KUAC - Fairbanks

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is asking for public comments on new regulations for siting small nuclear reactors, like the one the military plans to set up at Eielson Air Force Base to generate electricity.

DEC released draft regulations on Thursday that outline the process of applying for a permit to build or install a nuclear facility in Alaska. According to an agency news release, the regulations were drafted in response to the Air Force’s Eielson Air Force Base Micro-Reactor Pilot Program, which calls for siting a microreactor at the base that’ll generate up to 5 megawatts when it begins operation four years now.

That’s about a third of the electrical output of Eielson’s existing coal-fired heat and power plant. The microreactor, about the size of a railroad boxcar, would provide back-up for the 70-year-old powerplant. The base already supplements the plant’s output with power purchases from Golden Valley Electric Association.

The new regulations would require applicants intending to set up a nuclear facility to, among other things, obtain a siting permit from DEC and get approval from cities or boroughs where the facility would be located — or from the Legislature, for facilities proposed for unincorporated areas within the state’s unorganized borough.

The proposed regulationss wouldn’t affect existing federal regulations that among other things require applicants to also obtain siting permits from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC would continue to oversee all other aspects of the nuclear facility, including licensing, construction, operation, safety and security.

Alaskans may comment on the new regulations through May 11.

Two Fort Wainwright soldiers are undergoing treatment for injuries they sustained Sunday when their Army attack helicopter crashed at the Talkeetna airport during a training flight.

The soldiers, with the 25th Attack Battalion, were transported from the scene to area medical facilities for treatment, according to a Monday statement from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division. One of the soldiers was flown to a hospital and the other was taken by ambulance.

A division spokesperson says the AH-64 Apache helicopter was one of four that were taking part in the training.

The spokesperson said the crash will be investigated by a team from the Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.

A Fairbanks man was sentenced Thursday for carrying out a series of arson attacks in the Pleasant Valley and Two Rivers area in the summer of 2021. Jamison Gallion, 19, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Paul Lyle to serve 24 years in prison.

Gallion, who was 17 years old when he was arrested in August 2021, was tried as an adult.

Given time served since his arrest and assuming a one third sentence reduction for good behavior, Lyle said Gallion’s mandatory release date will be in 2037. Gallion is also ordered to pay restitution to victims, including forfeiture of permanent fund dividends.

Gallion admitted to setting fire to seven properties, including two structures with people inside. He pleaded guilty last year to the felony crimes of arson, burglary, criminal mischief and terroristic threatening.

The judge underscored that it was “sheer happenstance” that no one died or was injured by the fires Gallion set. Speaking before a crowded courtroom, Lyle explained key factors weighed in the sentencing and the seriousness of Gallion’s crimes.

“The defendant engaged in a series of arsons that caused millions of dollars of damage. He directly endangered the lives of ten people, some of them as they slept,” he said.

Lyle also spoke to letters Gallion sent to the Pleasant Valley Community Association which he described as “terrorizing and taunting the entire Two Rivers-Pleasant Valley community for three months in the summer of 2021.”

Rehabilitation potential was another factor, and Lyle highlighted Gallion’s remorsefulness.

“He stood and faced his victims in the courtroom and apologized, which in this court’s experience is relatively rare,” he said.

Lyle additionally noted Gallion’s young age, lack of prior criminal history and supportive family as favorable to rehabilitation, but also expressed uncertainty given Gallion’s  “disturbing motivations” for the arson attacks.

“The defendant has indicated that he committed the arsons for the thrill of it, to calm his stress, which would return after each fire, for personal satisfaction and because he allowed wickedness to overtake him. His June 2021 letter said he committed the arsons to obtain revenge and to release anger against people who were unkind,” Lyle said.

The sentence Lyle handed down is longer than those recommended by attorneys for Gallion and the state, and it surprised arson victim Donald McKee.

“After listening to the DA last week, I was going ah, he’s probably going to serve about ten years,” McKee said. “Well, Judge Lyle put a little bit of teeth to it, and I was happy to see that.”

