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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Monday, Sept. 30, 1985
Quest for buried secrets
When the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant finally restarted Sept. 3, the public shifted its attention from the construction, tests and delays and focused on how the levianth should be paid for.
But the Lawrence-based Nuclear Awareness Network contends that physical deficiencies in the plant could pose a much greater threat than the economic burden.
The network says the deficiencies are documented, and the documents are in the hands of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The NRC has rebuffed attempts by the network to obtain the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The commission also has rejected two freedom of information requests from Rep. Jim Slattery, D-Kan.
So the network fitted suit against the NRC in U.S. District Court in Topeka, charging that the public has a right to scrutinize these documents.
Many of the requested documents deal with the Quality First program started in March 1984 by Kansas Gas and
Electric, which owns 47 percent of the power plant.
KG&E promoted Quality First as an opportunity for workers to express concerns and grievances about the construction of the plant. The complaints were to be kept confidential.
But according to the network, the program only silenced workers. It maintains that some workers thought their complaints would bring action — which they didn't — and others were blacklisted or fired.
Until now, KG&E and the NRC have avoided the Freedom of Information Act by the use of a series of loopholes. This reluctance to disclose the documents has only sharpened the appetite of the Nuclear Awareness Network.
If there are dark secrets buried within the Wolf Creek power plant, neighbors of the plant and rate payers in Kansas should 'be told. The secrets won't stay hidden forever.
If problems do appear, the costs may only be financial. Or they may be far more dangerous.
Police suit has merit
KU students rarely have problems with the Lawrence Police Department. Credit for the lack of hassles largely goes to the officers, who are well-trained and usually sensitive in dealing with students.
But this skilled, professional force comes at a price. The latest battle between the city and the Lawrence Police Officers' Association therefore deserves students' attention.
Last week the officers' association filed a lawsuit against the city accusing it of willfully violating the police salary contract for 1986.
The contract called for a 5 percent salary increase for 1986. The Lawrence City Commission in August changed that to a 4.5 percent raise.
The commission based its decision on a clause in the contract that said both sides agreed to "reopen discussion without prejudice on the topic of wage adjustment" if the inflation rate remained low.
The officers' association
voted to sue because it interpreted "without prejudice" to mean that both sides had to agree on any deviation from the original 5 percent increase.
The battle of legal semantics ultimately will have to be decided by lawyers who can interpret the intricate language used in today's legal forum.
But on the surface it looks as if the city commission has overstepped its bounds. Common sense should have told them that they can't take promised money away from police officers without discussion of the matter.
We can commend our city police as much as they deserve. But commendations don't pay the rent. Only decent salaries pay the rent. If the city commission cared to ask students their opinion, we're positive a majority of them would want a better paid police force in Lawrence to match the quality of officers out on the streets.
Term papers for hire
An interesting story in the Kansan last week told how many students unable to cope with term paper deadlines get the job done.
Thev cheat.
No fuss. No mess. No education.
To make the grade they send $50 off to places such as Research Assistance Inc. in Los Angeles, and the company sends them a term paper to band in to their professors.
The story said 80 percent of the cheaters were foreign
But more alarming than lost educational opportunities is that some students who hack out an original term paper end up with lower grades because of the cheating.
students, who, presumably,
have difficulty writing English
well enough to get great
grades on term papers.
But that's no excuse. The education they receive in Kansas is often better than in their home countries but we didn't promise them a rose garden.
For them and for all others who choose to buy their way through school, we offer our disdain.
Due to an editor's error, Jeff Polack was incorrectly identified in an editorial in Wednesday's paper. Polack is student body vice president.
Correction
Rob Karwath
Editor
John Hanna Michael Totty
Managing editor Editorial editor
Lauretta McMillen
Campus editor
Susanne Shaw
General manager, news adviser
Duncan Calhoun
Business manager
General manager, news adviser
Business manage
Brett McCabe Sue Johnson
Retail sales Campus sales
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
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Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the Kach party in the Israeli parliament, has outlined a plan in which the Palestinians would be permitted to live peacefully in Israel, Yassir Arafat, leader of the PLO and a representative of the Palestinian people to the U.N., has rejected the plan unequivocally.
