Sisyphus Falling

Areva, the French company that convinced the legislature to pass tax incentives to build a uranium enrichment plant near the INL in Idaho Falls, announced today that they are indeed coming to our state. They were evaluating four sites including Idaho and decided that our history of nuclear development and the tax incentives created a perfect match. How did I find out? As I walked in the office a reporter called to talk to the ED, "And what is this regarding?" I ask..."Areva's announcement that they will build their plant here in Idaho Falls." I feel like Sisyphus falling, or failing as the case may be. In an article on the plant Areva talks about how we need more uranium enrichment to provide fuel for nuclear reactors so that we can have more "clean energy" and continue our "economic growth." Hello! People! Why is economic growth on the level of increased consumptive practices the priority right now? For a culture bent on linear understandings of times progression can we please acknowledge the varying global context that makes the kind of "development" practices of the 50's 60's and 70's not applicable in this millenium? Remember, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, the Green Revolution? These efforts have led to imbalances in our global socio-economic political demographics that make increasing resource depletion via progressive consumptive practices by facilitating dirty and dangerous energy production certainly low on the list of viable priorities to create a sustainable future. But the rock keeps rolling and we keep chasing it and there has got to be another way over this mountain. And how is it that so many folks are up in arms over low level radioactive sand from Kuwait coming into this state for disposal but no one gives a darn about the production of a facility that will create perpetual highly radioactive waste? I haven't been able to write about this because I am so appauled by my suspicion that the opposition to the sand is based less on waste and more on a xenophobic racist attitude towards the sand being from Kuwait. There must be a way to connect these dots on a level that supersedes this possibility. But maybe this obstacle is exactly the point. Maybe people don't care about anything other than otherizing and safeguarding their consumption. If I leave this bolder here and just walk to the top of the mountain will I get a better view?