Similarly, on the nuclear side, once we get into actually coupling a nuclear reactor to a desalting plant, this will mean greater expenditures for the Commission on the development and the design and ultimately the hardware for them.

Mr. WYATT. Well, as far as you know, then, there has been no sudden, technological breakthrough or development in the last year, say, that makes it more feasible now to leap ahead than it was, say, a year ago?

Mr. RAMEY. No, sir. This is an engineering development program. The events that occurred before last year, I think, that make this program make sense is, one, as I mentioned in my statement, that nuclear energy in the larger size reactors is getting cheaper, and that you have a source of low-cost steam in dual-purpose plants that makes it look more feasible to get water at a cost that would be perhaps economic for domestic, industrial, and municipal purposes.

The other thing that has happened has been that the Point Loma desalting plant operated successfully. It did demonstrate that you could make water somewhat cheaper than it had been before. The engineers who made who have studied this experience believe that this technology can be scaled up to couple with nuclear reactors and come up with plants that would be producing water in the cost range I mentioned.

Mr WYATT. In connection with your statement, the portion of it devoted to the international program, are you familiar in any detail with the type of information which we have given to other nations and which we have received from other nations?

Mr. RAMEY. Yes, sir; I am.

Mr. WYATT. Do you feel that our technology is further advanced than other nations in this field?

Mr. RAMEY. I believe our nuclear technology is better advanced than other nations. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and other countries participated in the Geneva Conference last September, in which there were survey papers and technical papers given on the status of nuclear technology. I think the general consensus was that the United States is still ahead.

There are other countries that are very well advanced-the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and Germany is coming up fast. That is on the nuclear side.

On the desalting side, I believe-and, again, you would want to ask Mr. Di Luzio on this certainly the British have done quite a bit of work on desalting plants, small scale plants that have been built in such places as Kuwait and other places such as the Caribbean.

I would think in terms of an organized program, we are a little bit ahead of them. And I think we have had a little more success in our development program, from the meetings that I have participated in. The Soviet Union also has built a plant that Secretary Udall mentioned this morning, on the Caspian Sea.

Mr. WYATT. What about the United Arab Republic, and the reviewing of their needs and their potential for nuclear desalting? Has this resulted in our giving technical information to the United Arab Republic?

Mr. RAMEY. The United Arab Republic has participated in these panels conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and

at those panels, each participant, including the United States, gives papers. And so there has been-they have received our papers, which are, of course, unclassified, and we have received their papers.

In addition, at the last meeting they talked to the U.S. Government, to the Interior people, and to myself, about looking into their needs. And so we sent a team over there last fall who visited the United Arab Republic and Tunisia, to assess whether a nuclear desalting plant would be feasible in terms of their requirements.

During that period, they had gone out for bids to American reactor manufacturers and desalting equipment suppliers, as well as to British, French, and other countries, and asked for proposals on a plant that would produce, as I recall, around 100,000 to 200,000 electrical kilowatts, and about 5 million gallons of water a day. The water would be used there in an experimental irrigation area along the Mediterranean, and the power would go into their grid.

Our people went over there on a team effort with the United Arab Republic, and our report is not out yet-it ought to be out in the next month or two.

Mr. WYATT. Approximately how many of our people went to the United Arab Republic for approximately how long?

Mr. RAMEY. There were three people-one AEC engineer, two from the Department of Interior, one from the Bureau of Reclamation, as I recall, and one from the OSW. And they were there approximately a week to 10 days. We have followed a similar type of approach with Israel. We would plan to do this when we initially look at the Mexico situation.

We find this is a rather convenient way of getting a sort of first cut on whether or not it makes any sense to look at the matter any deeper.

Mr.WYATT. Are there any plans, either tentative or underway now, to build any technical facilities in the United Arab Republic?

Mr. RAMEY. No.

Mr. WYATT. Those are all the questions I have.

Mr. ROGERS of Texas. Mr. Reinecke?

Mr. REINECKE. Thank you.

You referred to the price of power at 4 to 6 mills per kilowatt-hour. What amortization life is this, referring to the equipment?

