The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 20

2-B THI TENNESSEAN, Swndor, Angirt 10, IMP Sii i I I I i I TVA Commitment -to Nuclear Power Gets More Costly (Continued from 1-B) wake of the accident last year at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant. It the other utilities involved in nuclear power expansion are showing extreme caution in dealing with nuclear power expansion, why then is TVA forging ahead to build power plants that the agency's own predictions snow will not be needed until years after their completion? "IF WE err, it would be better to err on the side of having too much power," TVA Chairman David Freeman said recently in defense of the unabated construction. Last year, TVA admitted it had overestimated the need for additional power plants and announced that four of 14 reactors then under construction would be placed in "cold storage." "We stopped four reactors because there's a limit on how much you can ask a person in 1980 to pay for electricity that won't be needed until the '90s," Freeman said. One third of TVA's revenue from the sale of power goes to pay the interest alone on the federal agency's $10.8 billion debt, more 1 1 than $7 billion of that for nuclear power. The entire seven-plant, 5 17-reactor system originally was estimated to cost $7 billion, but the latest estimates place ultimate construction costs at more than $17 billion.

I TVA must join other utilities in wrestling with inflation, costly design changes mandated by new regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the drastic change in the demand for 1 electric power. If) ImMmmmsmMMmmmmmm ft siaiiitiisiL. 4 BUT INVESTOR-OWNED utilities must deal with those changes on the basis of how they will alter the economic- Staff photo by Nancy Warnecke the Klan left, defected from the Knights to year. David Duke, center, has been replaced as Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan by Don Black, right, of Athens, Ala. Willard Oliver, New Pretender to Klan Leadership practicality of nuclear power and their profit margin.

In that 7 respect, TVA is unique because the agency is answerable to no regulatory body save the three members of the board directors for its rate increases. The agency will conduct a rate "review" tomorrow which officials nave repeatedly said will show the need for a 20 rate i increase effective Oct. 1. And with the action of Congress last year to double TVA's debt -ceiling from $15 billion to $30 billion, the cost of TVA's nuclear power program could nearly double again and TVA still would be under no formal obligation to change its nuclear power PART OF the recent decision to continue to build atomic power plants while knowing they will create a large surplus of power is that TVA is negotiating to sell some of the power from those plants to the utilities that are now having trouble keeping their own construction programs going. "We sent out signals that we might have some surplus power to sell down the road and as a result of that, we are beginning negotiations to sell that power," said Freeman.

"This way, the-" ratepayers of the valley will have some help in paying the cost of -V builaing these plants." Neither the board chairman nor TVA Director Richard Free- man, a former railroad executive, will discuss those negotiations, however. They have refused to name the utilities involved in the negotiations and would not even say whether it was those utilities or TVA that made the first contact. WHEN THE "signals" were sent out, Richard Freeman said it T' would be a "damn shame" if TVA had a large surplus and no; market for it. At the same time, Chairman Freeman said any, -discussions about the purchase of large amounts of excess TVA power would have to be "at the initiative" of the needy utiliV ties. During a recent press conference when the negotiations were announced, David Freeman refused to acknowledge that he had earlier said TVA would not seek out power customers beyond TVA's congressionally-established service region of seven-- states.

And, when pressed for details of the "numbers" which he other TVA officials said show the need to continue the nuclear: power program, Richard Freeman said the numbers are not in -final form and will be released at a later date. Chairman Freeman responded to a similar request for detailed information concerning TVA's projections of the nomics of nuclear power by saying: "We will present the facts in as much detail as there is a market: for them." HE SAID resolutely, however, that he feels the economy of the Tennessee Valley and the demand for power is likely to increase in the coming years, at least partially because TVA will have plenty of power to attract new industries. Although TVA has been reluctant to release its new load growth forecast, an extrapolation of available data shows that by the time Sequoyah and Watts Barr nuclear plants are producing power in 1982, the agency will have enough power to handle its highest demands until after 1990. And in the intervening years, according to the current con-': struction schedule, the remaining four nuclear power plants will have been completed. TVA'S NUCLEAR power program began in 1966 with the award Leaders of They have tried to undermine the fabric of the white race.

"The civil rights movement is an example of ferment financed by the Jews. I wouldn't expel the Jews from the country, but I would encourage them to leave." Blacks great-grandfather may have played a crucial and ironic role in his descendant's attraction toward the Klan. Thomas Moore Black, of Paris, was a teen-age scout for Nathan Bedford Forrest's I5tn Tennessee Cavalry when the command rode into Athens on Sept. 23, 1864. THE "WIZARD OF the Saddle" surrounded a garrison of Yankee soldiers and tricked them into throwing down their weapons without a fight.

