an idea of the magnitude of the
problem, the cheapest of these will cost
$8 million.
“Finally, the last of the subsystems,
and the one which your letter most
directly addresses, is community in­
volvement. This is important not only
for sound decision making and clear
energy saving, but also for instilling the
readiness for change. We have sought
active involvement on our Energy Task
Force by students, faculty, and mem­
APRIL 1982

bers of the administration. Moreover,
the word is spread by way of a Conser­
vation Bulletin, mailings to resident
assistants, and information tables in the
dining hall. A special phone number,
composed of the letters S-A-V-E, is
slated to receive all complaints regard­
ing excessive heat or a lack thereof.
More can be done, and I appreciate
your comments toward this end; but I

have strongly maintained, since I ar­
rived at Swarthmore just over two years
ago, that further progress will require
raising our energy consciousness.
“I assure you that major undertakings
are in process that will serve to insulate
the College, in a physical and financial
sense, from the cold winters of the
coming decades.”
Lawrence L. Landry

“We’ve cut our consump­
tion in half while heating
many more square feet”

feet.”
The downward trend of energy use
over the past decade is the result of care­
ful planning and wise use of financial re­
sources in making changes in the physical
plant that produce the largest savings in
the least amount of time.
According to William Stanton, direc­
tor of the physical plant, the College
enlisted the help of an outside technical
firm to compute the return of capital
expenditures. “What they’ve given us is a
building-by-building payback schedule.”
A case in point is the College’s conver­
sion of one of the boilers in the central
heating plant from oil to natural gas in
the fall of 1980. The conversion cost of
$45,000 was recovered in three and a half
months. Plans call for a new unit, that
can run on either oil or natural gas, to be
on line this fall. Says Stanton, “This will
give us the capability to burn the cheaper
fuel no matter what happens to the cost
of gas or oil.”

Fourteen years ago, before most of us
realized we were plunged into an energy
crisis, Don Kelley sat in his office in the
service building and began making lists.
Kelley, then working on the mainte­
nance crew, made it his personal task
to keep daily records of the amount
of oil used to fire the boilers which
produced the majority of the heat on
campus. Now assistant director of the
physical plant, Kelley says those records
have “proven invaluable” in reducing
energy consumption.
“Back when oil was 6c a gallon, we
were using about 900,000 gallons to heat
the campus,” he said. “Today oil is 82c a
gallon but we’ve cut our consumption in
half while heating many more square

25

Custom-built computerized
system provides control
where it is needed most

Building in energy efficiency: correcting the old
and getting it right in the new
The most obvious way to make a building
energy efficient is to build it that way. In
the latest additions to the campus, plan­
ners have included not only “standard”
materials but also a series of innovative
systems.
Currently under construction, the
Cornell Science and Engineering Li­
brary (pictured here) will feature a solar
domestic hot water heating system,
double glazed windows, solar shading,

26

flexible light switching, and ventilation
and cooling to permit maximum cutback
at times of low occupancy.
Mertz Hall, the newest dormitory,
completed last year, is termed a “good
energy efficient building” with the best of
modern standards in insulation and
glazed windows.
Ware Pool boasts a heat recovery sys­
tem that captures heat from shower and
the pool runoff water and reuses it. A
solar south wall was installed to preheat
outside air used in the ventilation system.
In buildings erected before 1973 a
series of projects, some already under­
way, are being undertaken to increase
efficiency. Adhering to the cardinal rule
never to heat a space when it is unoccu­
pied, the College is making changes to
the heating system in the Du Pont Sci­
ence Building and the Tarble Pavilion.
In the science building, the heating
zones for the lecture hall and the library
will become independent of the rest of
the building. These two areas can then be
heated after normal class hours without
heating the unoccupied portions of the
building. A similar arrangement in the
Lamb-Miller Field House addition will
allow the heat to be shut off in the new
gymnasium while the department offices
and training room are occupied and
heated.

