New nuclear plants would add to the country's mountain of nuclear waste, at a time when the federal government has long been in default of its obligations to existing nuclear plant operators to take the waste away from their sites. Utahns are already familiar with the desperate, and so far unsuccessful, attempts of some utilities to send their waste to a "temporary" storage site in the state.

Solar and wind do not need water. The two nuclear plants proposed for Utah would consume between 30 and 60 million gallons of water per day. The 300 plants that Mr. Cannon proposes nationally would consume over a trillion gallons of water per year at a time when water supply is becoming an uncertain resource. For instance, last September, a nuclear unit at Browns Ferry belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority had to be shut down for lack of water. Such problems can be expected to intensify in a warming world. A renewable electricity system would also be much more secure from terrorism than one that relies on nuclear power.

Last month, MidAmerican Energy Holdings (which owns Rocky Mountain Power and is owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway), dropped plans to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho, on the grounds that it could not provide reasonably priced energy to its customers. Is that why some in Utah advocate an open checkbook for the nuclear industry to come and build a power plant, whatever the cost? If not the customers, then would taxpayers provide the subsidies?

The notion that renewable energy cannot supply the electricity requirements of the United States has been widely put forward without careful technical evaluation. On the contrary, it is nuclear that is the risky course. If the state of Utah is going to use its resources to encourage new electricity sources, a renewable portfolio standard of 25 percent by 2025 would help. And it could begin by installing solar panels on the parking lots and rooftops of its own buildings.

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Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md. He earned his doctorate degree in electrical engineering from the University of California-Berkeley, where he specialized in nuclear fusion. Makhijani is author of "Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy" and a consultant to a number of electric utilities including the Tennessee Valley Authority.