The incident fueled young Thomas Black's hero-worship of his commander. He began a family tradition of reverence for the man who became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux when it was founded in Pu- laski, about 30 miles north of Athens. When the young man from Tennessee moved with his three brothers to Athens after the Civil War, they discovered a school for freed slaves operating in the midst of the old Yankee fort Forrest's command had captured. A CORNER of the vanishing earthwork was still an all-but-forgotten memorial when young Don Black inherited the stories of the ancestor who rode with Forrest. Ahigh school classmate said, "It was evident to us in the 10th grade that Don was hung up on the Confederate aspect.

He was very quiet but he used to talk about now someday he would control the United States and he would give control over certain countries to people who supported him. "I remember once he sent a letter to President (Lyndon) Johnson in terms of the here and now for the Confederate States of America as if it still existed and sighed in Jefferson Davis. He was very right-wing people didn't think he was real. And Black says that the Civil War history he read and heard awakened his "consciousness to politics." "America never developed after the war. The CSA was the only true nation ever developed in this country," said Black.

"HE WAS ALWAYS very secretive with us. He read and studied all the time, and when I first learned about the stuff he was passing out it like to have shocked me to death," Thomas W. Black said of his son, the new Grand Wizard. "I didn't think about Don going that way, but he was insistent that his way was right, and he was very strong-willed," the father recalled. "He was a good boy morally, but he was too serious-minded, and I kept telling him he ought to go out and have more fun," Mrs.

Hazel Black, his mother, remembered. "WE ALWAYS THOUGHT he was very intelligent, and we've had other people tell us that," she said. Although he has an older sister who is now a professional writer living in Chicago, there was such an age difference between them that Black grew up virtually as an only child. His sister Sylvia graduated from join a rival Klan group earlier this IT WAS through the Alliance that Black met Duke. The two distributed literature and staged meetings at the University of Alabama before Black dropped out of the group to prepare for his aborted Army career.

After joining the Klan in 1974, he dropped out of school and moved to Birmingham where he still works as an audiologist at a private medical clinic. Black said he may have to give up the clinic work to devote more time to leading the Klan. The 6-foot, 3-inch Black, who turned 27 two days after he was appointed Grand Wizard of the Knights in a New Orleans conclave, said "Interesting things seem to happen to me at about the time of my birthday. In 1970 1 was shot. In 1974 1 joined the Klan.

And in 1980 1 became Grand Wizard. It makes birthdays interesting." Klan members must still ratify his choice as their leader. Black reads voraciously from such diverse publications as National Review, The New Republic and the journal of the Communist Socialist Workers' Party. Relaxation centers around karate workouts. HIS WIFE.

DARLEEN. whom he married in 1978, said she supports his activities. "I think Don is doing the right thing, and I'll be with him," she saidT His mother also accepts his political role, if reluctantly. "I THINK DON IS doing the right thing," she said. "I would rather he wouldn't be so involved, because it's too dangerous and I worry about him but Don always was strong-willed." Black is intense, and he really listens to his followers who approach him at rallies, instead of merely glad-handing them in the manner of politicians.

He speaks extemporaneously rather than from a prepared text. Grey-blue eyes flasn as he stabs the air with gestures, caught up in his own speeches, which often last an hour or more "I'M IN A position I really didn't want, and I'm still kind of in shock. The Klan needed leadership, and I was the only one who was qualified to give it," he said. "It is possible to succeed. We have the potential to win, although it may not be in two years, or five years or 10 years," said Black who ran for mayor of Birmingham in 1979.

He finished sixth in a seven-man race, just ahead of the candidate for the Communist Workers Party. Richard Arrington, a member of the Birmingham City Council, became the city's first black mayor when he won that election. BLACK'S STRATEGY for the Klan's future is aimed at providing "an alternative group with solid leadership" for those who believe in white supremacy, but who want no part of the "confrontation politics" promoted by the rival Invisible Empire led by Bill Wilkinson. Black said Wilkinson, whose organization is a spin-off group of the Knights, "is only interested in promoting himself." "We are the legitimate Klan," Black said. "We are the leaders of the white race, and we are willing to take whatever approach is necessary to win the battle." high school the year Don entered first grade.

"I did a lot of reading at 14," Black said. "I guess that's when you would say I became politically conscious, and I saw reality," he said. One of the first books he remembers reading was the political tract None Dare Call It Treason, that was widely circulated during Sen. Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign for the presidency. BLACK SAID HE remembers passing out Goldwater bumper stickers, and just last week he told followers at Collinwood, he will be supporting another Republican, Ronald Reagan, in this fall's election.

He glosses over his youthful difficulties as a high school student, but a girl who went to school with him remembers him as a loner who "just sort of walked around by himself all the time, with that weird look on his face." "I don't remember him having any girlfriends, although he was very neat," she said. "But no one ever spoke to him, and he never spoke to anybody." BLACK SKIRTS the topic of the 1970 shooting at Stoner's headquarters in Georgia. "I'd really rather not talk about it," he said, adding, however, that he regrets disregarding his parents' warnings not to join Stoner's campaign. "I suppose it's an awful, shocking thing to have your parents get a telephone call in the middle of the night that you've been shot and critically wounded, and I'm sorry I did that to them," he said. BLACK WAS SHOT by Jerry Ray, brother to James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Dr.

