Official Comments

Complaint of Deceptive and Unfair Practices Related to Proposed Nuclear Power-related facilities and activities in the State of Utah

Honorable Commissioners:

The undersigned organizations respectfully submit this formal complaint regarding false, deceptive and misleading advertisements and representations made by the Utah Office of Energy Development in promoting the development of nuclear power projects in the State of Utah.

This complaint is filed pursuant to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.

Parties Involved:

The Utah Office of Energy Development (Office), a state agency in the Office of the Governor, in its planning for and promotion of nuclear power in Utah, has engaged in false and misleading claims in its advertising campaign.  This campaign, authorized by the Utah Energy Council established and funded with tax dollars by the Utah Legislature and endorsed by Governor Spencer Cox, to convince Utah residents that a full range of nuclear power-related facilities and activities in the State is safe and should be supported. 

Promoters of nuclear power under Cox’s “Operation Gigawatt” have made public statements, presentations, and promotional materials that minimize or omit critical facts regarding this project’s true scale and its possible harm to Utah residents and consumers.  

While these advertisements — such as the Utah Office of Energy Development’s “$1.8 million pro-nuclear billboard campaign — use real, isolated scientific facts, they heavily distort them to minimize the unique, systemic risks of nuclear energy. [1]

The Office’s promotional campaign claims that nuclear power plants emit less radiation or are “safer” than household objects like candles, chairs, bananas, and refrigerator leftovers rely on a classic logical fallacy: the false equivalence of scale and context. [1]

These representations include but are not limited to:

Specific Allegations of Deceptive Practices:

1. The Banana Claim: “Nuclear plants emit less radiation than eating a banana.”

  • The Pro-Nuclear Argument: Bananas naturally contain miniscule amounts of radioactive Potassium-40 (⁴⁰K). Pro-nuclear advocates often use the “Banana Equivalent Dose” (BED) to show that living near a nuclear plant exposes you to less radiation annually than eating a few bananas. [1, 2, 3]  This is patently false.
  • Nuclear power plants dump radioactive water, scatter radioactive particles, and disperse radioactive gases into the general environment—near-by water bodies, air, and soil–               as part of their routine, everyday operation. The National Academy of Sciences has stated there is no safe level of radiation exposure, at any level it can cause harm.
  • Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2 (2006) National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9863.
  • Anders P. Møller, Timothy A. Mousseau. The effects of natural variation in

background radioactivity on humans, animals and other organisms. Biological Reviews, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2012.00249.x

  • Studying 175 nuclear plants in 17 countries, researchers found residents living near nuclear plants have a higher risk of all types of cancer, especially for children under 5 years old.
  • Lin RT, Boonhat H, Lin YY, Klebe S, Takahashi K. Health Effects of Occupational and Environmental Exposures to Nuclear Power Plants: A Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression. Curr Environ Health Rep. 2024 Sep;11(3):329-339. doi:10.1007/s40572-024-00453-8. Epub                 2024 Jun 18. PMID: 38886298; PMCID: PMC11324671.
  • Mueller W, Gilham C, Childhood leukemia and proximity to nuclear

power plants: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Journal of Cancer Policy, Volume 6, 2015, Pages 44-56, ISSN 2213-383,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcpo.2015.10.003.

  • When millions of people are exposed to small increases in risk, there will be thousands of victims, especially of cancer.
  • There is no research showing increased rates of cancer from eating or growing bananas or living near banana plantations.
  • The Debunking Reality: This argument ignores biological chemistry and isotopic severity.

 The human body tightly self-regulates potassium levels, a process known as homeostatic control. When you eat a banana, your body metabolizes what it needs and excretes the excess, just hours after ingestion. Unlike other radioactive isotopes produced by nuclear fission in a power plant, K-40 does not accumulate in your body.

The Tritium Lie: Pro-nuclear campaigns often compare banana radiation to tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen leaked to the atmosphere or released in wastewater by nuclear plants. However, as noted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, comparing a day’s worth of plant leakage to a banana is wildly inaccurate; severe leakages can deliver hundreds of thousands of times more radiation than a single banana. Furthermore, reactors produce highly toxic isotopes like Plutonium-239 and Strontium-90, which do not exist in bananas, can accumulate in human bones and organs, and remain dangerous for up to 240,000 years.

2. The Candle Claim: “Nuclear energy is cleaner and safer than a candle.”

  The Pro-Nuclear Argument: Burning a candle relies on open combustion. It releases soot, ultrafine particulate matter, and micro-toxins into your indoor air, affecting lung health. Nuclear fission produces zero direct air pollution. [1, 2, 3]

  The Debunking Reality: This deliberately conflates micro-level indoor air quality with macro-level catastrophic risk.