McKee, his wife, other family members and a rental tenant escaped a fire that destroyed their multi structure property. He says Gallion should have gotten more time, but some charges were dropped. He estimates the replacement cost of the property he lost at about $2.5 million but says the arson attack has also taken another type of toll.

“This morning I was taking a shower and right in the beginning of my shower, the power went out,” he said. “And my first thought was ‘Oh man, another fire.’ And that’s every time the power goes out. I hope I get over that someday.”

The arsons also destroyed and heavily damaged buildings belonging to the Pleasant Valley Community Association. Association treasurer and founding board member Bob Sugden expressed mixed emotions after Gallion’s sentencing.

“Quite frankly I’m sick in my stomach just having to have relived all of this,” he said. “I feel like what has been done and what has been sentenced is appropriate and right. I don’t want to be capricious and mean spirited, but at the same time I don’t want this person to ever have access to our community again.”

Sugden, a pastor, says he hopes Gallion can eventually find some semblance of a healthy and whole life. The courtroom was filled with people for the sentencing, a mix of Pleasant Valley Two Rivers area residents, including arson victims as well as family and friends of Jamison Gallion.

Gallion looked down for periods of the over hour long proceeding, but seemed to maintain composure as his sentence was delivered.

Genetic genealogy recently helped Alaska State Troopers identify a human skull found 25 years ago.

Interior Alaska commander Capt. Eric Spitzer, said a pair of hunters found the skull along the Porcupine River near the Canadian border in September of 1997. It was later retrieved and delivered to the state medical examiner.

“The cause of death was suspected of being the result of bear mauling,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer says the identity of the bear attack victim remained unknown until last April, when a DNA sample from the skull was compared to a genetic genealogy database enabling investigators to home in on relatives. The testing tentatively identified it as belonging to Gary Frank Sotherden of New York.

“The Alaska State Troopers contacted a suspected brother of Gary who submitted a DNA sample to Family Tree DNA, which subsequently resulted in positive identification, determining that they were indeed brothers,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer said troopers were also able to fill in the Alaska part of Sotherden’s story.

“While speaking with family members, Alaska State Troopers learned that Gary was dropped in and around the area where the remains were found, sometime in the early to mid-1970s, presumably to go hunting,” Spitzer said. “He has never been heard or seen by his family since then. A family biography and grave marker for Sotherden annotates he was lost somewhere in Alaska at the age of 25.”

Spitzer said Sotherden’s brother was notified about the positive identification Dec. 27 and put in contact with the state medical examiner’s office so the family could make arrangements to take possession of the remains.

The Air Force has begun replacing Eielson Air Force Base’s aging fleet of F-16’s with upgraded models of the fighter jet. The first two of the newer jets arrived last week.

The two newer F-16 Fighting Falcons are both about 35 years old, a couple of years younger than the jets they’ll replace. More importantly, the incoming F-16s have avionics that were updated five years ago, nearly a decade after than the old jets got their last upgrade.

“So, it’s still the same airframe and engine,” says Lt. Col. Albert Roper, the commander of Eielson’s 18^th Aggressor Squadron. “However, with the increase in systems capabilities upgrade, some of the software, the processors, all that has been replaced.”

Roper says the upgraded jets will enable his unit to better train U.S. and allied pilots to fight adversaries’ advanced aircraft, including so-called fifth-generation fighters, comparable to Eielson’s F-35s and the F-22s based at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.

“Our daily training here is interaction with local fifth-gen aircraft here in the state of Alaska, both F-22s from down there at JBER and then with the F-35s here at Eielson Air Force Base, in order to keep them operationally proficient and combat-ready,” he said in an interview Thursday.

Roper’s unit is called the Aggressor Squadron because its pilots often play the role of adversaries during training exercises held every year out of Eielson and JBER. Those include Red Flag and Northern Edge, both of which are conducted in the skies above the 65-thousand-square-mile Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex, a series of ranges spread around the state.

