RIVERTON RANGER

July 9, 1996

Wyoming's Brand - An editorial by State Senator Robert Peck

Wyoming will be honored at New London, Conn., with the commissioning this weekend of the USS Wyoming, an Ohio Class Trident nuclear powered submarine.

Much as people dislike war, nuclear deterrence helped to bring down the Communist Soviet Union. The USS Wyoming is one of the U.S. Navy's largest and most powerful underwater nuclear missile launch platforms.

The existence of the USS Wyoming, and 16 other Trident class nuclear powered submarines, will continue to deter any power anywhere from making an attack on the U.S.

Reprisal would be swift and sure, should some nation be foolish enough to incur our country's wrath and our nuclear ability to counter attack.

When the 300 or so Wyoming leaders join former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to tour the submarine, which is twice as long as a football field and weighs 18,750 tons, they may find that the submarine is powered by uranium mined from Wyoming, the country's leading producer of the remarkable element.

The commissioning of the USS Wyoming, and later the USS Cheyenne, will put Wyoming's brand on national defense from both land and sea. Over 1,000 nuclear warheads are deployed in Peacekeeper missiles from Fort Francis E. Warren at Cheyenne.

So does Wyoming uranium help. provide the fuel for 109 U.S. nuclear power stations which deliver about 22 percent of our country's electricity.

Wyoming is part of the fuel supply for both branches of the nuclear industry, national defense with weapons such as the USS Wyoming and the Peacekeepers, and vital electricity from nuclear power stations.

Fremont County tried to play an equally important role through possible temporary storage of nuclear fuel rods, until they can be either reprocessed or placed in permanent storage.

Each step along the nuclear path is of equal importance, fuel for weapons and for power plants, and responsible recycling and/or storage of materials left over from the defense and the energy sides of the nuclear industries.

You can't have one without the other.

SIGNED

Bob Peck