Energy control has entered the computer
age at Swarthmore. Known as the
central energy management system, a
custom designed network controls all
the individual heating and cooling oper­
ations in major campus buildings from a
central microprocessor console located
in the heating plant.
According to campus officials the sys­
tem is expected to reduce the College’s
annual energy bill by more than $ 100,000
per year, paying for the investment in
less than three years.
William Stanton, director of the physi­
cal plant, describes the system as “un­
complicated but highly effective. This is
our system, one we put together with the
manufacturers and contractor, rather
than a prefabricated ‘package.’”
The system provides central control of
heating and hot water systems, and of
the major electric users: McCabe, Lang,
and Ware Pool air conditioning units,
building ventilating fans and circulating
pumps, and the lights at the LambMiller Field House.
Cost savings are realized in several
ways:
•By “duty cycling” equipment, i.e.,
turning equipment off for brief periods
when it is not needed to maintain the
desired space temperatures.
•By “demand limiting” of consump­
tion by reducing the amount of electricity
or steam being used at any given time.
Lowering the peak electrical usage saves
thousands of dollars in charges that the
College pays in addition to its regular
electric bill. Demand limiting of steam
allows the central plant boiler to make
steam more efficiently, hence less ex­
pensively.
•With freeze-up protection, which
automatically turns heat on in buildings
when the temperature drops near freez­
ing. This feature allows the College to
maintain very low temperatures in build­
ings during vacation shutdowns without
the danger of pipes freezing and bursting.
Because they are controlled at a cen­
tral location, building systems can be
adjusted quickly for changes in weather
or scheduling, formerly impossible when
adjustments had to be made manually in
individual buildings.
“Although our watchword is conser­
vation,” Stanton says, “we have to
balance saving money against the possiSW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

bility of interrupting the educational
process. For example, we could save
money by closing the library at 10 P.M.
but it must stay open until midnight to
allow students to study. The educational
process must go on. It’s the waste of
energy that we hope to eliminate.”

Getting the word out
When the College’s Energy Task Force
was formed several years ago, one of its
major charges was to promote indi­
vidual conservation through education,
information, and encouragement. Help­
ing to fulfill that task, in part, has been
the periodic publication of the Conser­
vation Bulletin, a newsletter filled with
energy-saving tips, reports on faculty
research projects, updates on improve­
ments in the physical plant, and other
cost-effective programs to reduce the
impact of spiraling energy costs. Edited
by Gordon Cheesman ’75, a planning
engineer in facilities planning and utili­
zation, the Bulletin has become a popu­
lar source of energy information on
campus.

Students: Tomorrow’s
consumers tackle
problems today
Give a student a roll of weatherstripping
and a hammer and you solve two prob­
lems at the same time: sealing hundreds
of dormitory room windows from drafts
and providing the additional manpower
needed to complete a large job quickly.
The first such project was undertaken

during the fall of 1980 when students in
Mary Lyon IV organized a group of resi­
dent volunteers to work on their dormi­
tory. Using materials supplied by the
College, teams of students completed
weatherstripping their windows in one
afternoon. The result has been a more
energy efficient building and increased
comfort in the rooms.
This past fall, students from all over
campus organized into a Student Energy
Force, an informal group of nearly sixty
members who divide their time between
study and discussion on various energy
topics and physical projects around
campus.
According to Evelyn Peelle ’84, one of
the organizers, projects to date have con­
centrated on installing permanent wea­
therstripping on windows in Woolman
House, Ashton House, and Wharton
and Parrish Halls, and semi-permanent
weatherstripping in Willets, Hallowed,
and Dana dormitories.
Meeting for weekly dinner discus­
sions, the Student Energy Force has
begun devoting more of its time to “edu­
cational projects to learn more about
alternate energy sources,” says Peelle.
Currently she and other group mem­
bers are concentrating on ordering films,
arranging for a series of displays on
“some exciting energy projects going on
around the world” for the 1982-83 year,
and, they hope, arranging for forums
dealing with topics like both sides of the
nuclear power question.
Says Peelle: “Everyone is aware of
energy problems. What we’re trying to
do is find topics of interest while
remaining apolitical.”

