Chapter is closed on nuclear power

By David Ammons
The Associated Press

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OLYMPIA — Gov. Gary Locke and top energy officials yesterday officially marked the demise of the state's one-time grand vision of five nuclear-power plants.

They signed an agreement for eventual reclamation of the sites of two never-completed nuclear plants at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Locke said the region now can move beyond memories of the 1983 bond default on several of the plants.

An upbeat Locke, joined by leaders of the Bonneville Power Administration, Energy Northwest, state regulators and the Nature Conservancy, said the pact "ties up some of the loose ends" of closing down the ill-fated plan for a massive nuclear-power program.

Energy Northwest is a public power consortium formerly known as the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS).

WPPSS planned five nuclear projects in the state in the 1970s, four of which eventually were scrapped in a huge energy-planning debacle that included a $2.25 billion municipal-bond default in 1983. The nuclear-power industry was under assault, and both cost and projected electricity demand were factors.

"This agreement allows us to close this chapter in our history," said Vic Parrish, chief executive officer of Energy Northwest.

The one completed nuclear plant, Columbia Generating Station at Hanford, is operating with one of the best safety and reliability records in the country, Locke said. The site at Satsop, Grays Harbor County, of two other partially completed WPPSS plants is now home to "a thriving industrial and technology center," he said.

The two Satsop plants have been transferred to a local public-development authority, meaning the state and Energy Northwest only had to deal with the two sites at Hanford.

Under terms of the new agreement, the two unfinished Hanford projects, plants 1 and 4, will be sealed and secured, and the rest of the site will be restored to its original condition.

Some critics had wanted the buildings removed and the landscape restored to sagebrush, but the compromise is environmentally sound, the governor said.

BPA and Energy Northwest will pay $3.5 million for offsite habitat and conservation land, mostly in Benton County. The Nature Conservancy, a private nonprofit group, already owns 30,000 such acres in Douglas and Grant counties and will help to identify the new parcels, perhaps 10,000 acres or more, said Len Barson, the group's federal-relations director.

The agreement says the site must be fully restored by 2026. The cost is estimated at $45 million. The two plants were never finished or fueled, so no nuclear-waste cleanup is involved.

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