emerald
WPPSS offers to unload a pair of plants
For Sale: Two abandoned nuclear power
plants, numbers 4 and 5. One plant is located at
Hanford nuclear reservation, site of a recently
dedicated Fast Flux Facility. Second plant located
at Satsop. Only 83 owners at present. Contact
WPPSS. Will take best offer or consider trade.
The above makes light of the Washington
Public Power Supply System and its attempt to rid
itself of two terminated plants. This close-out sale
follows the supply system's three-phase program
for disposing of its holdings.
The first phase is an attempt to sell the plants
as they are. In the case of plants No 4 and No. 5.
they were terminated in January while not even
near completion.
The second phase is to sell them in parts. The
third phase is to have the project site returned to a
condition of inactivity specified under federal and
state guidelines.
WPPSS has been plagued with financial and
construction problems from its inception. And a
reevaluation of nuclear power by utility ratepayers
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has punctured the myth that nuclear power would
be safe, efficient, and above all cheap. More and
more Americans are reluctant to underwrite the
high cost of nuclear power Since the Three-Mile
Island incident and the almost weekly reports of
nuclear power plant emergencies and the perva
sive hazard to communities in the vicinity of a
nuclear power plant Americans have become very
mistrusting of nuclear power.
The sale of plants No. 4 and No. 5 is indicative
of the financial straits WPPSS is in. The supply
system will issue $590 million in bonds to help
finance the remaining WPPSS projects — one of
which, plant No. 2, is 90 percent complete.
The 83 "owners” who are “selling” plants No
4 and No. 5 include Blachly-Lane Electric Co-op,
Lane Electric Cooperative, and the Springfield
Utility Board. But don't expect the "selling” to
benefit the "owners". There has been some
recent speculation that WPPSS may default on
their previous bond obligations which run into the
millions
There are buyers, if one accepts the word of
Al Squire, deputy managing director of the supply
system Squire says there have been plenty of
offers. Among the offers were people claiming to
be backed by Arab oil money, a Japanese trading
company and representatives of Swiss banks
Sounds like big money, though most retreated
when Squires asked them to put down a couple of
million dollars as "good faith" money Squires
admits that the offers have not panned out.”
WPPSS may as well move swiftly through the
second and into the third phase, and dismantle
plants No. 4 and No 5. With the ratepayers in
revolt, the economic factors and the general
mistrust of nuclear power would a wise investor
take a chance on WPPSS?
Nitpicking
In the interest of preventing
my being drummed out of my
Constitutional Law class. I must
clarify a statement attributed to
me in the Emerald April 30,
within the article "Election
Court Cans Charges.” As a
member of the Elections Court,
along with Julie Bell and Jeff
Boiler, I dealt with a complaint
lodged against ASUO President
Rich Wilkins' right to repeat that
rumor at a fraternity dinner, I
stated “He has a right to say
anything he wants under the
First Amendment ” As per that
situation, my statement was
correct, however, in the general
scheme of things, no one has a
right to say just anything he
wants. The First Amendment
does not confer an absolute
right to speak without respon
sibility. It does not give an un
restricted and unabridged
license or immunity for every
possible use of language. You
cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded
theater, obscene or blas
phemous speech is illegal, there
are stipulations against in
citement to violate criminal law
and defamation is a no-no.
(Legal term). Clarifying tfiis may
sound a bit inane or incon
sequential but, here, at the law
school, nitpicking is our busi
ness
Cathi Bulone
IFC, law
Not a gadfly
This is to set the record
straight on Mr Hiawatha's
reprehensible personal attack
directed towards me in his letter
appearing May 3, 1982 in this
paper
The letter regarding SPA
campaign violations was the
first letter of mine appearing in
this paper ! am not the so called
'“gadfly'' who Hiawatha con
demns for using this letter
column to espouse personal
conservative views
Additionally, if liberals con
done unethical campaign tac
tics and the irresponsible use of
student funds as Hiawatha sug
gests, I'll be happy to be count
ed among the conservatives this
“other” Michael Larson repre
sents
Mike A. Larson
Law
debbie howlett
editor's note
With a bid to force the Graduate Teaching
Fellow’s Federation to renegotiate a part of its
contract, the administration played a hand that
held little more than a promise and a prayer But
the GTF union called the bluff and the adminis
tration was left holding a duece to the GTFF's ace
Shirley Menaker, representing the adminis
tration, calls herself "the University's contract
administrator for the renegotiation," a full-house
title and a straight flush example of the adminis
tration's confidence that the contract would be
renegotiated
Standing pat and trying to buy the hand, a
poker-faced Menaker told a GTFF meeting last
April 21, that if the salary increase clause wasn't
renegotiated layoffs would have to be im
plemented The implication was that layoffs
meant GTFs, not workloads
That was the bluff
But GTFF Pres Brenda Cochrane has an
other phrase to describe the action She calls it
“dangling a carrot in the GTFs face "
Cochrane explains that there was no way the
administration would opt to layoff GTFs because
the University wants to keep graduate enrollment
as well as the entitlement pot “up ” By laying off
GTFs, the University would have to fold both
hands
Menaker concurred with Cochrane's
statement during a discussion last Friday and
then played it close to the vest, saying that the
University never intended to lay off GTFs. Instead,
said Menaker, the administration had planned to
"lay off" workloads
Menaker is. of course, correct that the
University had little intention of laying off in
dividual GTFs — what they want is to cut back pay
and hours at an even rate
At their April meeting, the GTFF discussed
several alternatives to layoffs, one of which was a
reduction in workload with a proportionate .
reduction in pay Menaker told the group that
because a large number of GTFs are at the 15
FTE level (the minimum appointment which al
lows a tuition waiver) that kind of reduction didn't
seem feasible
"Without the pushback in the salary in
crease,'' Menaker told the GTFF meeting, "we ll
have to cut 3.2 percent of GTFs."
Sans poker face, Menaker is now in the
process of drafting a letter to the State System's
Board of Higher Education That letter asks that
the 15 FTE guide line for a tuition waiver be
dropped to 14 for the University for a period not
to exceed one year Menaker says the plea to
change the ruling is the only way to implement the
proposed layoff uniformly amona 700 teaching
GTFs.
It seems that most of the union membership,
about half of the total GTF count, believed that
re-opening a ratified contract was a substantial
compromise especially given that the University
was running such a weak bluff
So the union membership called the bluff and
is now in the process of raking in what they
consider to be a very sizable pot
But how far can the GTFF get with a stacked
deck and a hand of aces and eights?
staff
s
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