University Daily Kansan, August 20, 1981
Page 7
Nuclear plant blessing for Burlington businesses
By TIM ELMER Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
The construction of the plant has helped this town a lot, Burlington Mayor Floyd Lewis said recently.
For many in Burlington, Wolf Creek is not a problem. It is a blessing.
People in the Burlington area seem to be more concerned about how the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant has affected their pocketbooks than with the issues of plant safety, nuclear waste disposal and future electrical rates.
"I favor the nuclear power plant and I would say at least 90 percent of the people in Burlington favor Wolf Creek," Lewis said.
The plant, which is three miles east of the John Redmond Dam and six miles northeast of Burlington, is co-owned by Kansas City Power and Light Co., the Kansas Gas and Electric Co. and the Kansas Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. Because of the tremendous investment in the plant, electrical rates are expected to rise sharply after the plant becomes operable.
Construction of the plant started in 1977. It was scheduled to be finished in mid-1982 at an estimated cost of $500 million.
Plagued by endless problems, the completion date is now projected to be some time in 1984 at an expected cost of $1.7 billion.
Residents of Burlington don't seem to be concerned about those statistics. Are there more inclined to talk about statistics than relate to the growth of their town.
After the project started, Lewis said, the population of Burlington jumped from 2,200 to 3,800 people. Business has been good for many people in the town.
Sadie Settlemeyer, a waitress at the Lake View Cafe in New Straw, which is halfway between Burlington and Wolf Creek, said that before construction of Wolf Creek had started, there were lots of slack periods at the cafe.
"Business here now is pretty good year-round except if you get bad weather," she said. "Otherwise, people come in pretty much all the time."
In Burlington more than the stores and restaurants have prospered. The construction of new housing and the development of numerous mobile home parks and a rise in real estate prices all indicate that times are good.
Roy Bates, manager of Burlington Lumber and Supply Inc., said that although housing starts had slowed, at least 40 new houses had been built in
Burlington in the past three or four years.
Edwin Ware, also a waitress at Lake View Cafe, said two new schools had been built in Burlington in the last two years.
"We got a new elementary school and a new high school," she said. "They might have built them even if there were fewer of them, but they wouldn't have been as big and nice."
Mobile home parks have sprung up all over the place, Ware said. There are about two or three new trailer parks in and around them and three or four in New Strawn.
The demand for new housing has often real estate prices up, Lewis said.
"Real estate is high everywhere but I think it is a little higher here right now because it has a lot of investment."
Because business is booming in Burlington, the residents don't seem to be too concerned about the issues that appear in the newspapers so often, the safety, disposal of nuclear waste and the inevitably higher electrical rates.
Many people in the Burlington area think the plant is safe despite the technical and structural problems that have plagued the plant.
The concrete that formed the basement of the plant was found to be substandard. Cracks were discovered in the walls of the reactor and had to be removed. The cracks were defective and parts of the alarm and sprinkler systems had to be replaced.
Lewis said he felt sure that all those problems had been adequately correct.
"They caught the problems and fixed them," he said. "Just like that concrete deal. I went and saw that myself. It was hard, but I knew there were all in concrete. That all it was."
Ware said she also felt the plant was safe. People who work at the plant eat Lake View Cafe all the time and they don't talk about it being unsafe, she said.
"Not even the people at the hospital talk about it not be safe," she said. "They think it安全. Everyone around them used to it. They all think it is safe."
Lewis said he thought the power companies had learned a lot from the Three Mile Island accident. He said the situation putting in new and improved safety features that would prevent the same kind of thing happening at Wolf Creek.
The only concern he had about the safety of the plant was sabotage. But even that was unlikely because of the fact that they had taken to prevent it, he said.
"There is always a danger that something could happen," Lewis said. "There is a danger even when people cross the street."
The disposal of the spent nuclear fuel is yet another problem that doesn't seem to be of much concern to Burlington residents.
Were said she was not sure what they were going to do with the waste, "but whatever they do with it, I am sure it will be safe," she said.
Lewis said that although the United States had been the first to start using nuclear power, France and Russia had started importing United States in waste disposal methods.
In France, they reuse the spent fuel and don't have any problem with it, Lewis said.
"They send the waste back and get it recomposed into pellets and reuse it," he said. "When they get done with it, they don't have any trouble with nuclear waste because there is nothing left of it," he said.
He said laws in the United States prevented power plants from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
Bob Rives, vice president for K&E's systems services, Wichita, said some European countries did reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
"That reprocessing is not currently being done in the United States with commercial reactors but it is being done in military uses," he said.
When spent fuel is reprocessed, plutonium is separated out, he said. The Carter administration felt the proliferation of plutonium, which is used for nuclear weapons, could be better controlled if the reprocessing of nuclear fuel were prohibited, Rives said.
That policy is now being reviewed by the present administration, he said. Until a decision is made, the spent fuel is placed in storage and then disposed at the plant instead of belarus disposed of.
Waste still remains after the fuel is reprocessed, he said.
because it had cost so much to build the plant.
"You hear the expression that the waste from a plant like that of Wolf Creek each year would be a cube the size of a desk. That waste is a by-product of processing and would have to be disposed of in salt mines," Rives said.
Burlington residents agree that once the plant becomes operable, electrical wiring must be changed.
Ware said electrical rates would probably increase after the plant went into operation, but inflation was the reason.
Marilyn Christman, office manager of the Burlington Medical Center, said she was pleased with the care provided.
"Electrical rates will go up but so has the price of everything else in the country."
Rives said rates would likely jump about 15 percent above the cost of current rates in 1984 when the plant is opened. Over the 40 year lifetime of the plant, however, he said he expected that nuclear generated power would be about 10 percent cheaper than coal-generated power.
Tom Taylor, public relations director for the Kansas Corporation Commission said, according to their estimates, the immediate rate increase after the plant becomes operable would be substantial.
"The figures that we have indicate that rates will increase 50 percent above KGAE's present rates," he said.
People do not seem to be concerned about a big jump in electrical rates when the plant goes on the line because
they hear that the power will be cheaper in the long run, Taylor said.
"Our contention has been an alloy that when the plant becomes operable, people aren't going to care so much about how much they are going to save over 40 years," Taylor said. "But they will be awfully concerned if their rates jump up 50 percent or more at the time the plant goes on the line."
Although residents in and around Burlington seem to be happy with the Wolf Creek nuclear plant, some people outside of Burlington are not so happy. They are the people who had to sell their land to make way for the plant.
Florence Edwards, Route 1,
Blingington, definitely
against using the plant built.
"Some of my friends have had their land taken away," she said. "They didn't want to get of it but they had Mo. They have accepted it and have to live with it."
Mrs. Charley Bemis, Route 3, Burlington, said they had to leave their home and sell 800 acres of their land because of the Wolf Creek project.
"There were lots of people who had
their land take away." Bernis said, " lots of them out in their neighborhood."
She also about 54 residential looms. Rives said about 50 landowners had sold their property to make way for the plant.
"Only about 10 percent of the 56 landowners did not want to sell," he said.
He said KG&E had the right to buy the land because of a so-called power of emmine domain. If people elect not to sell their property, there are court rules that they should be given rights to the extent that the land cannot be unfairly taken from them, he said.
"They can condemn anything they want and take it." Bennis said.
Unlike many Burlington residents, Bemis said she didn't think the nuclear plant was safe.
"Even with the safety precautions, they aren't safe," she said. "There are a lot of accidents and things that happened at other places. It can happen here."
Even though they now live only six miles from the plant, Benis said they didn't want to move. When asked why, she laughed and said, "I don't know."
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