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. . . i . . i , iU'J i'. .' v C I LT V 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 i
Object Description
Title | Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1983-08-26 |
Description | Vol. 75th Year, No. 295 |
Subject |
Columbia (Mo.) -- Newspapers Boone County (Mo.) -- Newspapers |
Coverage | United States -- Missouri -- Boone County -- Columbia |
Language | English |
Date.Search | 1983-08-26 |
Type | Newspaper |
Format | |
Collection Name | Columbia Missourian Newspaper Collection |
Publisher.Digital | The Office of Library Systems of the University of Missouri |
Contributing Institution |
State Historical Society of Missouri University of Missouri School of Journalism |
Copy Request | Contact the State Historical Society of Missouri at: (800) 747-6366 or (573) 882-7083 or email contact@shsmo.org. Some fees apply:http://shsmo.org/research/researchfees |
Description
Title | Full Page |
Date.Search | 1983-08-26 |
Type | page |
Item.Transcript | . . . i . . i , iU'J i'. .' v C I LT V 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 i |