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Show No Future In Uranium I must respectfully disagree with Representative Tom Hatch's statement state-ment in your Feb. 25 issue that the Ticaboo uranium mill will be our economic savior. I do not see a prosperous future for us in uranium, ura-nium, or in any mineral for that matter. If there is a favorable uranium market in the near future, it will be short-lived. Since the end of 1973, only one nuclear power reactor has been completed out of the 117 that were planned or under construction in this country. The only Americans Ameri-cans still ordering nuclear power plants are the US Navy. The only growth market for nuclear power plants is in developing countries, where nuclear reactors are a status symbol and a source of plutonium for potential nuclear weapons production. pro-duction. We should not produce uranium to help these countries make nuclear weapons. (India, Pakistan, Israel, and China developed devel-oped their nuclear weapons from their nuclear power capability.) Nuclear power plants fell out of favor in this country for several reasons. 1 . They are dangerous. Another Three Mile Island or Chernobyl is possible at any time, and the risk is even greater due to the year 2000 computer problem. Unfortunately, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Commis-sion has reversed its earlier decision to shut down any reactor that is not confirmed to be Y2K compliant. If (See LETTER on page 3-A) Letter From page 2-A a nuke plant melts down in any country due to Y2K problems, the bottom will fall out of the uranium market. 2. There is no safe way to dispose dis-pose of the waste from nuclear power reactors. Concerns about ground water, earthquakes and vol-canism vol-canism have prevented any radioactive radioac-tive waste facility from opening in the US since the 1960's, except Envirocare's facility in Clive, west of Salt Lake City. Nuclear power plants can't expand until the waste problem is solved, and the problem is proving to be unsolvable. 3. Nuclear energy is the most expensive way to boil water ever invented. (Nuclear power is not produced by some high-tech conversion conver-sion of nuclear energy to electricity. Instead, the heat generated by a nuclear nu-clear reaction is used to create steam, which turns turbines to generate gen-erate electricity.) Between 1968 and 1990, nuclear-generated electricity in the US costs an average of 8.8 cents per kilowatt hour, nearly twice the cost of electricity from coal, oil or gas. (We pay 6 cents per kilowatt hour for Garkane's electricity.) This figure doesn't even take into account the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning decommission-ing reactors. (Reactors have a lifetime life-time of only 30 years, after which they must be either entombed in place or taken apart and hauled to a disposal facility.) To make ends meet, the nuclear industry relies on enormous federal taxpayer subsidies. The government govern-ment has poured approximately $97 billion into developing, commercializing commer-cializing and supporting nuclear power since 1950. The other use for yellow cake, of course, is nuclear weapons. That market is also declining. When the Cold War ended, nations signing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties Trea-ties (START) agreed to dismantle 50,000 nuclear weapons. Workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas, and at four sites in Russia, Rus-sia, are busy taking apart old nuclear nu-clear weapons right now. After dismantlement, the US and Russia will each still have 5,000 nuclear weapons (enough to destroy all life on the planet). Neither country needs any more nuclear weapons, and we don't want to supply uranium ura-nium for other countries to make nuclear weapons. If the Shootaring Canyon Mill manages to stay open longer than last time, what price will its employees em-ployees pay for working there? Utahns have already suffered enough cancer and leukemia, thanks to fallout fall-out from the atomic bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site. Not only the workers health will be at risk. If they bring home any uranium dust on their clothing, boots, or vehicles, vehi-cles, their families could be exposed to cancer-causing radiation. Children Chil-dren are more susceptible to radiation radia-tion than adults. This leads me to the bigger picture. pic-ture. Counties that rely on primary production such as mining and logging log-ging are treated like Third World colonies by the global economy. Relying on natural resource production produc-tion keeps Third World countries poor. We don't want that. It would be smarter for us to find ways to attract growth industries to our county (such as amenities economies, service and communications). communica-tions). That is our path to a prosperous pros-perous future. Victoria Woodard Escalante |