I guess I sort of got carried away. Looking into the latest status refreshed my memory of the whole debacle. There are lessons in this but I doubt if anyone is learning. What got WOOPS into their mess? Small town boosterism at its worst? Greed and self interest? Small minds unable to grasp larger concepts? Military secrecy? All that and more. The eastern three quarters of Washington state is a desert. The far east has a deep fertile soil and sufficient moisture that can support dryland farming. The center is a thin soiled desert known as the channeled scablands. During the last 7 or so ice ages, an ice dam plugged the Clark Fork forming glacial Lake Missoula. When the ice sheet receded, the dam broke and millions of gallons of water gouged out Lake Pend Orelle and carved the Spokane Valley. The outflow created a delta called the Channeled Scablands in central Washington. This is an area of vast distances and the Columbia River. Floyd Domminy of the BLR believed that no good came of a river without a dam. During the depression, public works programs such as Boulder Dam put a lot of people to work, provided electricity for to power the many new products on the market, and water to irrigate deserts. A natural place to build a dam was near the Grand Coulee on the Columbia. It would do all of those things and more. Well, Washington did not have the political pull of California so the Grand Coulee dam was not complete until 1949. But by then the Army Corps of Engineers had made many more dams along the lower Columbia to "improve navigation." Turbines were added to generate electricity for the rural farmers and the cities of Spokane, Portland & Seattle among others. During WWII the need for aluminum bloomed. Bauxite is in plentiful supply but it takes massive amounts of energy. Here was all that cheap energy in the northwest so aluminum smelters sprang up in remote places such as John Day and Spokane. Bauxite brought in from half way around the world was smelted and the aluminum sent to the aircraft factories of Seattle. Also during WWII the government had a super secret project to build the worlds most powerful explosive. They needed a place far from prying eyes and far enough away that an accident would not be noticed. There was just such a place in the bend of the Columbia near the tri cities of Washington. Run out a few farmers and you have Hanford Nuclear Reservation. After the war Coulee dam was completed. This was a dam not for navigation but for land reclamation. The rater powered large generators that pumped water into the Grand Coulee which was then pumped to farms. There was a lot of energy available so why not add more turbines. And add they did as a growing Seattle and the northwest needed more electricity. New uses for aluminum came along every day. Bonneville Power Administration was formed to sell all that excess power and a tie line was added to power Southern California. At the time BPA had a nice formula to decide when more generating capacity was needed. They just drew a straight line from some point in the past to now and projected the line to the future. That was the generating capacity needed and Floyd Domminy was more than willing to build dams. Nearly every stream in the Northwest has several dams but we have destroyed salmon runs in the process. During the 60s and 70s it became increasingly difficult to build dams. The attempt to dam Hells Canyon finally made the dam builders slow down. Meanwhile the BPA straight line was not going to be meet. So the BPA sent out a "Notice of Insuffiency" to all its major customers. What they said in affect was that there was not enough power to meet future needs. This sent a minor panic wave. It was decided to build a nuclear plant to meet those needs, besides the governor of Washington was the former head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dixie Lee Ray. Thus was WPPSS brought on stage. They would build the plant and BPA would distribute the power. Other players were various northwest utilities such as Washington Water Power. They started to build one plant. Where would be a better place that someplace with an existing nuclear infrastructure, some place like the Hanford Reservation. Lots of cooling water, plenty of places to store waste, and the dirtiest nuclear plant in existence, the Purex Plant. A plant that had released plutonium into the atmosphere just to see where it would go. But the line showed that would not be enough so another plant was started. Easy, everything is in place so build it next to the first one. Well eastern Washington felt left out of the political gravy train so they wanted one. Boom! Satsop became the site of another plant. Well delays showed the capacity below the line so more plants were needed. It was relatively cheap to copy the plans and build another. Satsop had an in by this time so the same thing happened there. Now we are up to 5 plants and the money train starts full speed. By dint of special laws there was little oversight over the bond purchasing. They were issued and they were bought. Plans read wrong? no problem let another contract and issue another set of bonds to rebuild. New AEC or NRA requirements? More contracts and more bonds. Labor problems and schedule slips? You guessed it, more contracts and more bonds. Bonds need repayment? Peter can always pay Paul. This continued until the bond companies realized where things were headed and started raising questions. By this time it was at $24 Billion and only one plant was anywhere near complete, #2. There was no money and the bonds defaulted, $2.25 billion worth. #2 was completed and is now the most expensive producer of power in the world and has the worst safety record of any plant in the US. #3 was not completed and has had its license to build pulled. They are trying to sell #1 as an industrial part but it is a hard sell. The remainder are just giant concrete monuments of futility. The Washington Public Power Supply System has changed its name to Northwest Energy in an attempt to outrun its WOOPS name. BPA is under fire to repay some of its operating costs but has managed to dodge that political bullet with the election of a republican senator. What have we learned and who if anyone is learning it? Don Bowen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Valley Center, CA Senior Software Engineer Internet development and software engineering http://members.cts.com/crash/d/donb http://www.oldengine.org/members/ihc14 http://www.oldengine.org/members/ferguson/
