Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1983-08-26

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1012 LOVJRY UUC . . C0LUK3IA, MO. 65211 jnkfw flfoutmbta
75th Year No. 295 Good Morning! It's Friday, August 26, 1983 2 Sections 14 Pages 25 Cents
Veteran battalion chief
will lose iob in shaken p
By Mark Weaver
Missourian staff writer
City Manager Dick Gray has de-cided
to eliminate the Columbia Fire
Department's battalion chief posi-tion
held by 28- ye- ar veteran Joe V.
Bryson to make room in the depart-ment
for Chief Girard " Toot" Wren
after he is demoted, Gray said
Thursday.
Gray eliminated Bryson's position
in his proposed budget for the com-ing
fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
But he decided that Bryson could re-tain
his job until Dec. 31.
Wren's resignation becomes effec-tive
Oct 1, though he will continue
as acting chief until a replacement is
found, Gray said.
Gray notified Bryson Aug. 2 of his
decision to terminate the position.
He did not make the decision public,
but presented copies of the termi-nation
letter to the City Council just
prior to the Aug. 1 council meeting.
Gray also told Wren of his decision
on Aug. 1. They had not discussed
Bryson's position prior to that time.
Gray said.
The council has until Sept. 30 to
make final alterations in Gray's bud-get
proposal. But council members
did not mention the termination on
Aug. 13 at a study session on the fire
department's portion of the new bud-get,
indicating their acceptance of
the dismissal, Gray said.
But Bryson said Thursday the is-sue
has not been settled. " I don't
agree tc it," he said. " I don't have
any intentions of retiring right now.
If I leave it's because I am pushed
out."
Bryson declined to elaborate on
his plans to fight the decision, but he
said he hoped Gray could be con-vinced
to reinstate his position.
Gray said the decision was a
trade- of- f between the limitations of
the department budget and his de-sire
to appoint Wren as senior battal-ion
chief, a newly- create- d position,
when Wren's resignation takes ef- -
feet Wren voluntarily tendered his
resignation in July with the under-standing
that he would be given an
administrative position in the de-partment.
Gray said.
" I had to find the money for him to
do that," Gray said. " I had to figure
out where I would find $ 34,000. Ob-viously,
that's how I did it. I told
Chief Bryson it has absolutely noth-ing
to do with his performance,
which has been very good for 28
years."
Gray said he reviewed Bryson's
duties as a fire inspector at city
medical facilities and a community
fire safety spokesman, and he decid-ed
that Wren could absorb them into
his new position.
Bryson disagreed. " What I'm
doing now I like, and I'm doing a
good job," he said. " They need
somebody to do this work. It's nec-essary
work."
Bryson said he had planned to re-tire
in 1985. The termination will cost
him two years of Social Security
Joe Bryson Miein croon
benefits, he said, and his full depart-ment
pension, which he is now eligi-ble
for, is only half of his current sal-ary-
Bryson joined the department in
1955, was promoted to lieutenant in
1965 and captain in 1969. He served
as battalion fire chief at the down-town
station for 10 years before he
was transferred to his current job
four years ago a position created
by Wren.
the body Of MS. Van Dine. Ml mmtmmnammm. xKa&' ixaBKBKmL. ammnsesaraa'iL! jmxmnrmnm
Mark Harrison
Student9" iiistriictor die
in stunt plane accident
Boonville farmer listens as plane goes down
By Margaret Hunter
and W. Kevin Armstrong
Missourian staff writers
A 23- year-- old University student
and her co- pil- ot were killed Wednes-day
evening when their airplane
crashed in a field 12 miles south of
Boonville.
The victims were identified as
Rose Van Dine, a graduate journal-ism
student at the University, and
John Edward Greer, 27, a flight in-structor
from Boonville. Both were
experienced pilots.
Ms. Van Dine was practicing aero- bati- c
maneuvers about 5: 15 p. m.
Wednesday in her tandem- seate- d,
single- engine- d aircraft, nicknamed
" Citabria," when the plane crashed.
Greer was found seconds after the
crash, still strapped in the plane, his
parachute on his shoulders. Ms. Van
Dine's body was found 1,000 feet
from the plane almost 20 hours later,
at 11: 45 a. m. Thursday.
Virgil Doty, owner of the farm on
which the crash occurred, was near
his workshed, 40 yards away, when
he heard the plane go down.
" I was out working behind the
shed here about 5: 15 or so," he said.
" There was a screeching and a
screaming. That's when they dived
down.
" They came northeast across
Leonard's ( a neighbor's) farm, and
then I heard the motor rev up again.
About 10 seconds later, there was a
sputter- lik- e noise. Then the crash.