Taking matters (and hammers) into their own hands, this group o f Mary Lyon IV residents
was among volunteers who installed weatherstripping around the dormitory windows.
Pictured are (left to right): David Pacun ’83, Walter Hermanns ’82, Anne Mylott ’83, and
Darius Rejali ’81. (Photo by Martin Natvig.)
APRIL 1982

Energy research pursued
in the lab, in the field—
and on the roof
Technological advances often have their
roots in basic research conducted on the
nation’s campuses. At Swarthmore, one
topic of research—energy—has occu­
pied the efforts of many faculty mem­
bers, a significant number of whom are
involved with pure research on campus
and at facilities around the world. In the
curriculum, the kinds of work being
done are marked by diverse interests:
fission and fusion reactions (physics),
windmills and oceanic studies (engineer­
ing), and political, economic, and tech­
nological issues affecting development
of the nation’s energy policy (political
science).
On campus two of the more visible
experiments involve taking advantage
of the sun. A prototype solar dryer has
been erected at the north end of the
campus on the rim of the lacrosse field.
It will test the feasibility of using the
sun’s energy to dry various agricultural
and industrial materials. According to
Frederick Orthlieb, assistant professor
of engineering, tests are being conducted
using concrete sand in the first of a
series of studies to determine the way
different materials dry as they are peri­
odically raked down the sunwarmed
slope below the translucent fiberglass
cover of the device.
“In processing sugarcane, for exam­
ple, the solids that remain are burned to
provide process heat,” he said. “The
moisture content left in the waste is so
high that oil must be added to burn it. If
we can find a way to reduce the moisture
cheaply, it cold make sugar cheaper.
“Projects using small scale energy
systems are of particular interest to us,”
he added, “because we can work on
them and involve students in all phases
of the research, from heat transfer and
fluid mechanics to instrumentation and
computer modeling.”
Meanwhile, on the roof of Papazian
Hall, three solar domestic hot water
systems are being tested. The brainchild
of Arthur McGarity, assistant professor
of engineering, the three systems (which
range from low- to high-cost) are being
tested to determine which delivers the
best level of performance per dollar.
Students and faculty began collecting
data in January to determine the
amount of solar energy each system can
supply in this geographic area.
27

THE COLLEGE
Grants (SEOG) provide exceptionally
needy students with campus-based
federal grants. The College also admin­
isters the College Work-Study Program
(CWSP), to subsidize 80 percent of
For the past year, the higher education
needy students’ part-time employment.
community has been increasingly af­
In addition to receiving direct grants
fected by changes in federal policies.
and College-based employment, stu­
President Reagan’s proposed budget
dents borrow through two federally
for fiscal year 1983 raises particular
initiated programs. The National Direct
concerns for financial aid. Following
Student Loan program (NDSL) offers
are some of the considerations which
College-administered federal loans to
make this issue so important to the
students. Guaranteed Student Loans
College and to students’ families.
(GSL) are provided by banks under
Swarthmore College is and has been
conditions
set by the government. Since
committed to a policy of admitting stu­
NDSL
funds
are insufficient to meet the
dents without regard to their financial
borrowing needs of all needy students,
circumstances and, once they have been
Swarthmore encourages some to use
admitted, offering a financial aid pack­
GSL for the recommended loan element
age sufficient to meet their analyzed
of their package. Others, who do not
needs. “Need-blind admission” is the
demonstrate need by the College’s anal­
familiar term for this policy, which
ysis, also have been eligible by statute
enables the College to make decisions
and have chosen to seek help from GSL
about applicants on the basis of their
to supply part of the expected family
talents without considering their ability
contribution.
to pay, and which, it is hoped, enables
Federal financial aid to students is
students to accept an offer of admission
not
an irreplaceable element of Swarthusing criteria other than costs.
more’s budget, but it is very significant.
Between 1976-77 and 1981-82, the
In 1980-81, 17 percent of the $1,907,603
proportion of students receiving finan­
awarded in scholarships and grants con­
cial assistance from the College rose
sisted of federal Pell and SEOG funds.
from 34 percent to 45 percent. In the
A more significant sum is the total loan
same period the average Swarthmore
figure borrowed by Swarthmore stu­
dents and their families. Need-based
NDSL and GSL, plus additional GSL
discretionary loans for flexibility in
family finances, amounted to $1,902,276
in 1980-81, nearly identical to the
amount of outright grant aid awarded
by all sources. Although only the direct
federal grants are counted as income to
the College, the loans obtained are
largely transformed into family contri­
butions to meet the self-help expectation.
The accompanying table (next page)
shows the projected effects on the
College of proposals to be debated in
Congress this spring.
The growing precariousness of federal
financial aid funding has been moni­
tored by the College for some time.
Firefighters from seven local fire companies battled unsuccessfully to save Mary Lyon II
Policy options for distributing financial
during an early morning blaze March 26. There were no injuries and damage was too
aid
and for balancing it among other
extensive to determine immediately the cause o f the fire. Built in 1922, it was one o f four
budgetary
priorities have been under
buildings o f the former Mary Lyon School purchased by the College in 1946. A t the time o f
intensive
study
in several College comthe fire the building was unoccupied.

