[BEEPING]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of a lion's energy who brings safe, reliable,
and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Tonight we'll tell you about a wild birthday celebration,
100 years of preserving the nation's flora and fauna.
We'll also introduce you to a man working to
promote race relations.
He just happens to also be a world-renowned musician
living here in Wisconsin.
But first, we continue our series on nuclear
energy issues in our state.
The concept of nuclear power has been around for more
than 50 years.
Wisconsin's first nuclear plant was built
near Genoa in the mid-1960s.
That plant is now decommissioned, but
there are three other nuclear plants currently
operating in Wisconsin.
They generate 19.6% of the electricity
produced in the state.
The plants were built in the early 70s, before the 1983
moratorium on building new nuclear plants in Wisconsin.
Last week, a state assembly committee passed a bill that
would eliminate that ban.
This may open the door for new plants, and it's
certainly reopening the debate on nuclear power.
Our packet has our report.
Inside the Mechanical Engineering Building
at UW-Madison sits a nuclear reactor.
A small one, to be sure, but its blitz atoms and
produces heat, that's how a nuclear power plant works.
The reactor is there to serve a nuclear engineering program
created in large part by Professor Emeritus Max Carbon.
When Max Carbon graduated from Purdue University in
1943, there was no such thing as nuclear engineering.
The nuclear era had barely begun.
Following a standard of the military, Carbon went
to work at the Hanford Works in Washington State.
Hanford makes plutonium for nuclear weapons, but Carbon says
his mind was on something else.
In the early 50s, I used to sit at my desk dreaming about how
I could design a nuclear power plant and generate electricity.
Over 50 years later, Max Carbon is still trying to
promote a nuclear future.
He helped organize a recent conference in Madison to
encourage Wisconsin to take another look at building
nuclear power plants.
None have been built here in 30 years.
Opposition to nuclear power is stiff.
Carbon's colleague, Michael Cora-Dene, was grilled by
Marion Stunkel of Madison.
Who are the people who are designing the new generation?
Who are the people who would be bidding on building them?
Six are being built in China, three of which are French and
I think one which is Canadian.
Taiwan has two, there's two in Finland.
I forgot about Finland.
If you...
I'm not there yet.
No. If you're talking about
the future of Wisconsin energy, I don't think it'll
be the Koreans building it.
There are the Canadians.
I wouldn't be that.
But I want to know who would be the construction company.
Okay, such as Bechtel.
Stunkel says she picked up her concerns from her
father, Leon Stunkel.
Like Carbon and Cora-Dene, he too was an engineer.
Only he became an anti-nuclear activist.
There were various engineering issues that he felt
that were not addressed.
My number one concern is what do I do with a waste?
Nuclear power has always battled safety concerns,
as Victor Glinsky, a former member of the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
It is a dangerous technology in the sense that you have to
be very careful in using it.
And I think people are concerned that those pushing nuclear
power are more interested in pushing nuclear power
than they are in protecting public safety.
Nuclear power's proponents, meanwhile, see it as
environmentally favorable in comparison to
alternatives, especially coal.
Nuclear energy is a very clean source of power.
And it can be quite economical, and it's virtually limitless.
Carbon introduced the keynote speaker at the Nuclear Power
Conference, former secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babitt.
Carbon and Babitt soon learned, if they didn't already know,
that not all people who consider themselves environmentalists
support nuclear power.
But as nuclear power nears the half-century mark, nuclear
power's proponents are saying it's now more environmentally
favorable than ever.
The burning of coal and fossil fuels, I think,
is the much the greater threat to the environment.
Global warming is now the number one environmental
problem of our generation.
And when you start talking about making a really dent in the
environmental problems that you were talking about, you really
need to expand nuclear power by something like a factor of 10.
And then you begin to wonder, "Can you really handle that with
the apparatus that we have?"
And it's not surprising people are apprehensive.
Nuclear energy sounds very, very good, but we don't know
what to do with the waste, for sure, to make it safe.
The supporters of nuclear power say they do know what to do with
the waste, variant in Nevada.
The organizers brought in the man overseeing what's known as
the Yuckamountain Project for the U.S.
Department of Energy.
