Nuke Bruneau

This site serves as a public service announcement for south eastern Idaho. It has come to our attention that Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc is proposing to nuke Bruneau by building a nuclear power plant there. This start-up venture from Virginia plans to build a new French designed 1,600 megawatt nuclear reactor by CJ Strike Reservoir. The company is currently flooding the media with misleading information regarding the economics, energy payback, emissions, independence, safety, and need for the plant. The company wants to build the plant here, most likely sell the power out of state, take the profits back to Virginia, and leave us with the waste.

The only other plant of this design is being built in Finland. This is 2 years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget as of Dec 6, 2006. At this time there are no working reactors of this design in the world.

This is being promoted as a green/clean energy source. The only thing green about nuclear power is the glow! A 1,000 megawatt plant produces .2 tons of plutonium waste, 159 tons of reactor fuels and weapons grade plutonium and 179,000 tons of uranium mill tailing per year. This is not to mention all the CO2 produced during the construction, mining, milling, enriching, storage, and decommissioning.

Idaho currently has no active uranium mines so this is not a fuel of choice for energy independence. We would have to import the fuel from other states and most likely other countries (in 2006 the US imported 21,435 metric tones of uranium from places like Russia, Kazakhstan, and Namibia). A better solution is to generate electricity with our local fuel sources such as hydro, geothermal, solar, wind, and biomass. These renewable sources would also create many more local jobs.

The Idaho utility companies, as shown by their Integrated Resource Plans, show a deficiency in peak generation. A nuclear power plant cannot operate as a peak generation plant. Currently there is not a deficiency in base load generation. The utilities also have plans to firm up future generation demands including generation with wind and geothermal.

Want to be stuck forever with the waste? There is currently no solution to the very high level radioactive waste. Man made plutonium has a half life of 24,400 years and is radioactive for over 240,000 years. Plutonium is 20 million times more radioactive than mined uranium. One millionth of a gram if inhaled can cause lung cancer. This stuff will be stored at the proposed plant forever unless sometime in the future there is a high level waste storage or reprocessing facility built. It currently appears Yucca Mountain may never accept any high level waste and there is not even a site picked for reprocessing. Common sense would say the solution to the waste problem must be solved before any new nuclear power plants are built.

Please contact your senator and representative at the Idaho Legislature website or this website.