Noel has commented on uranium availability as a selling point for nuclear power generation in Utah. We would still need to purchase the uranium from private interests, some of them foreign, and would still need to ship the uranium to one of a handful of federal facilities for enrichment. Much of the uranium is located on Navajo lands, and the Navajo Nation has recently declared a moratorium on all uranium mining. Indeed, uranium mining has already imposed a disproportional burden on Navajo people, in terms of the health and safety. This goes for many other Native American communities.

We agree that we need mitigation solutions to greenhouse gas emissions and to our oil addiction. These solutions should draw on resources that are locally and regionally available. Utah is already a beneficiary of the Blue Sky initiative, the windmill array in Wyoming, through Utah Power. Infrastructure already exists for wind power generation and transmission. Wind farms have already been proposed for locations within Utah. Given the statistics available on sunlight in Utah, our state is also an ideal location for solar arrays. Indeed, Japan plans to generate a full half of its electricity from the sun by 2030.

The sun is the only nuclear reactor we need.

Certainly, nuclear research should continue. But it should focus on phasing itself out and mitigating the harms already produced. Future nuclear research should work to protect the health of our communities and our environment by developing processes to neutralize the radioactivity of existing nuclear waste instead of adding additional burden and risk through encouraging production.

In the end, if Utah were to move down the nuclear path, we have one question: Where would we ship our own high-level nuclear waste?

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Eileen McCabe-Olsen is associate director and Pete Litster is executive director of Shundahai Network.