Nuclear Powered Debate

Nuclear Powered Debate

Questions arise as company eyes industrial park for possible nuclear power plant

James L. Davis

The prospects of a nuclear powered Emery County became a topic of discussion and disagreement during the July 15 meeting of the Emery County Commission.

During the public comments portion of the meeting John Urgo of HEAL Utah, an organization opposed to nuclear power, urged the county to reconsider supporting plans by Transition Power Development for a proposed nuclear power plant near Green River.

Transition Power has expressed interest in Emery County’s industrial park being developed outside Green River for the location of a nuclear power plant, and the county has signed an option contract with the company that allows Transition Power first option on purchasing acreage for the plant development.

From a slide presentation he discussed with the commission, Urgo said using history as a guide, betting the farm on a nuclear revival only gave the county a 50/50 chance of ever seeing it pay off. He said there have been more nuclear reactor orders canceled than completed in the United States.
Commissioner Gary Kofford told Urgo that he was “putting the cart before the horse” in regards to a nuclear power plant. “We aren’t jumping on board anything that hasn’t been thoroughly looked at and studied.”

If Transition Power did decide on the Green River site for development of a nuclear plant, the road to development of a plant is long and winding, and an initial application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wouldn’t be filed until 2010, with construction taking years after that. Before a plant development got to that point the process would be exhaustive and complicated.

“Commissioner Kofford told me I was putting the cart before the horse in coming to the meeting, and while it’s true an application to the NRC might not be filed until 2010, and construction will take years, the county’s role could be done in a few weeks or months,” Urgo said after the meeting.

“I say this because the commission agreed to an option contract with Transition Power in April that goes into effect once the land deal is finalized with SITLA (State Institutional Trust Lands Administration). Mike McCandless (Emery County Economic Development director) told me this deal is being finalized through phone calls and emails and could become final in the next few weeks. So I guess my point is that if people in Green River or Emery County do have questions or concerns about this proposal, they won’t be able to turn to their local government once the SITLA deal is finished,” Urgo said.

McCandless countered that even when the SITLA process is finalized there would still be a great many possibilities for public involvement, starting with planning and zoning requirements. He said the option contract had very little significance at this point in time.

“All it does is allow them to do some studies to see if it is even a feasible site,” he said, indicating that the option contract is not in effect today and wouldn’t be until a lease agreement is finalized with SITLA.

During the meeting Urgo claimed that the county planned to use tax revenue for the development, but after the meeting he was able to get clarification on the issue from McCandless.

“After talking with Mike McCandless, it is my understanding now that these are new tax dollars that would come from the sale of the land, not existing tax dollars. The contracts for the sale are also going to be written so that Mancos (company planning to develop a uranium mill at the industrial park) and Transition Power have to put up some of their own money for infrastructure improvements. So I do believe that the deal with SITLA is structured to protect the taxpayers of Emery County from having to put up existing revenues for improvements that could then be lost,” Urgo told The Emery County Review.

With that said, Urgo pointed out that nuclear power is the most heavily subsidized energy sector in history and everyone will be paying tax dollars for any new nuclear power plants developed in the United States.

“My argument is that we shouldn’t give more of our tax dollars to an industry that has been around for 50 years and should be required to stand on its own two feet,” Urgo said.

During his discussion with the commissioner Urgo said the county would be better served to be looking at other, more environmentally friendly forms of power development. McCandless said that the county does talk to other developers. He indicated that he will talk to any developer that expresses an interest in the industrial park

“We have talked to a lot of energy companies. We talk to them all of the time. But they have to get to where they’re willing to spend money and so far Transition Power has said they’re willing to spend money,” McCandless said.

During the commission meeting Mark H. Williams of Castle Dale asked Urgo to tell him when the last nuclear accident had occurred in the country and indicted that he felt nuclear power was safe and would bring needed jobs into the county.

Urgo acknowledged that there hadn’t been an incident at a nuclear plant for more than 20 years and after the meeting said he understood some of the hostility toward the message he was bringing regarding nuclear power.

“I think the reaction was a result of me being perceived as an outsider trying to tell the county what to do. And I understand that, and the suspicion. I just hope people treat the companies coming in with the same suspicion. I also think people are suspicious because they’ve lived off the land for years, but in the last 25 years or so they’ve been told what they can and can’t do with their land more often. While it’s always been public land, no one outside these communities really bothered for years and it was left to local control. Now, people are being told what roads they can drive on, what areas are now off limits, what you can do with livestock. I think the environmental movement has done itself a great deal of harm by promulgating regulations from above and not starting first in local communities to try to build support, or at least consensus, for some of these changes,” Urgo said.

If the development of a nuclear power plant makes its first, tentative steps toward development, it will be the second business for the industrial park with a nuclear theme. Manco Resources Inc. is moving forward with plans to develop a uranium mill through the lease of up to 800 aces of land at the park. The uranium mill would produce 1,200 tons of ore each day and produce 2.4 tons of yellowcake. The uranium mill would be the first tenant of the new industrial park once the agreement with SITLA is finalized. The plant is expected to cost $100 million to build. A public hearing regarding the uranium mill development is being planned for September.

HEAL Utah is also opposed to the development of the uranium mill and points to the poor track record of uranium mills in the past in regards to safety and environmental stewardship.

“We’re still dealing with the past legacy with Atlas, the cancer cluster in Monticello, and there are residents in Blanding concerned about groundwater contamination from the White Mesa mill. It’s going to cost over $1 billion just to remove the Atlas mill tailings, and it cost a few hundred million to remediate the other sites that existed in Utah. Again, these are costs to taxpayers, not to the companies that created these messes,” he said.

Also speaking to the commission during the July 15 meeting was Sarah Fields of Uranium Watch in Moab. She expressed concern about the proposed uses of the industrial park and said that if the county sold as much as 1,600 acres to Transition Power for a nuclear power plant and another 700 to 800 acres to Mancos Resources for a uranium mill, that would leave very little of the 3,300 acres left at the industrial park for anything else.

“The plans for a nuclear power plant are going on under the radar. I have no knowledge of Transition Power having any meetings to discuss what they are wanting to do. I don’t think the county has a very good picture of what a nuclear power plant will mean next to the Green River,” Field said.
McCandless and the commission again stressed that everything is in a preliminary stage and there is no evidence, as of yet, that the development of a nuclear plant at the site is even feasible.