This story was adapted from a radio broadcast script using artificial intelligence. Every story, including those adapted with AI, is reviewed by a human editor before publication to ensure that KSL’s editorial standards are upheld.

SALT LAKE CITY — As Utah looks for ways to meet growing electricity demand from data centers, artificial intelligence, manufacturing and population growth, nuclear energy has become part of the state’s energy conversation.

Gov. Spencer Cox has said Utah must embrace nuclear energy if it wants to meet surging electricity demand and remain competitive in the global economy.

“And as I’ve said many times, if you are serious about energy abundance, you have to be serious about nuclear energy,” Cox said.

Much of that demand is being driven by artificial intelligence data centers, which require enormous and reliable power supplies. Proponents say small modular reactors are the answer — offering stable, carbon-free electricity that traditional renewables struggle to match.

Critics, including downwinders and environmental advocates, said Utah’s history with radiation exposure should make state leaders more cautious.

Listen to parts one and two of the nuclear energy reporting on KSL News Daily below. 

Advocates tout nuclear reliability and clean air benefits

John Kotek, senior vice president of policy and public affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said nuclear power’s fuel cycle gives it an edge over fossil fuels.

“Once you fuel a nuclear reactor, it’ll run between 18 and 24 months before you have to shut it down and put new fuel in it,” Kotek said. “So you’re not dependent on shipments of coal or gas in a pipeline or what have you.”

Kotek added that nuclear energy produces no carbon emissions or air pollutants, saying it has “a real role to play in cleaning up air quality in the West.”

Dr. Tatjana Jevremovic, director of the nuclear lab at the University of Utah, said the math also favors uranium.

“The amount of energy you get out of a kilogram of uranium is about 10,000 times the amount of energy you get out of a kilogram of coal or petroleum,” Goodell said. “And also it is an energy source that has basically zero carbon emissions along with it.”

Environmental, health groups raise alarms

Not everyone is convinced the benefits outweigh the risks. Carmen Valdez, a senior policy associate at Heal Utah, said co-locating reactors with data centers creates compounding dangers.

“If something were to catch on fire, if something were to fail, you are now accumulating a lot of issues as well as creating toxic spaces,” Valdez said. “If we’re concerned about the cancers coming from data centers, what is the concern about a data center with a nuclear reactor, with spent fuel, on site?”

Valdez urged state lawmakers to invest instead in resources Utah already has in abundance.

“We are extremely equipped for solar. Maybe we should start looking at rooftop solar for our large communities and consumers,” Valdez said. “We have battery storage. We have so many opportunities.”

Waste disposal remains unresolved

Even nuclear supporters acknowledge one lingering challenge: the United States has no permanent disposal facility for radioactive waste.

“The very good part about spent nuclear fuel is that it’s very easy to manage. You put it in pools for a few years, you put it in these concrete and steel containers, and you can leave it on site,” Kotek said. “The challenge is, of course, it is radioactive, so it needs a long-term place to be stored and ultimately disposed.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent federal agency that licenses and regulates the civilian use of nuclear energy.  Kotek said the commission has helped to significantly improve plant safety over decades of operation.

“We’ve been operating commercial nuclear power plants in the United States for more than 60 years,” Kotek said. “And when you do something that long, you learn a lot about it. You get good at it.”

Utah’s Downwinders say history demands caution

Between 1951 and 1962, the U.S. government conducted above-ground nuclear testing at what was then called the Nevada Test Site. As a result, the wind carried radioactive debris to thousands of people in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

The people subjected to that fallout are known as Downwinders. For Mary Dickson, a Downwinder and thyroid cancer survivor, the push for nuclear energy carries a deeply personal weight. Dickson advocates for Utahns harmed by radiation exposure from nuclear weapons testing, and she said the state’s history should give leaders pause.

“The idea that they would be so cavalier and just welcome nuclear energy and everything that goes with it, including nuclear waste, into our state makes us expendable,” Dickson said. “And you’d think with our legacy, we would be far, far more cautious and just say ‘no.’”

Dickson said the concern extends beyond reactors themselves.

“They’re pushing for the facilities for every step — to develop uranium for reactors, to mine it, mill it, fabricate it, enrich it, all of that,” Dickson said. “And they’re looking at these throughout the state.”

Modern reactors designed to contain worst-case scenarios

Goodell said residents worried about safety should consider the track record of communities that already live near nuclear plants. He said modern facilities are engineered with multiple layers of protection.

“We don’t just design them to prevent accidents. We design them to contain accidents, so that even in a worst-case scenario for a nuclear power plant, all of the nasty radioactive material will stay at the plant,” Goodell said.

Graphic accessed from the Downwinders.info website. It indicates which counties in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah experienced fallout from nuclear testing.

Dickson acknowledged that newer technology is safer than past designs but said no system is foolproof. She called on Utahns to demand answers from government leaders and push for regulations that protect public health and safety.

Contributing | Simone Seikaly

It may be the middle of July, but the Old Farmer’s Almanac is already looking ahead to the fall with cooler temperatures ahead.

The Almanac, which has been one of the most trusted weather prediction sources for more than two centuries, recently released its fall forecast, showing a wide range of weather throughout the United States.

But what about in the Washington DC region? Here’s what the Almanac says.

What is the fall weather forecast in the Washington DC area?

DC sits along the Almanac’s Atlantic Corridor, and that region should expect a “cool, dry” fall, according to the forecast.

“Expect cooler and wetter conditions than usual this fall,” the Old Farmer’s Almanac says. “Below average temperatures are forecast, along with an uptick in precipitation over traditional averages.”

Last year, DC received 6.53 inches of rain during September, October and November — significantly lower than the city’s 30-year average of 10.50 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile

The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.

The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.

Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.

While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”

The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.

What happened

According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.

The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.

Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)

The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.

“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”

The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops. 

The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”

This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Related