Two or three seconds later, one of
the wheels hit my shed. ' '
Doty walked around the shed to
find the crumpled pieces of the
green airplane. Greer was still in-side.
Doty was able to reach the
man's wrist but could not find a
pulse.
The plane crashed and rolled in a
dry lake bed near a pond and seven
acres of corn and a wooded area.
The terrain and the tall, late- su- m-mer
crops complicated search oper-ations,
which were carried out on
foot, on horseback, by boat and by
helicopter. Involved in the search
were about 50 people, including
members of the Cooper County Med-ical
Patrol, the Missouri State High-way
Patrol and volunteers.
" I don't know a rougher spot on
this farm to land," Doty said. Scraps
of fiberglass, aluminum and fabric
lay scattered in his back yard.
It is not unusual for farmers south
of Boonville to look out their win-dows
and see planes performing
daredevil tricks. " They come up
here often," said a neighbor.
" They'd cut their engines and dive
so low I didn't see how they could
pull out. Then they'd re- sta- rt their
engines and make it. It scared me to
death."
Ms. Van Dine, 121 S. Tenth St., en-tered
the University School of Jour-nalism
in January, after receiving a
bachelor's degree in international
economics from Georgetown Univer-sity
in Washington, D. C.
The New York City native began
taking lessons in aerobatic flying af-ter
she arrived in Columbia. She
purchased her plane in New Orleans
duringthe July 4 weekend.
Friends and faculty members de
scribed Ms. Van Dine as an adven-turous
woman who really enjoyed
flying, and as an excellent student. '
" She had a great deal of initiative
and vitality," said Ernest Morgan, a
faculty adviser. " She was the kind of
person who went after life and enjoy-ed
it. She had good sense."
Federal Aviation Administration
officials from Kansas City arrived
Thursday morning to investigate the
cause of the crash.
Greer's body was sent to the
Kirksville Funeral Home. Ms. Van
Dine's body was sent to Wood Wil-liam
Funeral Home in Boonville.
University cuts off cool air
By Renee Tawa
and Richard Ehrhard
Missourian staff writers
Air conditioners in 15 Universi-ty
buildings and five cafeterias
were turned off Thursday af-ternoon
in order to help ease the
electrical demand caused by
searing temperatures.
The units could remain off dur-ing
peak hours until the weather
cools, says Duane Stucky, Uni-versity
director of institutional
research. " It's up to the weather-man.
If we continue to have 100- degr- ee
weather, it ( the shut- of- f)
could happen every day," he
said.
In another incident, an apart-ment
building near the campus
lost its electricity, leaving its 55
residents some of them elderly
without air conditioning. Resi- -
dents were without the cool air
I for five hours Wednesday night,
and more than two hours Thurs-day
evening.
Temperatures reached 102 de-grees
Thursday afternoon, a Na-tional
Weather Service spokes- -
Demands on power ... Page 7A
man said. Today's high will be
near 100 degrees.
At the University, Stucky said,
" It was beyond anyone's imagi-nation
that we would be exceed-ing
our limits by 25 percent"
The University normally uses
21 megawatts of electricity; it
generates about 17 megawatts of
electricity and buys 4 megawatts
from the city. Thursday's con-sumption
peaked at 27 mega-watts.
Soaring temperatures around
the country have caused peak de-mands
and limited the availabili-ty
of surplus power. " The same
situation could arise tomorrow
depending on whether there is
any surplus power," Stucky said.
From 2 to 6 p. m., University of-ficials
pulled the plug on 20 build-ings
Midcflebush, Fine Arts,
University Hall, Nursing, Stan-ley,
Data Processing, Tate Hall, j
General Services, McAlester, I
See POWER, Page 8A
TotaS electric failure
blacks out Fayette
By John Everding and Mary Jane Gore
Missourian staff writers
FAYETTE Night came early to
Fayette Thursday. The city lost all
of its power at 6 p. m. when crucial
electrical wires burned out.
The blackout left homes and busi-nesses
in the mid- Missou- ri commu-nity
of about 4,000 without air condi-tioning
only V-- 2 hours after the
temperature had soared to 102 de-grees.
No heat- relate- d illness was
reported as temperatures dropped
into the low 90s after the blackout.
Power was still out at 11p. m.
Mayor Iarry Sapp said that if
power is not restored by Friday
morning and the heat persists, elder-ly
residents would be moved to Kel-ler
Memorial Hospital, which was
operating on emergency power.
" The heat and the amount of pow-er
we were producing combined to
burn out wires leading from the
plant to a switching mechanism,"
said Sapp.
The electrical outage could put a
strain on a key resource water.