College Faces Proposed Cuts
in Federal Financial Aid

28

grant to each assisted student moved
from $2,148 to $3,448, a five-year in­
crease of nearly 60 percent. In addition
to outright grants from College funds,
provided by endowment income and
annual giving, student financial aid
packages typically include College-administered government grants, loans,
and student employment. The proposed
reductions in federal aid to students
affect all these categories to some
degree. Surveying the history and scope
of the program will demonstrate the
complexities of the problem.
National commitment to federal sup­
port of higher education as a means of
developing the “mental resources and
technical skills of its young men and
women” has been an explicit bipartisan
priority since the National Defense Ed­
ucation Act of 1958, amplified by the
1965 Higher Education Act. The Edu­
cation Amendments of 1972 then intro­
duced the Basic Educational Oppor­
tunity Grants (BEOG, now called Pell
Grants), federally administered but
campus-monitored awards based on
need. Eligibility for Pell Grants was
extended by the 1978 Middle Income
Student Assistance Act to include
students from middle income families.
Supplemental Educational Opportunity

SW ARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

mittees, including the Advisory Com­
mittee on Resource Use and the stand­
ing faculty committee on Admissions
and Scholarships. Based on these
studies, the College foresees no need to
change the policy of admitting and
retaining students without regard to
their financial circumstances, even
given the extreme case of complete
federal withdrawal from financial aid
support.
Swarthmore does, however, see the
need to cover increased costs and re­
duced federal support by pressing all
sources of revenue: by continuing in­
creases in student charges at slightly
more than the projected inflation rate,
by heavy reliance on contributions from
alumni and other donors, and by high
expectations of spending from endow­
ment income. The College is also inves­
tigating alternative private loan sources
for families affected by federal reduc­
tions.
It is fortunate that in its institutional
budgeting, Swarthmore may be less
severely affected than many institutions
in 1982-83. But numerous Swarthmore
students and their families may be
sharing a nationwide stress that will run
from the painful to the educationally
disabling, depending upon family re­
sources and priorities. The College will
persist in its efforts to help.
While Swarthmore can note with
some sharpness of detail the impact of
dollar reductions upon College and
family budgets, the impact of the pro­
posed changes upon public policy
emerges with blunt force. By attempting
to dismantle a bipartisan commitment
to the principles of access and choice in

Pell (BEOG)

higher education, the present proposals
put at risk not only the immediate edu­
cational goals of many talented young
people but also the fullest development
of a generation. President Theodore
Friend commented on this problem at a
recent press conference of college and
university presidents from the Phila­
delphia area: “In other national systems,
birth, wealth, ideology, or chance play a
large role in determining who has access
to higher education, and the relative
diversity of institutions themselves is
limited. The American system, however,
has provided both range of choice
among institutions of many kinds, and
breadth of access to students of all
kinds. Present and proposed federal
policy threatens both of these charac­
teristics of our national strength in
higher education.
“Maximal education for a variety of
talents and energies is a minimal expec­
tation of a democratic society,” said Mr.
Friend. “When we live in a world of
competitive nation states, to restrict
opportunity for young Americans and
to stifle their creativity is to take a
dangerously short-sighted view of the
national interest.”
Whatever federal policy and practice
shall become, Swarthmore recognizes
that family and institutional resources
should be the first applied to the edu­
cational investment, and the policies of
the College reflect that obligation. As
federal policy evolves, Swarthmore will
strive to the utmost to maintain its
present policies: to admit students with­
out regard to financial circumstances
and to offer a financial aid package
sufficient to meet analyzed need.