We, the department, believe technically that this
repository is going to be safe enough because those doses
are going to be low enough.
The waste is primarily spent fuel rods, now accumulating
at nuclear plants in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
The problem is the waste will be dangerous for
thousands of years.
And Yuckam Mountain will only be able to handle part of the
waste produced by the current generation of power plants.
Therefore, another repository will have to
be located somewhere else.
Wisconsin's Wolf River Bathworth has previously been considered
as a site for long-term storage.
How can you still guarantee this for 10,000 years?
There's no guarantees, ma'am.
So then how can we proceed?
Well, look, we can't guarantee anything.
I can't guarantee one year in the future, although I
have more confidence in one than a hundred, and more
confidence than a hundred than five hundred or ten thousand.
You know, I can't guarantee that somebody isn't going to
do something in this building in the next ten minutes.
It'll kill us all.
The state of Nevada is suing to block the
development of Yuckamountain.
Victor Glynsky is currently a consultant in Nevada
in that legal proceeding.
Glynsky says the nuclear industry thinks the lack of
a permanent disposal site is what's holding back new plants.
Wisconsin law forbids new plants until a permanent
repository is in operation.
But Glynsky wonders whether the opening of a permanent sealed
repository will allow the industry to build new plants.
They think what's holding up nuclear power in America,
I think, completely wrongly.
But this is what they think is that people are
concerned about waste.
And if you only quote, solve the waste problem, people
are going to run out in the streets and say, "Give
us more nuclear power."
Well, I think this is just silly.
The reason we don't have more nuclear power
mainly is it costs too much.
Former Wisconsin Public Service Commissioner Charles Chiquetti
says gas or advanced coal-fired plants are much cheaper.
Natural gas continues to beat nuclear by at least
five to one in terms of the cost to install the plant.
Natural gas will take its construction cost advantage,
the environmental benefits it has over coal and oil.
And I think the way most plants will be built going forward.
But nuclear power's proponents say natural gas will
lose its advantage sooner than Chiquetti thinks.
Right now, it's economically viable to build natural gas.
But then four months ago, natural gas was 50% cheaper.
So a lot of the plants that have been built for natural
gas probably won't run.
They'll just sit there.
If you factor in the environmental cost, then
the electricity from fossil fuel goes way up.
If you're concerned about climate change, CO2 into
the atmosphere, if you count that as a cost, and it is
a cost, that changes the economics on what you base it.
And finally, defense and death.
The point of the conference wasn't to come up with the
definitive answer to the economics of nuclear power or
to arrive at the best way of disposing of nuclear waste.
The point was to get people thinking about nuclear
power again.
New plants haven't been ordered in
the U.S.
since the 1970s.
There have been lots of discussion about Wisconsin's
energy needs.
Nuclear should be considered in the mix
of how we meet those needs.
I think that if we had other choices, nobody in that room
would have picked it.
If there was another good choice.
The conference drew fewer participants in
the organizers expected.
Courtney says that maybe because the supporters and
opponents have their minds made up and aren't interested
in reopening the discussion.
But the discussion in Wisconsin is open.
The state's decades-old moratorium on
new nuclear construction is currently a target for repeal.
You can watch all three reports in our series on Wisconsin's
nuclear energy issues by going to wpt.org/inwisconsin.
Once there, you'll see a link you can click on to watch the
reports. If you don't have a home computer, most public
libraries around the state do offer free internet access.
From time to time, in Wisconsin features stories
produced over the years at Wisconsin Public Television.
Tonight, we reach into our video vault for a story I did in
2001 for the program weekend.
I had the opportunity to spend some time with Richard
Davis, a man who spends his life striving for both
musical and racial harmony.
Innovative Versed-on.
He is one of the world's premier bass players.
Jazz artist Richard Davis has been making music for more than
half a century.
His musical journey has taken him from the
world's large concert halls to intimate clubs in
Greenwich Village.
He has played with some of the greats, not just in jazz, Igor
Stravinsky, Frank Sinatra, Saravan, Proust Springsteen,
diversity drives Richard Davis.
The music can take us to places unknown.
In 1977, after 23 years of performing, music took
him from his home in New York to the University of Wisconsin
Madison School of Music and a different life as a professor.