“The mission of the Aggressors is to know the threat,” he said. “We teach that threat to our combat aircrews and their partner nations. And then we replicate that threat in the aircraft.”

Roper says that training will continue over the next several months, with both the new and old F-16s. He says during that time, two or three of the newer jets will arrive every few weeks, and two or three of the older ones will then fly their final missions to the Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in southern Arizona — the so-called Boneyard, where aircraft are stored before being sold, repurposed or recycled.

“By August or September of this year,” he said, “hopefully the transition’s been completed and we’ve got our newer jets here and the other ones are down in the Boneyard mothballed-away.”

Roper says all 19 of the squadron’s F-16s will be replaced with the newer jets.

The state is offering financial help to Alaska farmers who are struggling to pay high prices for livestock feed that’s in short supply after last year’s poor harvest. But some farmers say setting up a grain reserve would be a better way to help them recover in lean years.

The state has launched two new programs to help farmers pay for livestock feed. Prices are about double last year’s because spring planting was delayed by last winter’s heavy snowfall and fall-harvest crop yields were low due to early frosts and other unseasonable weather.

“It was tough,” says local UAF Cooperative Extension Service agent Phil Kaspari. “We had those high input costs, poor returns, and a number of people are in survival mode.”

Kaspari said in an interview Monday that higher prices for feed, fuel and fertilizer have driven some producers to cut back on their livestock.

“The last thing that we wanted to see happen is people having to cull down their herds,” he said, “but in fact that’s what a number of these people have had to do.”

Alaska Farm Bureau President Scott Mugrage says the problem affects many farmers around the state.

“It’s not just people are paying a high cost for feed,” he said. “We’re going to run out of grain in the state of Alaska.”

Mugrage grows hay and other feed for the 600 head of cattle at his farm near Delta Junction. And he says producers appreciate the help the state is offering through its Food Security Cost Assistance Program. A state Agriculture Division spokesperson says about 70 farmers have applied for payouts from the program, with requests ranging from about a thousand dollars to nearly $150,000.

But, Mugrage said, “I’m just not sure that this type of assistance is what was needed to carry us through.”

He says another new program announced by the state last week, however — the Alaska Barley Transportation Support Grant Program — is more likely to help, even though the window to apply for a grant closed on Monday.

“I thought they’d be better off with offsetting some transportation costs with imported feeds, because that’s what we don’t have,” he said. “We don’t have grains.”

Mugrage says he was disappointed that the state didn’t follow through on what he and others believe is the best solution to protect livestock producers during lean years: reviving plans to establish a grain reserve.

“This is exactly the type of year that proves we need this reserve to be established,” he said. “It’s like a savings account. That grain’s always going to be there, it can be released during a time of drought or disaster, and then could be right back re-apportioned after the drought. ”

Mike Schultz, another Delta area farmer, agrees.

“It is a good idea, for several reasons,” he said in an interview Monday. “One is over the course of several years, that grain reserve would get built up and be the cushion that we need in the event of another poor production year.”

Mike Schultz raises barley and other crops on the 6,000 acres he farms with his brother, Scott. He’s also serves as board chair of the Delta-based Alaska Farmers Co-op, which built grain elevators and a fertilizer plant with state funding back in the 1980s. The organization ran into financial problems and declared bankruptcy in 1993, and deeded those assets to the state. Then in 2015, the state leased it back to the co-op for 25 years at a cost of a dollar a year. Schultz says it would be the perfect place to set up a grain reserve.

“It would really benefit the livestock producers throughout the state,” he said, “because they would then know there’s an adequate supply of feed for their animals.”

Both Mugrage and Kaspari agree. And they’d had hoped the state would move ahead on setting up a grain reserve after Gov. Mike Dunleavy talked about it in June at Nenana’s annual Agriculture Day event. An Agriculture Division spokesperson said last week that state officials are still considering a grain reserve, but decided to move ahead on the other programs in an effort to get help to farmers this year.