Losses from proposed
rescissions for 1982-83
(base 1981-82)

Proposed FY83 budget
effects in 1983-84

20-40%

$33,000-66,000

Additional loss certain
but difficult to estimate

$40,000

Program eliminated
(106 recipients in 1981-82)

SEOG

25%

CWSP

12% $25,000

NDSL
SSIG (State Student
Incentive Grants)
GSL

APRIL 1982

Additional loss

Losses to student borrowers Program eliminated
who use loans to meet tuition (45 recipients in 1981-82)
$12,000

Program eliminated

Changes in eligibility, interest subsidies, and borrowing
limits will reduce availability of loans for family
contributions to meet College charges

Philip T. Sharpies ’10,
emeritus Board member,
dead at 92
Philip T. Sharpies ’10, emeritus member
of the Board of Managers, died in
January at his home in Palm Beach,
Florida. He was 92.
A noted industrialist, aviation pioneer,
and Republican fundraiser, he was
founder, chairman, and board president
of the family interests: Sharpies Corp.,
Sharpies Chemicals, and Sharpies Oil.
Mr. Sharpies was a member of the
executive committee of the Pennsylvania
Republican party, serving as chairman
of the finance committee from 19501953 and again from 1960-1963.
An amateur aviator who began mak­
ing balloon flights in 1910, he was a
founder of the Aircraft Owners and
Pilots Association, the largest noncom­
mercial aviators association in the coun­
try. His avid support of the Boy Scouts
earned him the first Roger S. Firestone
Award from the Valley Force Council as
well as the 50th Year Active Scouters
Award.
He was named a member of the Board
of Managers in 1947 and later served on
various committees and as vice chairman
until 1969, when he was granted emeritus
status. His commitment to the College
was further demonstrated in 1964 with
his donation of Sharpies Dining Hall as
part of the centennial celebration.
Mr. Sharpies was one of twenty-seven
members of his Quaker family who were
Swarthmore graduates. His father, Philip
M. Sharpies, who was not an alumnus,
served for many years (1909-1935) as an
active member of the Board of Managers.
He is survived by his wife, Edith Walz
Sharpies; a daughter, Wynne S. Ballin­
ger; son Philip P , and seven grand­
children.
29

WEEKEND
Celebrate the centennial of the Swarthmore
Alumni Association, 1882-1982, and help
wish Dorie and Elizabeth a Friendly goodbye!

April 1982/Second-class postage paid at Swarthmore, PA 19081 and additional mailing offices.

FRIDAY
JUNE

It’s fireworks! Literally and figuratively we’re going to shoot
the works to honor a one-hundred-year birthday and the
presidency of Theodore Friend. We re throwing a party: good
food and the drink of your choice, Swarthmoreans from all
classes, a big band and a small combo for your listening and
dancing pleasure, a presentation or two, som e remarks and
reminiscences, a musical ode by Peter Schickele ’57, and a
dazzling flourish of fireworks. Don’t miss this epoch-making,
earth-shaking party!

The day is chockablock with celebrations,
reunions, friends, and music. Top billing
goes to a stellar panel of alumni Presidents!
SATURDAY
JUNE

Special for this special year is our five-star presidential
symposium— Friend, Kerr, Lyman, Perkins, and Prentice.
There’ll be a bluegrass band and a parade, balloons and a
bird walk, sports for the participant and spectator, a concert
in the beautiful Lang Concert Hall, and your own reunion
class parties. If you’ve always wanted to make noise in the
library, com e and cheer for the runners in the Alumni
McCabe Mile. Pick and choose your favorites and save time
for good conversation with friends under a tree on the front
campus or on a walk in the Crum.

Full details of Alumni Weekend, and a resewation blank, will be sent to you.