Unless the Palestinians are ready to accept the rules under which Israel has offered them residence, Israel must be forced into Israel, the Zionist homeland.
In response to the article in the Kansan (Sept 18), I wish to express my view regarding the demonstration held by the General Union of Palestinian Students.
Rachel Kingman Highland Park, Ill., freshman
One of the greats almost visits town
Rachel Klugman
It seems that the organization's main goal was to vocalize its anti-Zionist beliefs to the student body. While there is nothing wrong with voicing one's political perspective, an opposing view must be expressed.
Zionists offer peace to Israel's neighbors
Say it isn't so.
Even though the concert and this train trip were planned for the farmers, most Newton farmers probably feel that the festivities will not affect how their crop
"The American," Merle Hagard's rented Amtrak train, scheduled for 20-minute whistle stops at five Kansas towns on its way from California to Chicago, didn't make it to Willie Nelson's Sept. 22 Farm Aid Concert in Champagne, fl.
Mailbox
Although the train hasn't been canceled, without the FarmAid concert as a goal, the trip seems sadly belated.
Israeli and Palestinian lives have been lost in the numerous wars that have plagued the Middle East since the mid-1900s. The State of Israel is still waiting for its neighboring nations to lay down their arms and to form some kind of truce. Although the Palestinians need a homeland, Israel and the Jewish people have fought for theirs for 4,000 years and are not about to give it up.
Farming is important to Newton. Winter wheat built the community soon after the railroad moved to town. When farming looks grim, so do faces on the street.
Having lived in Newton — one of the scheduled stops — all of my life, I can easily imagine how the event would have looked.
Banners hang from the train depot. "Welcome to Newton."
"We extend our hand to all neighborly states, and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East."
While spending a portion of last year in Israel, I studied the history of the Zionist movement and how a Jewish state was born out of that movement. Quoting the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel:
Kimberly Hurley
Staff columnist
comes up. But they like the idea that someone is finally doing something for the people who put bread on the American table.
A town on the move, Newton still struggles for a city slogan. Status means belonging to the United Way, being a Jaycee, running for city commission and owning a business.
The town stops and stares. How long has it been since a passenger train crossed the tracks in daylight? This in itself is history. The station didn't do — one eastbound, one westbound, both around 4 a.m.
People who know Haggard know only his name and voice. Many don't know him at all, because Newton has only an easy listening radio station. Perry Como and Johnny Mathis would draw a larger crowd.
Those who do know Haggard as a country singer applaud on the inside, because Newton has not seen many stars lately. The bigger celebrations come to the State Fair in nearby Hutchinson, where the best crowds in the area are drawn on by the local platform "Why didn't Willie Nelson come, too?" someone asks. Merle stands inside the train.
Merle stands inside the train, waving his arm.
He speaks of the farmers' struggles and tells the crowd why he's here.
Men in overalls who have been farming for more than 60 years
yell, "Why don't you go tell the movie star how much trouble he's putting us through?"
People drive by, stare, and drive on. "What was that, Mommy?" the little kid in the back seat asks. "Isn't dad funny, honey."
The sun shines, and the cool air bites a little.
These people will go home and read the first three paragraphs of the front-page story about "The American," and will glance at the picture of Haggard, below it, a photo of a man and his purple martins.
"So that's who that guy was," the husband mumbles from his recliner.
"Did you say something, Harold?" she yells from the kitchen, stirring the Swiss steak gravy.
Verbatim
On shaky ground
Seismographs at the survey, which is in Moore Hall on West Campus, recorded the Mexican earthquake but didn't get good readings. The survey receives data from its seismographs and the eastern Kansas town in eastern Nebraska.
