An assessment of the determination of energy needs: The case of nuclear power

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) forced the Atomic Energy Commission, and subsequently the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to weigh costs and benefits of proposed nuclear power plants. This paper examines how the Commission has developed a framework for decision making in response to the NEPA mandate. Its principal conclusions are that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not interested in being in the business of assessing power needs, and that regulating need by electricity source is counterproductive. If the question of power needs should be addressed at all, the paper argues that a more general framework should be used which would apply to all new facilities. Such a framework would allow a utility to build the plant of its choice, subject to satisfaction of existing regulations, after it is determined that sufficient demand exists.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Quality Laboratory at Caltech. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on the Economics of Nuclear Power Regulation at the Brookings Institution. I wish to thank Roger Noll, James Krier and Gary Miller for their helpful comments. Any remaining errors are solely my responsibility.     

Learning in government programs and the usefulness of cost-benefit analysis: Lessons from manpower and urban renewal history

Especially in the social program area, the outcomes of new programs are extremely difficult to predict, and it is rarely clear a priori which of several competing program techniques ought to be tried. In such an atmosphere, ex post program evaluation methods which take account of possibilities of “learning by doing” can promote the selection over time of those program elements which maximize beneficial results per unit cost. A basic premise of this paper is that recent applications of cost-benefit techniques have frequently ignored learning considerations, greatly reducing their usefulness. The “learning by doing” features of the recent history of manpower and urban renewal programs are examined to demonstrate the plausibility of this premise.     

Visualization of dyes on thin-layer chromatography plates by means of the argon ion laser

A simple method for the detection of nanogram amounts of dyes by means of their fluorescence in the visible region of the spectrum is described. To stimulate the fluorescence, an argon ion laser with principal lines of 514.5 nm and 488.0 nm is used. The sensitivity of the technique allows the visualization of an amount of dye smaller than could be detected with either visible absorbance or ultraviolet stimulated fluorescence.