By the way, by the way, in other words, the second order
is make it a little longer.
I need some musical children.
I learned a lot.
I wanted to share it with many young people.
Even simpler.
That is, I'm turned on, watching someone who had one second,
they don't know this, and the next second they know it.
And along with jazz improvisational skills, his
students are learning something else.
Something he believes is potentially more valuable.
Being open with racism and accepting other
races and diversity.
For the past few years, Davis has devoted himself to improving
race relations on campus.
Once a month, Davis invites people of different cultural
backgrounds to talk about things that really matter.
Since 1998, more than 2,000 people have answered his
call. Today, he's invited Multicoe, a multicultural
ensemble from Madison's West High School to join him.
I started feeling like it was this unspoken thing
that you don't speak about.
I was thinking about Donna, who just left high school a year
ago. And you look at all these beautiful young cares, man.
And it breaks your heart to notice somebody is looking
at them in the most negative way you could ever imagine.
And don't even know who they are.
Richard Davis grew up in Chicago, where his parents
owned a grocery store.
He took up the base when he was 15.
But his introduction to music came much earlier.
Well, we had a little singing trio in the house.
And I remember that point I used
to say, "Buff, buff, buff, buff, buff, buff, buff, buff,
buff, buff, buff, buff."
He remembers a neighborhood filled with music, a
saxophone player here, a harmonica player there.
Even his part-time job, selling the Chicago Defender newspaper,
was a musical experience.
"Lady, lady, with the ball head baby stickin'
neck out the window, get Chicago Defender, use the
bid-dive, nine to ten cents."
"That was your sales pitch."
The Defender was one of the earliest
African-American newspapers.
During the 1940s, it was a lifeline connecting
Northern blacks who were migrating North for jobs
to their southern families.
The Defender was Davis's first exposure to racism.
"Every Friday the Chicago Defender would come out.
In that paper was listed all those
who were lynched in the South.
So every Friday, it was like a ritual.
Mom and Dad would call around to friends in Chicago and
relatives to find out if that person's name in the paper
was a relative of a friend."
For Davis, multiculturalism is a lot like a jazz combo.
You should be able to hear the individual musicians,
but as a group, they produce a fuller richer sound.
He likes to invoke John Coltrane.
"He said, 'We're all deep out of the same vessel.
We're dipping from things that are
already there.
It's just how we combine them and use them.'
If we're not enhancing ourselves with cultures of
the world and of all the races, what are we losing?
What are we not developing as an individual and a person?"
"I am saying I'm better than you are.
I am quiet and I'm always saying where I look in
the mirror.
I like myself."
I guess my biggest motivation is I got a very young
daughter, 18.
And from day one, I said, 'I have to make
this a better place for her.'
"Describe what you'd like Madison to look
like 20 years from now."
It looks like a place where people have developed an
appetite for the Oneness of Humankind, an appetite
to see what it feels like, what it tastes like.
Have we ever tasted loving each other as one race of people?
Three years after I sat down with Richard Davis for
that story, he continues to make and teach music.
Davis is also still working on race relations.
He says he doesn't have any more coffee
break discussions scheduled for this school year, but
he's already working on another project for the fall.
Davis plans to gather UW faculty members together for
a new program.
The idea is to invite people together to
share international cuisine and good conversation, creating a
way for people from different backgrounds to relate to
and understand each other.
You can find out more about Davis's work by logging
on to wpt.org/inwisconsin.
Our next story also takes us back in time.
100 years ago when the National Wildlife Refuge
System was established, we're celebrating this Centennial
Birthday Day through next month, celebrating the wild places
that allow endangered birds, animals and plants to flourish.
Sit back and enjoy as producer Joanne Garrett takes us
on a tour of the National Wildlife Refuge's located
right here in Wisconsin.
It's a birthday.
Cue the candles.
Make a little noise.
Send flowers.
The occasion for this celebration is actually a
Centennial, a 100th birthday.
The 100th anniversary of a system.
A series of places that belong to all of us.
The 100th anniversary of the National Wildlife Refuge System
was about 530 National Wildlife Refugees across America.
Every state has a refuge and Wisconsin has seven.
