The World's New Temples

Henry Adams described the dynamo as modern man's equivalent of the medieval Virgin, and Rudyard Kipling celebrated its strength in Song of the Dynamo. Prime Minister Nehru has urged his countrymen to make pilgrimages to their "new temples": the dams and power plants rising across the face of India. In 1964 the world is hungry for electric power as never before--and is struggling to overcome a shortage of it. From Singapore, where new entrepreneurs hawk the output of 10-kw. mobile generators, to Switzerland, where ancient glaciers help turn turbines as they melt, East and West this year are expected to consume a staggering three trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity. That is double 1954's consumption--and by 1974 the total is expected to double again.

The race to keep up with rapidly rising demand keeps power in the news around the world each week; last week was no exception. Britain was building the world's most powerful nuclear station on an island off the Welsh coast, and two private utilities announced that they will build West Germany's second commercial atomic plant near Lingen in, of all places, the coal-rich Ruhr. In

Italy, which last year made Europe's biggest jump in power production, the nationalized power companies revealed plans to double their 47.5 billion kwh. capacity within eight years. Kenya is about to start work on a project that will harness a 900-ft. drop in the country's largest river, the Tana.

40 in a House. The increasing need for power is caused by the world's rapidly expanding population, the steady industrialization of underdeveloped nations and the increasing affluence of the West. Wealthier nations tend to treat electricity as if it were air; merchants often leave lights blazing all night, and big cities never grow dark. In the U.S., the average number of appliances in the home has risen from ten to 40 (including lamps) in 25 years, with a consequent drain on power. But electricity has also become a necessity in whole areas of the world that only recently regarded it as a luxury. In Kenya, for example, the East African Power & Lighting Co. is busy stringing cables through the bush to grass-roofed huts.

About 70% of the world's power is still generated by steam, most of which is produced by coal or, increasingly, by oil and gas. Highly industrialized nations depend on improving the efficiency of these sources to meet much of their power need; U.S. utilities now build thermal power plants right on top of coal fields because it is cheaper to transport power than coal, and Britain and France cooperate on an under-Channel cable that feeds French power to Britain at the breakfast power peak, then reverses to feed British power to France at its 5 p.m. dinnertime peak.

But the need for new power plants outpaces their construction. In a seven-year program, Australia is doubling its electrical output, partly to serve such expanding aluminum giants as Alcoa, Alcan, Kaiser and Pechiney. Iran has completed a new water and power project that is hailed as a Middle East TV A and will soon include an $800 million petrochemical complex. Brazil desperately needs more power; in the industrial city of Sao Paulo, which boasts steel mills, auto plants and TV antennas on slum roofs, 30% more power is needed than is produced.

Inexhaustible Source? The need for power is so great that nations now harness just about anything they can, from the atom to the ocean tides. Italy's railroads run partly on electricity generated by steam tapped from underground lava beds at Larderello in Tuscany. In Ghent, Belgium, the Sidmar steel plant, now being built, will draw power for peak production from a mounted jet airplane engine. The French are harnessing the swift tides that swirl around Saint-Malo and high in the Pyrenees are experimentally generating power by using heat from solar mirrors. New Zealand has started work on an underground hydro plant that will be fed with waters rushing through a huge, six-mile tunnel from Lake Manapouri.

Then there are, of course, such massive hydroelectric projects as the Aswan High Dam, now nearing first-stage completion in Egypt, and a new dam that is the world's highest, Switzerland's Grand Dixence (932 ft.).

Other sources of power are on the way, and may eventually solve a large part of the world's shortage. As atomic power becomes more economical, it is bound to be widely used as an efficient source of electricity. Scientists also estimate that they are about 15 years away from commercial MHD (for magnetohydrodynamics), which generates electricity by shooting ionized gas through a magnetic field. And in the most significant quest of all, physicists have, in the laboratory, leashed energy from the hydrogen atom. Used only for bombs up to now, this energy might eventually provide an inexhaustible source of power.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.