Groups try to thwart nuclear power
BOISE – Two nuclear energy foes pitched an initiative Friday that seeks to keep nuclear power plants out of Idaho by giving the state’s voters final approval of such projects and by prohibiting any construction until the federal government approves a place to put the waste.
The initiative comes as two companies, billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Co. and Alternate Energy Holdings, a small Virginia-based company, separately are investigating building a nuclear plant here.
Alma Hasse, a hay farmer and small businesswoman in southwestern Idaho where Mid-American is scrutinizing a site near the Payette and Snake rivers, opposes nuclear power because she fears an accident such as the 1986 calamity in Chernobyl, Ukraine. A nuclear power plant could affect the whole state, so the whole state should be able to vote on it, she said.
“This isn’t as safe as a lot of people would like you to believe,” Hasse told reporters in Boise on Friday.
She and Twin Falls nuclear foe Peter Rickards submitted the initiative to Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa with the 20 signatures required for initial approval.
The proposed measure also would mandate voter approval for coal-fired power plants, such as one proposed in 2006 near Twin Falls by a Southern California utility. It now goes to the Idaho attorney general for a nonbinding legal review.
Alternate Energy Holdings has been promoting its proposed 1,500 megawatt Idaho Energy Complex on 4,000 acres in Owyhee County near the Snake River since December 2006.
Meanwhile, MidAmerican Nuclear Energy Co. has been scrutinizing a 3,300-acre site in Payette County near Idaho’s border with Oregon, investigating its suitability based on the landscape’s seismic and volcanic features.
Hasse, who lives about 30 miles from where the Mid-American plant could be built, said she thinks the region’s rural, agrarian setting could actually heighten the risk of terrorist threats against such a facility.
“People don’t think anything of it when they see a crop duster flying over those towers,” she said.