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Utah Governor Spencer Cox and other state leaders believe Utah can become a hub for this new generation

of nuclear energy. At the center of their plan are these small modular reactors. They're

compact nuclear plants, basically, designed to produce power more safely, more efficiently,

and with less space than the massive reactors of the past.

So forget the huge cooling towers and the sprawling complexes.

These next-gen reactors are said to be about the size of a shipping container or a school bus.

And the idea is to deliver power to a grid that's under growing stress.

Now, there are a lot of outstanding questions here about cost and waste and safety. And then, of course, there's Utah's history

with the atomic age. Thousands of people who lived with and died from cancers they believed

were caused by the government's atmospheric bomb tests in the Nevada desert.

And there's another angle to that history that we should mention.

Utah has been a player in the development of nuclear energy before.

The historian Sarah Fox told us about it this week.

She said, during the Manhattan Project, most of the uranium used in the American bomb program came from overseas.

And she says, officials wanted their own supply. Uranium from here.

So in the wake of World War II, you have the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission in

1946, which is designed essentially to kind of create civilian oversight over nuclear

weapons technology. And a big priority for the Atomic Energy Commission is establishing a

domestic supply of uranium. And so the Atomic Energy Commission is establishing a domestic supply of uranium.

And so the Atomic Energy Commission basically announces the first federally sponsored mineral rush.

They set a guaranteed finding bonus for verified uranium claims, which was a huge amount

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