  • If a candle burns out of control, it may cause a house fire—a localized disaster with a finite ceiling of damage.
  • If a nuclear power plant suffers a catastrophic system failure (due to human error, cyberattacks, or natural disasters), it can result in a meltdown. The long-term exclusion zone from disasters like Chernobyl or Fukushima spans hundreds of square miles, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and causing billions of dollars in economic damage. A candle cannot render an entire geographic region uninhabitable for generations. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

3. The Refrigerator Leftovers Claim: “Leftovers are riskier than nuclear power.”

  • The Pro-Nuclear Argument: According to agencies like the USDA, food leftovers kept in a refrigerator that has lost power for more than 4 hours can rapidly grow deadly bacteria like Salmonella or E. coli. Statistically, thousands of people die or are hospitalized from foodborne illnesses every year, compared to virtually zero routine deaths from operating nuclear plants. [1, 2, 3]
  • The Debunking Reality: This is a manipulation of probability vs. severity (consequence).
  • Risk is calculated as:Probability × Severity. Food poisoning is highly probable but has low severity on a societal scale (it affects one person or one family, and is easily treatable).
    • Nuclear accidents have an extremely low probability but infinitely higher severity. A single breakdown in the nuclear fuel cycle or waste containment does not cause an upset stomach—it poses a systemic threat to human health, agriculture and ecosystems, water tables, and regional food supplies for decades. [1]

4. The Chair Claim: “Sitting in a chair is more dangerous than a nuclear plant.”

  • The Pro-Nuclear Argument: Workplace safety data from the U.S. Department of Labor frequently shows that working in real estate, retail, or sitting in an office chair (sedentary lifestyle risks, slips, and falls) leads to higher injury rates than working inside a heavily regulated nuclear power facility. [1, 2]
  • The Debunking Reality: This omits the externalized “Upstream” and “Downstream” Lifecycles.
  • While the day-to-day operation of a reactor core is highly guarded and strictly regulated, a chair does not require uranium mining.
  •  Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth point out that uranium mining and milling leave behind millions of tons of toxic, radioactive tailings. These operations historically pollute local water supplies and disproportionately harm nearby Indigenous and rural communities.
  • Downstream, the “chair” does not produce high-level radioactive waste that requires secure, geologically stable storage for 100,000+ years—a problem for which a permanent global solution is still heavily contested and largely non-existent. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Considerations of systemic scale impacts:

A banana, a candle, leftovers, and a chair cannot be weaponized into a geopolitical proliferation threat (nuclear weapons), do not require cradle to grave tracking and security or thousands of centuries of guarded waste isolation, and cannot cause a multi-billion-dollar regional evacuation crisis if equipment fails or if a single employee makes a mistake. Comparing localized, everyday personal risks to massive industrial nuclear fission is an intentional distraction from the unresolved issues of toxic waste, high economic costs, and upstream mining pollution. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The Office’s campaign does not address the scope and breadth of the overall nuclear power ambitions under Operation Gigawatt and makes no effort to educate the public regarding its components, which encompass the full spectrum of nuclear power production and disposal.

Additional Concerns:

1.Misleading Claims About Nuclear Energy’s Costs:
Public communications have evaded or downplayed the fact that electricity produced by nuclear power is not competitive in the electricity market, costing upwards of three times more per kilowatt hour than that produced by solar power.  This omission creates a false impression that local production of nuclear power will not significantly raise electricity rates for residential and small business consumers.

2. Minimization of Environmental Impacts:
The Office and Operation Gigawatt public relations ignore or minimize separate and cumulative environmental impacts and potential consequences of developing a full range of nuclear power-related facilities and activities.

3. Deceptive Economic Benefit Claims:
While emphasizing job creation and tax revenue, promoters have failed to adequately disclose the likely negative effects on consumers, including higher utility bills, increased infrastructure costs that may be passed on to residents, and long-term strains on public resources.

4. Omission of Material Risks:
Information directed at the public and stakeholders appears to omit material facts necessary to prevent consumers and residents from being misled about the project’s overall impact on their cost of living and quality of life.
These practices, if proven, constitute unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce by shaping public opinion, securing regulatory approvals, and influencing stakeholder support through incomplete or misleading information.

Requested Action:

We respectfully request that the Federal Trade Commission:
• Initiate an investigation into the promotional statements and public representations made by the Office and by nuclear project developers and their agents.
• Determine whether enforcement action is appropriate, including cease-and-desist orders, required corrective disclosures, and any other remedies necessary to protect Utah residents and consumers.
• Coordinate with relevant state agencies as needed.

We are willing to provide additional information, documentation, news articles, or public statements upon request. We ask that our personal information be kept confidential to the extent permitted by law.


Sincerely,

Steve Erickson, Trustee, Downwinders, Inc.

Lexi Tuddenham, Executive Director, Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL Utah)

Brian Moench, M,D., President, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE)