With global warming an increasing threat, some are urging
a return to nuclear energy, but the industry’s own checkered
past reminds us that a nuclear renaissance will be neither easy nor
cheap
Magazine
September 4, 2006
As the global warming threat increases, nuclear energy enjoys a renaissance, but the industry’s own checkered past hints that nuke power will be neither easy nor cheap. Also in this issue: The BLM’s decision to lease land for energy exploration in the watersheds of Grand Junction and Palisade, Colo., reveals the way oil and gas leasing works.
Feature
With uranium prices rising, speculators are looking anew
at busted mining towns like Jeffrey City, Wyo., but locals have
learned to be skeptical
The Navajo Nation is fighting to keep uranium mining off
the reservation, but eager uranium companies are determined to
mine– and the federal government is on their side
The nation’s nuclear infrastructure is aging, and in
need of very expensive – and very complicated –
retooling just to survive
Sidebar
The federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was
created to compensate uranium miners and mill workers sickened by
their jobs, but on the Navajo Reservation, Dr. Bruce Baird
Struminger says the program has proved flawed
Graphics show the location of the West’s nuclear
sites and uranium sources, and the nuclear fuel cycle is
described
The French have dealt with their radioactive waste for
decades by reprocessing it, but the process is more problematic
than it sounds, particularly in an age of terrorism
Editor's Note
High Country News reveals its odd
historical connection with the West’s uranium obsession of
the 1950s
Uncommon Westerners
Economist and demographer Larry Swanson wants to help
rural Western communities find a way to survive
Essays
In a dark, narrow storm drain below the border town of
Douglas, Ariz., eight illegal immigrants drowned in the summer of
1997
Book Reviews
The Dire Elegies laments the plight of
North America's endangered wildlife in poetic detail
In 109 East Palace, the granddaughter
of one of the Manhattan Project's administrators re-examines the
story of the atomic bomb built in Los Alamos
The Boy Who Invented Skiing" is the
memoir of Swain Wolfe, who spent his boyhood in a Colorado Springs
tuberculosis sanatorium in the '30s
Perspective
Worried about falling poll numbers, some Republicans, led
by Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, are resisting some of the
Bush administration’s more far-reaching attacks on
environmental protection
Heard Around the West
Dirk Kempthorne and luxury RVs; The Farmer Wants a Wife,
maybe; no rules (or bras) at Sturgis; look before you pee;
hard-working Washington pot-growers; Arizona’s biggest
marijuana farm; with defense lawyers like this one, who needs a
prosecutor?; and big bird with a bad grip
Dear Friends
Bikers, filmmakers, engineers, cheesemakers all visit
HCN; Ed Wayburn celebrates 100th
birthday
News
The BLM’s decision to lease land for energy
exploration in the watersheds of Grand Junction and Palisade,
Colo., reveals the way oil and gas leasing works
BLM and Forest Service officials say they have little
power to prevent drilling in an area once it’s been
OK’d for leasing, but critics say the government simply
refuses to use its power
Across the West, anti-government activists from out of
state are funding ballot measures that attack government spending
and the judiciary as well as land-use planning
With Congress stalled on immigration reform, Western
states such as Colorado are tackling the issue with tough new
laws
Two Weeks in the West
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne kicks off "listening
tour" on "cooperative conservation"; court shoots down Forest
Service’s anti-public input rules; Idaho judge blasts
BLM’s similar anti-public input rules; feds ignore
states’ requests for roadless acreage
Letters
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