Fayette's water plant depends on
electrical power to pump water into
the town's towers
Elsewhere in the city, a party at-mosphere
prevailed Thursday night
as people Kit on cars around the
town square and played radios. The
only lights visible in the town were
car lights and tfas- powor- eil awn flx.
ture. s.
Several locals visited the only
place in town that sells beer, McMi-llan's
Cafe.
" It was great for business." pro-prietor
Dude McMillan said " We
sold a whole lot of beer. "
Fayette generates its own power
from 2 to 10 p. m. daily. At 10 p. m.,
the city nonnallv would have
switched to power from the Central
Electric Power Cooperative in Jef-ferson
City, but damaged wires pre-cluded
that.
" The only solution is that the city
of Fayette would have to pass a bond
issue to replace the switching
gears," said Bob Stewart, senior
City Council member. " We will just
have to repair it and hope that it
holds until we get a bond issue
passed."
By Bruce Maxwell
Missourian staff writer
REFORM, Mo. More than a third
of the pipe in portions of the emer-gency
core cooling system at the
Callaway nuclear power plant may
be defective.
An official of Bechtel Power Corp.,
Callaway's architect- enginee- r, testi-fied
before a U. S. Nuclear Regulato-ry
Commission board that at least
some of the pipe used in the emer-gency
cooling system should have
been rejected because of its defects.
But it wasn't.
Officials of firms involved in Cal-laway
construction say they know
the size of the defects and that the
pipe can be used safely. But they ad-mit
that their knowledge is based
primarily on extrapolation and com-puter
models.
The simple fact is that no one
knows for sure how serious the de-fects
are.
Bechtel tried to use the most popu-lar
test for finding pipe defects ul-trasonics,
which involves sending
sound waves through the pipe but
found to its surprise that the test
couldn't detect the defects.
But serious doubts about Bechtel's
claims have been raised by a group
of national pipe- weldin- g experts con-tacted
by the Missourian.
r
i
A9fo Callaway
vSc Controversy
The pipe problem at Callaway
exemplifies a difficulty that faces all
nuclear power plants: Nuclear tech-nology
has outpaced itself. Man has
developed the ability to construct in-credibly
complex nuclear plants but
has yet to come up with a means of
ensuring that such vital components
as pipe are produced without flaw.
Worse still, he has not developed the
technology to accurately find and
measure the size of defects accu-rately
once they occur.
In short, nuclear power plants are
being built faster than such basic
technology can be perfected.
What little pipe- testin- g technology
does exist has been developed large-ly
in Great Britain. Although the
United States has more nuclear pow-er
plants than any other nation in the
world, it historically has lagged be-hind
the British in developing impor-tant
aspects of nuclear technology.
Callaway opponents, who have in-tervened
in the plant's licensing, say
the pipe was not adequately tested;
defects could be much larger than
those confirmed by the builders,
they say.
There's a lot riding on who's right
in the debate. The strength of the
pipe could mean the difference be-tween
a safe shutdown of the reactor
and a loss of coolant the most se-vere
accident possible at a nuclear
plant.
The pipe carries water through the
emergency core cooling system,
which pumps or blows water into the
reactor core if the main cooling sys-tem
fails. The emergency system is
critical because the radioactive core
otherwise could melt within about 30
minutes of a loss- of- coola- nt accident,
then melt through the containment
building and spew radiation into the
atmosphere.
In the 1979 Three Mile Island acci-dent,
plant operators made the near- tragi- c
error of turning off the emer-gency
core cooling system that had
automatically taken over cooling the
core after the main cooling system
failed. Their action contributed to
making the TM1 accident the worst
in the history of nuclear power.
If the pipe in the Callaway emer-gency
core cooling system ruptured
during an accident, an even worse
disaster could occur.
The defective pipe at Callaway
designated SA- 31- 2 by the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers
and ranging in diameter from eight
to 14 inches is created by rolling a
stainless steel plate into a tube, then
sealing the seam with welds inside
and out. In the Callaway pipe, these
inside and outside welds don't al--
ways meet, leaving a gap. The de-." e- ct
is known as centerline lack- of- oenetrati- on
( CLP).
Bechtel officials say the most se-vere
defect they found in the pipe
used at Callaway had a CLP of 26
percent meaning that 26 percent
of the weld is missing. But the meth-od
Bechtel used to reach that conclu-sion
is the subject of controversy
within the industry.
The debate centers on the Ameri-can
Society of Mechanical Engineers
Code, which specifies how compo-nents
such as pipe should be man-ufactured.
The code also requires
that certain non- destructi- ve tests be
performed after manufacture to en-sure
that the pipe doesn't contain de-fects.
The code's most conclusive test for
SA- 31- 2 pipe involves sending an ul-trasonic
sound wave . through the
pipe; weak welds are supposed to
See PIPE, Page 8A
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