The seven total over 175,000 acres.
Mollymell is a ranger in the Nacita National Wildlife Refuge.
44,000 acres located in the Great Central Wisconsin
swamp, the largest wetland bog in the state.
We've accustomed to the National Park Service.
At the National Park you're much
more likely to be catered to.
Out here when you take a hike you're really in a natural
environment, a wild place.
A wildlife refuge is a place where wildlife comes
first. It's a place where people are welcome to visit.
But we will always put the habitat in the wildlife
as the number one priority.
It's been that way since the beginning in 1903.
The first National Wildlife Refuge was Pelican Island
off the coast in Florida.
It was started by Teddy Roosevelt because it was the
only place where they're now common but then fairly rare,
brown pelicans still existed.
And he recognized that if we didn't set aside some
land for this pelican we're going to lose it.
It was the plight of the pelican that began the refuge
system, the brown pelican.
But this species, the white pelican, illustrates
the continuing importance of the refuge system.
White pelicans like these used to touch down in the prairie
potholes of the Dakotas during their annual migration every
fall to the Gulf of Mexico.
But with declining habitat, there are now fewer places
for these birds to stop and refuel as they fly.
And now pelicans are growing in number as they seek sanctuary
in Wisconsin's refuges.
Pelicans and the Trempolo refuge along the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi is a critical flyway for migratory birds.
I like to think of it as an eight-leane interstate
for migrating birds.
Bob Driesley is one of four district managers of the
biggest refuge in the state, the Upper Mississippi National
Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
It's huge, yeah, it covers 261 miles, four states.
It's a long linear refuge.
In the lower 48 upper misses is one of the bigger refuges.
One of the biggest and one of the most unusual.
The Upper Mississippi refuge is in the middle of a
navigable riverway, one of the largest in the world.
It's a refuge that includes power plants and a lock-and-damp
system and local communities and still provides a place
of protection for wildlife.
Horika is home to the largest freshwater cattail marsh in
the country and was critical as a rest stop and in the
recovery of the now quite plentiful Canadian geese.
They're hoping for a measure of that success in Nisita with
the now rare whooping cranium.
They're teaching them how to fly and find their
way. How to migrate.
Nisita has moved from being just a migratory
bird refuge to being an endangered species refuge.
It's a measure of the work that takes place in the refuge system
and of the success they've had in the last hundred years.
When Alda Leopold wrote his book, "Sand County Almanac,"
he referred to cranes.
He wasn't talking about the whooping cranium.
He thought they were goners
for sure.
He was referring to the same hill cranes.
He thought we were going to lose them completely.
Now we'll have 4,000 cranes come through very easily in a day.
Sand hill cranes are now quite common, but it's still rare to
cite another Nisita resident.
We're looking at a wolf den.
It's a couple years old.
It wasn't used this past year but
it was used in previous years.
It probably had been a badger hole or some such
thing before and the wolves came in and large did it.
Sometimes it's the habitat itself that needs saving.
We tend to think that prairie is the rarest habitat but it's
really not.
It's Savannah.
Savannah is probably the rarest habitat left in North America.
It's an area where there are large trees where the
branches are just barely touching each other and
there's grasses underneath.
Savannah needs fire to go through it to clear out
the brushy species that grow underneath the trees.
It's really important that we get this burning it done
because there's some great seeds waiting underneath the soil.
Waiting to come back and if we get a good fire over
it, the remnant seeds will come back and sprout.
There are wonderful treasures hidden away
in the refuge system.
And for a hundred years, those in the National Wildlife
Refuge System have worked in all kinds of conditions
and all kinds of weapons to keep these treasures safe.
We're a well kept secret.
A well kept secret.
It's well worth celebrating.
America has open wild places still.
A lot of the world doesn't have that.
We need to not take it for granted.
Here's hoping for another 100 successful years.
That's our program for tonight.
Join us next week when we'll introduce you to a man who
looks at volunteerism as a sweet note in his life.
As we leave you, we head to Newport State Park in Door
County for a wintry walk through Wisconsin's only formally
designated wilderness park.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lowe.
Good night.
[Music]
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliance Energy who bring safe, reliable, and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]