Mr. RAMEY. This would be using private utility financing and amortization, and it would be a 30-year amortization period, and using normally a 12- to 14-percent fixed charge override on their costs.

Mr. REINECKE. These investment costs are reflected in this 4- to 6mill figure?

Mr. RAMEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. REINECKE. On the combination powerplants-maybe I don't have the concept quite clearly-any time we take power out of a given system for use such as in a desalting process, are we not thereby lowering the efficiency of what the plant was originally intended to put out if it was basically an electrical generation plant? We have only got so much energy, and we have got to split it and go two ways, so we really are not getting something for nothing here, are we?

Mr. RAMEY. I don't think we are getting something for nothing. And you appreciate I am not an engineer by training. I have Mr. Williams here.

From my lay understanding of it, it is that in your turbine generator system, it is economical to take your high pressures, higher temperature steam through a part of your turbine generator, and then it is your lower temperature or lower pressure steam that you could bleed into a desalting system, and thereby get a more efficient use of the heat coming from a reactor. Reactor heat is relatively low temperature, low pressure steam, anyhow.

Also, the actual steam that finally comes out from a generator, from a nuclear power electric generator, would then be routed, instead of going to the condenser, would go through the desalting facility.

Now, you are not getting something for nothing, but you do get some advantage. You don't get as much actually as people might think, my technical people tell me.

Mr. Williams, do you want to comment on that?

Mr. WILLIAMS. As an example, let us assume that you have a given thermal size for your heat source, say a reactor of 1,500 megawatts thermal capacity. If used in a power only situation, you would expect somewhere in the neighborhood of about 500 megawatts of electricity to be produced, 500,000 electrical kilowatts. If you use this same reactor in a dual-purpose application, the electrical production would be reduced perhaps to the neighborhood of about 200 megawatts electrical, but you could provide the energy necessary to produce approximately 150 million gallons of water a day.

Mr. REINECKE. But basically we still are not getting something for nothing. That steam you are applying to the salt water could also be applied to the intake water, to preheat that before it goes into the

boiler.

Mr. RAMEY. Yes.

You do get the advantage of building a larger plant than you would build for power or for water only, and by building a larger plant your unit costs of steam go down, for both purposes. That is one of the economies.

Mr. REINECKE. Thank you.

Just for my information-maybe everyone else understands it-but I would like a clarification or solidification of the difference between thermal kilowatts and electrical kilowatts.

Mr. RAMEY. Well, the thermal kilowatts are your kilowatts of heat of the steam, and the electrical kilowatts are what comes out of your electric generator normally. And this is a sort of a measure, I guess, of the efficiency of your system.

Normally, you divide your thermal megawatts by 4 to come upsometimes 3-to come up with your electrical kilowatts, in a nuclear powerplant.

Mr. REINECKE. Instead of referring to it as so many B.t.u. of energy, you talk about thermal kilowatts?

Mr. RAMEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. REINECKE. Do you feel we are at a stage in this whole technology where we are really ready to go ahead and build large-scale plants, using nuclear sources, or do you feel that there is a good bit of research and development and technology yet to be accomplished before we can spend large amounts of money on full-scale plants?

Mr. RAMEY. Well, it depends on how you define large-scale plants.

We think that there are these commercial nuclear heat sources that can be coupled, with some engineering and design effort, with desalting plants in the sizes of 50 to 150 million gallons a day.

Now, these desalting plants, in terms of what are in existence today, would be large, but in terms of future projections on very large sizesthey are what we would call intermediate size plants.

We think with some engineering development on the coupling of reactors to desalting plants, that this could be accomplished in the next few years. And this is what we are working on now, these engineering studies on what is the most optimum way, the optimum amount of power as against water in the systems how you design them to get the most efficient use of your power facility and the desalting facility, and

so on.

Mr. REINECKE. Would you recommend final completion of these studies prior to the construction?

Mr. RAMEY. Yes; we would not want to start actual construction of plants until we have had finished these types of design studies.

Mr. REINECKE. Thank you very much. No further questions.
Mr. ROGERS of Texas. Mr. Aspinall.

Mr. ASPINALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry I was not here to hear the Commissioner's presentation. He always makes a very effective and factual presentation.

