Walter was a History major in undergrad, with a minor in Politics and Government. He graduated in May 2025, Summa Cum Laude with Honors in History.
Long-term goals: “I am hoping to eventually pursue a PhD in U.S. environmental history, specifically the environmental and labor history of nuclear energy in the United States.”
What this means to Walter: “I am very grateful to win the ΣΑΕ Historical Society’s Topoi Competition in the Professional Papers category. In addition to my undergraduate faculty advisor, Dr. Douglas Sackman, I’d like to thank John Werner and the rest of the ΣΑΕ Historical Society for always encouraging my love of history.”
About the Topoi competition: “I learned about the Topoi competition in January of this year, when John Werner invited me to join a meeting of the SAE Historical Society as a guest. At the time, I had just finished my senior thesis (in December 2024), and thought it was a fantastic idea to have a Topoi category specifically for professional papers.”
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Walter’s history senior thesis’s full title is as follows:
Outsourcing Failure: Contractors, Construction, and Labor’s Last Gasp at Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) Nuclear Plants 3 & 5, 1979-1983.
John Werner is just shortening that Outsourcing Failure: Thesis. This is a pretty complex topic from a paper aimed at a post-PhD audience, so he did his best to break it down.
BACKGROUND INFO ON THE TOPIC
1. The Washington Public Power Supply System (aka WPPSS) was a joint operating agency of 19 public utility districts and four cities (Seattle, Tacoma, Richland & Ellensburg) in Washington State.
– WPPSS operated from 1957 to 1998.
2. From 1968 to 1983, WPPSS attempted to build five nuclear reactors in Washington State.
– WPPSS tried to build three plants (WPPSS Plants 1, 2, and 4) in eastern Washington.
– These three plants are less relevant to my research.
– WPPSS tried to build the remaining two plants (WPPSS Nuclear Plants 3 and 5) in western Washington.
– These plants were twin plants, built at the same location near a small town called Elma.
– My research focuses specifically on Plants 3 and 5, in relation to the broader WPPSS program. (Confused yet?)
3. The WPPSS consortium collapsed in July 1983 when it defaulted on $2.25 billion in municipal bonds.
– Basically, WPPSS borrowed too much money & couldn’t pay off the interest.
– This was (and remains) the largest municipal bond default in U.S. history.
– As a result, WPPSS never completed Plants 3 & 5.
4. Most previous academic scholarship blamed the WPPSS $2.25 billion bond default on poor management and overly strict government regulations.
– But were those the only reasons?
ANALYSIS
5. Here’s what I found was missing from the existing scholarship:
– Plants 3 & 5 never went online (meaning, they never produced electricity), because they were shut down before completion. We all agree on that.
– However, 3 construction workers died and 8 were injured during the construction phase (between 1979-1983).
– Because these deaths and injuries were not a result of a nuclear meltdown (like the disaster at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania), they never became national news, and academics failed to consider them in their research on WPPSS.
– Previous scholarship on WPPSS Plants 3 and 5 does not mention deaths, injuries, or labor issues at all.
6. My research first focuses on why so many construction workers died and were injured.
– The biggest reason is that WPPSS outsourced everything relating to Plants 3 & 5 to contractors, including the day-to-day management of construction operations.
– As a result of exceptionally poor oversight, contractors developed corrupt practices and ignored safety regulations.
7. My research then focuses on the construction workers themselves.
– Construction workers repeatedly protested poor safety conditions at the construction site for Plants 3 & 5.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
8. Here’s three big research questions I addressed in my paper:
– At what point can a construction worker at a nuclear power plant become an antinuclear activist?
– Did blue-collar protests at WPPSS Plants 3 and 5 significantly help bring down the entire WPPSS program in 1983? OR, as previous scholarship claimed, was the 1983 WPPSS closure only due to poor budgeting and overly strict government regulations?
– If blue-collar protests at WPPSS Plants 3 and 5 DID contribute to the end of the WPPSS program in 1983, why didn’t previous scholarship acknowledge that?
RESEARCH ARGUMENTS
9. My paper essentially argues two things:
– One, that blue-collar protests at WPPSS Plants 3 and 5 DID contribute in part to the end of the WPPSS program in 1983.
– Two, that previous scholarship ignored the contributions of these blue-collar construction workers,
– These previous scholars believed that blue-collar construction workers at nuclear power plants could not become antinuclear activists. I argued that, in many cases, these construction workers did become antinuclear activists.
– A deeper look: Many environmental historians tend to believe that work – especially blue-collar work like construction, forestry, or mining – is incompatible with nature and environmentalism. I argued against that approach, partially by citing some other scholars who argued that nature and blue-collar work are compatible.
