Energy Northwest has hired a team headed by former Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt to find buyers for electricity that could be produced by a mothballed Hanford nuclear power.

The 16-member public power consortium has been studying the viability of finishing its Plant No. 1 north of Richland but has been stymied by a lack of interest among Northwest public utilities.

This week, the utility approved a deal with the consulting team of Goldschmidt, his wife Diana Snowden and Tom Imeson to review recent feasibility studies conducted for the project and pitch the plant to potential partners. Goldschmidt also was U.S. Transportation secretary under President Jimmy Carter and is a former Portland mayor. Snowden and Imeson are former executives at PacifiCorp.

"It's a pretty impressive team," said John Cockburn, chairman of Energy Northwest's executive board.

The contract takes effect today and runs through April 1, said Energy Northwest spokeswoman Laura Dovey. A final report is due April 15, and compensation is not to exceed $200,000. That would push the total price tag of studying the plant's revival to almost $1 million more than last year.

The plant was one of five nuclear projects the consortium began building in the 1970s. Only the Columbia Generating Station was ever completed, and Energy Northwest must find alternative uses for the other plants or demolish them.

At 60 percent finished, Plant No. 1 was closest to completion.

Goldschmidt and company are being hired instead of naming an independent review team as planned earlier. As originally envisioned, that team would have consisted of recognizable figures who would have been responsible for reviewing recent studies.

It was hoped its independent nature also would give credibility to the effort and allow the consortium to make a better pitch to a region that may not support more nuclear power.

But it became a moot point when no interest materialized from potential buyers.

Prices on wholesale markets were soaring when Energy Northwest commissioned a series of studies on finishing the project but have since receded. Staff now believes the plant would produce power at a rate between 3.9 cents per kilowatt- hour and 5.1 cents per kilowatt- hour, figures that are far above today's market but might fall in line with future market prices.

Those figures assume the plant would be finished using tax-exempt bonds. To attain such status, at least 90 percent of the 1,300 megawatts the plant would produce would have to be sold to public utilities.

Otherwise, financing costs would surge higher and make the price of the plant's power even less competitive.

So far, no one's called.

"There's no entity or collection of entities in the region that are showing interest in completing the plant," Cockburn said. "But there might be something out there on the national scene. We don't know for sure."

He figures Snowden and Imeson have the insight into the industry and Goldschmidt has the political and corporate contacts to find out. And if they find interest in using the plant for something other than power generation, that works, too.

"Maybe something else will come up," Cockburn said.