Martin Luther King, in an incident authorities described at the time as being connected with the theft of records from the Stoner campaign headquarters. According to an AP news story, Black was shot while trying to pick up a box of materials placed outside a window of the headquarters of the National States Rights Party. AP QUOTED Ray as telling police Black had taken files from inside the office and was shot as he picked up the box. The story quoted Stoner as saying Black had been working in the campaign but was dismissed July 4, 1975 three weeks before the shooting occurred on the night of July 25. Contacted last week, Stoner said he vaguely recalled the incident, but "I don't recall any records being taken and I don't recall any charges." When asked if he still was in contact with Black, Stoner said, "I try to tend to my business and let others take care of theirs.

We try to stay on friendly terms with everybody." Black calls the shooting "acci dental." and says he's "on good terms with Stoner's organization today. After the shooting, he was briefly a leader in the White Youth Alliance at Huntsville, where he had transferred to a jprivate, all-white religious school for his senior high school year. Black said he transferred to Madison Academy to avoid the integration of Athens High School in the fall of J970. (Continued from 1-B) have guaranteed him a commission upon graduation. A MONTH LATER.

Don Black joined the Ku Klux Klan. "I remember that he was a very sharp looking cadet, and if I evaluated him as a racist, I did it by the record," Col. Paul O'Mary, retired commander of the university's ROTC brigade, said last week. "With his background, he never could have been cleared to be an Army officer, because no racist can become an officer," O'Mary said. "I WAS REALLY gung-ho," Black recalled.

"O'Mary told me I was the best in the brigade, and I really wanted to be an officer." Black trained exhaustively for the military career that never materialized, winning a black belt in karate and becoming a member of the brigade's elite "Ranger? division. When his political views denied him a commission, Black was crestfallen. "Actually, I had been rather apolitical for a few years," he said. "I had been sort of Durned out, but that was the catalyst. "I had been restless, wanting to do something, wanting to take part, and without the ROTC program, I decided to go ahead and do it," he said.

Black's joining the Tuscaloosa Klan chapter strengthened his ties with a Louisiana white supremacist he had first met through the White Youth Alliance David Duke. Duke, only a few years older than Black, had become the national information director for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headquartered at Metairie, and within a year rose to become the group's Grand Wizard. "Nobody else seemed to be doing anything to stand up for white rights, and that's why I chose the Klan," Black said. A girlfriend at the university joined him in the Klan, and they were married a few years later. THE FRIENDSHIP between Black and Duke led to promotions for Black.

He became the Grand Dragon, or state commander, in Alabama for Duke's Klan, and within a few years took Duke's old post of national information director. He became the group's No. 2 man and when Duke resigned last month, amid charges he attempted to sell out the organization's membership to the rival Invisible Empire, Don Black, who had originally planned to resign along with Duke, chose instead to stay on, assume leadership, and "try to continue this organization in a growing condition, where it may represent the white race." Like Duke, Black directs much of his rhetoric at Jews. "The blacks aren't out to destroy whites; they are being used by the Jews. "The Jews over the centuries have held themselves aloof.

They have been kicked out of every European nation and they have been persecuted. They claim every time they get kicked out they are the victim of circumstance. "That is like somebody convicted of murder in 35 different states claiming they are the victim of circumstances. Those countries didn't expel the Jews for no reason. of a $392 million contract for Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, a three-reactor facility located near Athens, and one of two-destined for that state.

By the time the last of the three reactors went on line in 1977, the' cost of the plant had risen to $920 million. The second nuclear power plant in the system was Sequoyah, a two-reactor plant north of Chattanooga with one reactor now ready, TVA says, to begin commercial power production. Sequoyah was estimated when the first contracts were ap- proved in 1968 to have an ultimate construction cost of $333 mil-lion. TVA fOW says the interest alone on the money borrowed to finance construction of Sequoyah will be hiore than $300 million and the ultimate cost of construction will be about $1.46 bil- lion. The escalation in construction costs are similar for the remaining nuclear power plants in the TVA system, and the cost factor is not unique to TVA.

The federal utility is unique, however, in its unrestrained -authority to raise rates and in the size of its committment to -nuciear power. THERE ARE many variables that will ultimately determine, whether TVA is right in maintaining its aggressive construction -program, and most of them are factors over which even TVA has no control. For example, while Freeman said the new estimates for load growth include the expected effects of TVA's conservation -program, staff experts involved in that program and in load growth projections say there is no realistic way to predict how escalating power costs and other incentives will affect consum- ers. IT COULD WELL be that TVA will have electricity to spare that nobody will need, some critics argue. Chairman Freeman last week dismissed that possibility as being akin to the "white elephant" issue raised by the late Sen: Wendall Wilke, an early opponent of TVA's construction of hydroelectric power plants that now play but a minor role in the" total energy system.

"It's a judgment call," Richard Freeman said. "In two or three years, we and our customers will know whether we are right or wrong.".