Mr. RAMEY. Thank your, sir.

Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Commissioner, how much did the Atomic Energy Commission spend on desalting programs in this field during fiscal 1965?

Mr. RAMEY. That would be through this June 30th?

Mr. ASPINALL. That is right.

Mr. RAMEY. It would be around $1 million.

Mr. ASPINALL. And how much is proposed in the next fiscal year? Mr. RAMEY. It is budgeted at around $2.9 million.

Mr. ASPINALL. What do you propose, then, for the 5-year life of the extension period as set forth in the legislation now before us?

Mr. RAMEY. That amount of money would go up modestly. That portion which is directly applicable to desalting would be about $20 million for the 5-year period. This would be in addition to our other reactor development efforts and prototype assistance such as the heavy water organic-cooled reactor program.

Mr. ASPINALL. That would be in addition to the $200 million which is being requested in this legislation; is that right?

Mr. RAMEY. Yes.

Mr. ASPINALL. Now, you have kept in close touch with the Department of the Interior. Do you have your program envisioned for the additional period proposed to be authorized by this legislation? In other words, do you have your goals set up?

Mr. RAMEY. For the period beyond the 5 years, or for this 5-year period? Yes, sir.

Mr. ASPINALL. You have that.

Is that in such form that you can give it to the committee?
Mr. RAMEY. Yes, sir.

Essentially, the general scope and goals are set out in this report to the President, I would say, Mr. Aspinall. We could-I would be glad to specify it in greater detail, if you felt that was desirable.

Mr. ASPINALL. I understand we have never even received the report. And we would like to have something in this respect in the record of the hearing.

Mr. RAMEY. We brought

Mr. ASPINALL. Are you in position to give us a copy of the report?
Mr. RAMEY. Yes, sir; we brought 50 copies to the session this after-
noon, after the question that was raised in this morning's session.
Mr. ASPINALL. We have the Interior report.

Mr. RAMEY. Yes, sir. We brought copies of the joint report.
Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Commissioner, where is the joint report?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Aspinall, the joint one is the report that states at the bottom: "In collaboration with the Atomic Energy Commission." Starting about two-thirds of the way through the report is the portion that pertains to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Mr. RAMEY. We submitted a report with the Interior Department. I think the confusion arose was that the Interior Department, for uses in their own Department, had just put out the Office of Saline Water part of the program, and they used the same cover with the Atomic Energy Commission heading left off.

Mr. ASPINALL. Well, Mr. Chairman, I don't believe we should put it in the record. I would ask this report to the President, entitled "Collaboration With the Atomic Energy Commission," be made a part of the files, so we don't lose it.

Mr. ROGERS of Texas. Without objection, it will be made a part of the files.

Mr. REINECKE. Will the gentleman yield?

Perhaps this should be off the record. But there must be a third report, because this is not the other one that I saw. The other paper which I saw had some bar graphs in it that I was interested in, which are not in either of the two I have now.

Mr. WILLIAMS. This contains the only report that the AEC has published, sir.

Mr. RAMEY. There have been reports on these engineering studies that I mentioned, that carry various graphs and bars and so on.

Mr. REINECKE. As a matter of fact, the other cover, Mr. Chairman, is brown instead of black-it is the same cover, but it is again another report. Apparently Mr. Di Luzio knows something about it.

Mr. ROGERS of Texas. It is this one?

Mr. REINECKE. No; it is the same printed copy, but it is either a beige paper or brown ink. It is something different. Just a few pages. Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Commissioner, as we are thinking about this period-into the seventies-we talk about 150-million-gallon-per-day plant, and a 300-million-gallon-per-day plant, what do you envision as of this time, or have you thought about it, as to what the cost of the water will be at that time?

Mr. RAMEY. The estimate of the cost of water from these plants that would produce, say, from 75 to 150 million gallons of water a day, and using the current reactor technology, which is to say we would also produce perhaps 200,000 or 300,000 electrical kilowatts-the projected cost of water is in the range of 30 cents a thousand gallons-anywhere from 28 to 33 cents, in that range..

Mr. ASPINALL. Which means a hundred dollars per acre-foot.
Mr. RAMEY. Roughly; yes, sir.