The devastation from the twin earthquakes in Mexico will never occur in Kansas, but the state does lie on some shaky ground, says丹 Steeples, a scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey.
Steeple talked with staff columnist Julie Comine last week about the possibility of earthquakes in Kansas.
Can earthquakes occur in Kansas and, if so, does anyone ever feel them?
STEEPLES. We have an average of one earthquake per month in Kansas and another in Nebraska, usually in the Richter magnitude range of about 1 to 3. Historically, there have been somewhere around 30 earthquakes that actually have been felt in Kansas that originated in Kansas.
What is the most severe earthquake ever to hit Kansas?
STEEPLES: The most severe earthquake occurred in 1867 in the Manhattan-Wamego vicinity. Based on reports from newspapers of that time, we can estimate that the Richter magnitude was somewhere in the neighborhood of $5\frac{1}{4}$ even though the Richter scale wasn't invented until the 1930s.
What kind of damage occurred then?
STEEPLESS: It toppled chimneys in the Manhattan area, broke a few windows, that sort of thing.
When was the last time Kansas was shaken by a significant earthquake?
STEEPLES: The last earthquakes in Kansas that were felt by people were out northeast of Hays near between Hays and the little town of Codell about four or five weeks ago. They were felt by a half-dozen families down on the Saline River.
Are there any large faults that run through Kansas?
STEEPLES: We know of a few dozen faults, but I'm sure that there are thousands. The major fault zone is called the Humboldt fault zone. It runs from about Omaha all the way through Kansas through the Wamego area southward near El Dorado and on into Oklahoma City — about 500 miles long.
What exactly is a fault?
STEEPLES. The earth is layered, particularly near its surface. When faulting occurs the layers are offset relative to one another. The rocks break, in other words, and then the layers become offset across the fault.
When the Wolf Creek Nuclear, power plant was being built, some people were concerned that the plant was located near a fault and they were predicting alt sorts of disaster movie scenarios if an earthquake should ever hit the plant. Could something like that ever happen?
STEEPLES: Wolf Creek is somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 miles east of the Humboldt fault zone. But the plant was designed to more than
Don Steeples
withstand the largest earthquake that's occurred on the Humboldt fault zone in historic times, that being the 1867 quake. I'd have no problem living in Burlington.
What about elsewhere in the Midwest? Are there any large faults in say, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska or Iowa that would affect Kansas?
STEEPLES: The largest earthquake in terms of area shaken that's occurred in historic time in the United States was centered near the little town of New Madrid, Mo., which isn't far from Memphis, Tenn., down in the Missouri boot heel. There were a series of three major earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, with Richter magnitudes somewhere in the 7.2-7.4 range.
How far could you feel it? Kansas City? Topeka?
STEEPLES: The 1911-1812 earthquake rang church bells in Boston, but Kansas wasn't very settled at that time. The only way that we can estimate what the shaking was here is simply to look at what the shaking was like at an equivalent distance to the east — in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky. They had shaken there that was very similar to what Manhattan experienced in 1867.
What types of things are scientists such as you find out about earthknakes now?
STEEPLEPS: What we've been able to do here relies on research that's been done elsewhere. We've found that for every 10 magnitude three earthquakes, for instance, you're likely to have one earthquake and we are magnitude fours, you're likely to have one that is a five and so forth up to some maximum fault length.
So what we're doing is counting magnitude ones and twoes and threees over a period of time and, combined with the historical record that has some magnitude fours and五es in it, we can extrapolate how often we expect a Richter magnitude six. It appears at this point that a Richter six will occur roughly once in 1,000 years, but we don't know when the last magnitude six was.
The other thing we've found is that for an earthquake to reach up into the magnitude seven range, you have to have several tens of miles of fault break all at one time. We've pretty well determined that the longest active faults here in Kansas tend to be somewhere in the range that would accommodate about a magnitude 6.5 earthquake.