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Haunted by the goblins of the cold war, a Boise-based group is obsessed with a uranium enrichment plant GargoyleA relic with knee-jerk, anti-nuclear reflexes from the cold war has energized itself to oppose Areva's planned $2.4 billion "Eagle Rock" uranium enrichment plant in Idaho. The Boise-based Snake River Alliance (SRA) has a war chest of $300,000 from the Bullit and the Edwards Mother Earth foundations and Patagonia outdoor clothing. With a staff of five and a claim of 1,000 members, it is planning to mount a major campaign to drive Areva out of Idaho. The French nuclear energy firm announced plans in May 2008 to build a $2.4 billion uranium enrichment plant in eastern Idaho 18 miles west of Idaho Falls, ID. Areva chose the site after a yearlong nationwide search, with intense competition among five finalist sites, and only after the Idaho legislature offered tax incentives to sweeten the winning deal. Idaho Falls is one of the nation's most pro-nuclear cities with a sustained track record of standing up for Areva's project.

Haunted by the goblins of the cold war, a Boise-based group is obsessed with a uranium enrichment plant GargoyleA relic with knee-jerk, anti-nuclear reflexes from the cold war has energized itself to oppose Areva's planned $2.4 billion "Eagle Rock" uranium enrichment plant in Idaho. The Boise-based Snake River Alliance (SRA) has a war chest of $300,000 from the Bullit and the Edwards Mother Earth foundations and Patagonia outdoor clothing. With a staff of five and a claim of 1,000 members, it is planning to mount a major campaign to drive Areva out of Idaho. The French nuclear energy firm announced plans in May 2008 to build a $2.4 billion uranium enrichment plant in eastern Idaho 18 miles west of Idaho Falls, ID. Areva chose the site after a yearlong nationwide search, with intense competition among five finalist sites, and only after the Idaho legislature offered tax incentives to sweeten the winning deal. Idaho Falls is one of the nation's most pro-nuclear cities with a sustained track record of standing up for Areva's project.

The catch: Waste America's realization that it must kick its expensive foreign-oil habit has energized the previously moribund nuclear power industry, which is proudly selling itself as the cheaper, cleaner alternative. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering at least a dozen applications for new power plants, and it expects to receive 23 more applications within two years. Nuclear power should be included in the panoply of preferred alternatives to fossil fuels - along with wind, solar, geothermal, hyrdroelectric energy and anything else that weans the nation from its $700-billion-a-year taste for foreign oil.

A bill to encourage construction of nuclear power plants in Oklahoma passed the Senate by a 36-9 vote on Tuesday. The Nuclear Energy Incentive Act would help companies that want to build nuclear power plants recover the money spent on construction. "We need to explore all the options for generating power," said Sen. Brian Bingman, R-Sapulpa, author of Senate Bill 831. Some senators opposed the bill because they were concerned about storage of nuclear waste. "If they were removing the nuclear waste, would they be driving that on our roads," asked Sen. Kenneth Corn, D-Poteau.

"Utah's role » Observers wonder how state facilities might figure into a national solution. Two recent announcements from the Obama administration have energized nuclear power advocates. The first is his plan to offer $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear plants; the other, a task force to look at the dangerously radioactive waste often blamed for delaying what some anticipate will be a nuclear renaissance. More than a few Utahns are keeping an eye on the new Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. Tooele County includes the nation's largest low-level radioactive waste disposal site, the mile-square EnergySolutions landfill, and the nation's only high-level nuclear site licensed in the past three decades, the derailed Private Fuel Storage facility on the Goshute reservation in Skull Valley. Both sites have generated controversy in Utah for decades. Now, they could become part of a national nuclear strategy. That's what Utah leaders and advocates on both sides of the nuclear debate plan to watch in the two years the commission takes to develop its final report. "

Steve Chu could be a groundbreaking energy secretary for the energy research efforts of President-elect Barack Obama's Administration in several ways. It's not just that Chu will be the first life-long scientist- and a Nobel prize-winning physicist at that-to run a department which spends more than $15 billion a year on physical science research, including weapons work. (Previous energy secretaries have usually been political allies of the president, which Chu isn't; a Naval Admiral and a power industry official have previously held the post.) But his selection, and new clues from Obama's transition team, could signal some big changes in the way that the United States conducts science to tackle the energy challenge.

The Energy Department will tell Congress in the coming weeks it should begin looking for a second permanent site to bury nuclear waste, or approve a large expansion of the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Edward Sproat, head of the department's civilian nuclear waste program, said Thursday the 77,000-ton limit Congress put on the capacity of the proposed Yucca waste dump will fall far short of what will be needed and has to be expanded, or another dump built elsewhere in the country. The future of the Yucca Mountain project is anything but certain. President-elect Obama has said he doesn't believe the desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is suitable for keeping highly radioactive used reactor fuel up to a million years and believes other options should be explored.

We'll soon see how much Missourians want a new nuclear power plant. A Missouri utility wants to build a second nuclear plant in Callaway County - if ratepayers will pony up before the plant opens. But that is against the law in Missouri, where utilities are prohibited from charging ratepayers for plants that have not been built.

Today, October 17, 2008, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) is announcing the availability of its Draft Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). The document provides an analysis of the potential environmental consequences of alternatives to the present U.S. open fuel cycle, in which nuclear fuel is used one time and eventually sent to geologic disposal.

Fifty people rallied outside the Fremantle Esplanade Hotel on July 22. The hotel was the venue of the Australian Uranium conference. The protest was organised by the Fremantle Anti-Nuclear Group. The protest was addressed by mayor of Fremantle, Peter Tagliaferri, who denounced the Western Australian Coalition government's support for uranium mining as a short-sighted and costly policy. He reaffirmed the Fremantle City Council's commitment to keeping Fremantle a nuclear-free zone. Greens parliamentarian Lynn MacLaren denounced the federal environment minister Peter Garrett for his approval of the Four Mile uranium mine in South Australia. She called for the state government to invest in renewable energy rather than uranium mining which is dirty and dangerous.

Peggy Pauly lives in a robin-egg blue, two-story house not far from acres of onion fields that make the northern Nevada air smell sweet at harvest time. But she can look through the window from her kitchen table, just past her backyard with its swingset and pet llama, and see an ominous sign on a neighboring fence: "Danger: Uranium Mine." For almost a decade, people who make their homes in this rural community in the Mason Valley 65 miles southeast of Reno have blamed that enormous abandoned mine for the high levels of uranium in their water wells.

Peggy Pauly lives in a robin-egg blue, two-story house not far from acres of onion fields that make the northern Nevada air smell sweet at harvest time. But she can look through the window from her kitchen table, just past her backyard with its swingset and pet llama, and see an ominous sign on a neighboring fence: "Danger: Uranium Mine." For almost a decade, people who make their homes in this rural community in the Mason Valley 65 miles southeast of Reno have blamed that enormous abandoned mine for the high levels of uranium in their water wells.