Federal role in dry and wet-dry cooling tower research, development, and demonstration

It is concluded that it is appropriate for the Energy Research and Development Administration (or its successor) to sponsor a program of fiscal, technical and management support directed at providing a commercial advanced concept wet/dry (or dry) cooling technology for electric utility use within ten years. This federal role is thought to be appropriate for several reasons, including: the need for such technology, although expected to grow only slowly at first, will eventually be quite widespread; wet/dry and dry cooling tower technology is currently available, but successful development of an advanced concept should produce significant cost savings for this component of power plant costs; established cooling tower vendors do not appear to have sufficient research dollars available to support a program of the magnitude planned by ERDA, although at least one non-vendor advanced concept development project is underway; the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the State of California and potentially other entities have expressed a willingness to support the ERDA program with significant funds, but state that they cannot assume complete funding at this time; and even without the shared funding mentioned above, the ERDA program is expected to produce discounted public and/or private industry benefits in excess of its costs