June 26, 2026

Dear Editor,

Let me start with the honest acknowledgment the opposition deserves.

Idaho Power rates have risen nearly 45% since 2021. Farmers in our region feel that directly. Data center demand has contributed to that pressure, and anyone who dismisses it isn’t being straight with you.

But here’s what the opposition isn’t telling you: the problem is already being solved. And the solution is being built right next door.

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT INL

Idaho National Laboratory — right down the road in Idaho Falls — is the premier nuclear energy research institution in the United States. What may surprise you is what’s happening there right now.

The Department of Energy has identified 44,000 acres of INL land specifically for AI data center projects integrated with advanced nuclear reactors. INL has partnered with NVIDIA on a project called Prometheus, using AI to design and build nuclear reactors faster — with goals of doubling deployment speed and cutting costs in half. Oklo Inc., which has already broken ground on its Aurora reactor at INL, has partnered with Meta to build a 1.2-gigawatt nuclear power campus, with a pilot demonstration planned specifically at Idaho National Laboratory.

The nation’s most advanced nuclear research, the world’s leading AI companies, and the infrastructure America needs to win the AI race are converging in our backyard.

PRESIDENT TRUMP IS BUILDING THIS

On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed four executive orders linking nuclear energy directly to AI infrastructure and national security — to quadruple US nuclear capacity by 2050. Construction is already underway nationwide. Three Mile Island — the most symbolically loaded address in American nuclear history — is being restarted specifically to power Microsoft’s AI data centers.

The Trump administration isn’t just talking about a nuclear renaissance. It’s building one.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR EASTERN IDAHO ENERGY BILLS

Nuclear-powered data centers that supply their own electricity take themselves entirely off Idaho Power’s grid. They stop competing with our farm or our home for power. The pressure driving rate increases gets relieved — not because the data center gives power away, but because it stopped drawing from the same pool we depend on.

Longer-term, every small modular reactor (SMR) built to serve a data center drives down manufacturing costs through scale — exactly the “need is the mother of invention” dynamic I described earlier in this series. The data center investment today subsidizes the cost reduction curve that benefits Eastern Idaho families tomorrow.

And there is one immediate, concrete benefit nobody mentions: property taxes. A large data center campus generates substantial property tax revenue flowing directly to local schools, roads, and county services. That benefit arrives before the first kilowatt-hour gets generated.

BEING HONEST ABOUT REAL CONCERNS

Nuclear waste is the most honest unresolved challenge here. Spent fuel remains highly radioactive for extraordinarily long periods and requires permanent geological isolation. SMRs don’t eliminate that challenge — some designs create additional waste complexity. INL already manages nuclear waste research. More nuclear development means continued responsibility for that challenge, and Eastern Idaho residents deserve honest planning around it, not dismissal.

Construction timelines carry real uncertainty. Nuclear projects have a history of running over budget and behind schedule. Trump’s executive orders streamline regulation, but they cannot eliminate engineering complexity. The nuclear solution is coming — the exact timeline is not guaranteed.

Those concerns deserve serious attention. They do not justify turning Eastern Idaho away from a future that is coming whether we engage with it or not.

SO, WHAT SHOULD WE AS A COUNTY ACTUALLY DO?

The answer is simpler than the opposition wants you to believe.

Local county’s position on data centers should be the same as its position on any business that wants to locate here: you are welcome, you will be treated like everyone else, you will follow the same rules everyone else follows, and you will not receive special favors at taxpayers’ expense.

No tax subsidies. No special incentive packages that shift costs onto local residents while profits flow elsewhere. If a project can’t stand on its own economic merits without local county taxpayers backstopping it, that’s a signal the project isn’t as strong as its proponents claim.

At the same time — no special obstruction. No extra barriers invented because outside activist groups with foreign funding decided data centers are this year’s pipeline fight. Noise standards, setback requirements, dark sky ordinances — those are reasonable tools that apply to any development. Use them well. That’s good governance. What local government doesn’t need is a moratorium driven by a national ideological campaign that has nothing to do with our community’s actual interests.

Equal treatment. Free market principles. Local decisions made by local people.

That is not a complicated policy. It is the free market working exactly as it should.

THE LARGER POINT

This series has covered a lot of ground — from activist funding networks to China’s military ambitions, from Adam Smith to nuclear fusion. But it comes back to something simple.

The communities that thrive in the coming decades will be those whose leaders understood what was coming and positioned their residents to navigate it wisely. We sit next to one of the most important energy and technology research institutions in the world, at a moment when that institution’s work has become central to America’s future.

That is not a burden. That is an opportunity.

I made my home in Jefferson County. It should meet the opportunity with clear eyes, free-market principles, and the confidence of a community that knows its own interests — and doesn’t need outside activists telling us what to think.

Art da Rosa, PE, MPA, CFM
Rigby, Idaho