In The NOCO

A small nuclear reactor proposed by the Pentagon may be a reality soon in Aurora.   The proposed microreactor would power Buckley Space Force Base and give the site a steady source of electricity.    But it would look different – and operate at a smaller scale – than the nuclear reactors built a few decades ago. Rather than a large energy plant with cooling towers that jut into the sky, this small...

E-bikes and e-scooters are having a moment right now. Battery-powered, motorized transportation is becoming more common on streets and bike paths.   E-bikes and e-scooters are considered green transportation, since they don’t emit the exhaust that cars produce. And some cities, including Denver, offer rebates for e-bikes to encourage more people to buy them.  But today we’re digging into some pret...

TikTok has become a go-to source for news, especially for younger audiences .   But short-form videos on the social network don’t look or sound much like traditional journalism. Users see a stream of bite-size videos that favor strong opinions and controversy over nuance and depth.  So, how does consuming political content on TikTok actually affect young people ?  Michaelangelo Landgrave is a poli...

Melissa Strong didn't set out to be a writer. In her twenties she was an accomplished rock climber. In her early forties, she was working on a new chapter in her life: opening and running her own restaurant in Estes Park, called Bird & Jim.   But in 2017, a devastating accident threw all of her plans into chaos.   Melissa details her experience in a new memoir is called Climbing Through: A Cou...

Colorado voters have a right that many Americans don’t. Colorado, and 25 other states , allow residents to collect signatures and put questions on the ballot, rather than relying solely on lawmakers to decide whether an initiative goes before voters. And Colorado has been putting that tool to use. Only Oregon and California use the referendum process more. But in recent years, some unusual proposa...

An ancient collection of dice discovered by archaeologists might rewrite the history of how humans have understood mathematical concepts like probability.   A new Colorado State University study examined the earliest known dice in human history.  Native American hunter-gatherers across the western U.S. first used the dice as early as 12,000 years ago.   Robert Madden , the CSU researcher behind th...

Renewable energy is becoming cheaper and more common. Just a few months ago, Colorado generated the majority of its electricity from renewable sources for the first time.  And that raises questions about which sources do the most good. Wind or solar? Hydroelectric or geothermal?  A researcher at the University of Colorado set out to find answers about what forms of renewable energy are most effect...

Recent storms have given the Front Range relief after an unusually hot and dry start to the season.  Lawns look a little greener – and Denver Water, one of the state's largest providers, says customers' usage actually dropped because of the rain.   So, you might think that all these afternoon showers surely mean reservoirs are filling back up, and we can relax a bit on conserving water. But the re...

Could planting aspen groves slow the spread of wildfires in Colorado’s forests?  It’s an idea that could help some mountain communities seeing increased threats from wildfires. And it’s backed up by several recent studies , including one that looked at 20 years of data from more than 300 wildfires in Western states. It found that large aspen groves often slowed the spread of forest fires. That’s p...

Colorado's business climate is hurting.   Over the past 18 months, the state lost more than 6,000 jobs.  A CNBC ranking of top states for business saw Colorado slide from a top-10 position four years ago to 25th this year. And a coalition of tech and other business leaders recently issued a letter warning that Colorado’s high cost of living and excessive regulations are bad for business.   Gov. Ja...

On Nov. 7, 1893, men in Colorado did something extraordinary for the time: They granted women the right to vote – which made Colorado the first state to do that not by legislative action or executive order, but by a vote of the people .   It was a moment of triumph for activists who fought for women's suffrage for decades . It meant women in Colorado could vote 27 years before that right was grant...

For decades, Warren Miller was synonymous with a very Colorado genre of film.  In Miller’s films, skiers glide across pristine winter terrain and hurtle down near-vertical slopes. Over the decades, Miller and his film crews turned those images into dozens of feature-length documentaries that celebrated the thrill of a day on the mountain – and also captured the poetry of skiing.   Miller died in 2...

Every summer in Colorado’s high country, yellow-bellied marmots race to gain enough weight to make it through months of hibernation. But this year’s meager snowpack and early spring have put that survival strategy under new pressure.   Scientists with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte have studied individual marmots in the wild for more than six decades. And they say that...

If you read the Colorado Sun, you might be familiar with the comic strip called ‘ What’d I Miss? ’ It follows conversations between Ossie, a young Black man, and Myra, an older white woman who has awakened from a long coma.    Together they struggle to understand modern day politics and culture. Ossie and Myra talk about issues like artificial intelligence, disinformation on social media and more...

Railroads transformed the American West – and immigrant labor made the railroads possible. But many of those immigrants’ stories haven’t been well documented - including those of the Mexican railroad workers known as traqueros .  Beginning in the late 1800s, railroad companies recruited thousands of Mexican and Mexican-American workers to build and maintain the tracks.  At one time, Mexican worker...

The soldiers who trained in Colorado for alpine combat in World War II helped turn the tide of the war. And later, many of them changed outdoor recreation in Colorado as we know it.   The U.S. Army built Camp Hale in the high country near Leadville. Thousands of soldiers there trained for skiing, rock climbing and other elements of high-altitude combat.     But the story of Camp Hale and the 10th...

During World War II, the U.S. Army built a unique training ground in the mountains outside Leadville.    At Camp Hale, soldiers in what would become the 10th Mountain Division trained for combat in extreme alpine conditions. And that led to key victories for Allied forces in the mountains of Europe. After the war, some of the soldiers returned to Colorado and helped launch the state’s ski industry...

There's a trend in Colorado that has higher education officials concerned.   The number of high school graduates is declining -- and that means the state's colleges and universities are expecting a dropoff in enrollment in the coming years.   Colorado is one of three dozen states bracing for what's become known as the "enrollment cliff." And the prospect of fewer students only adds to the pressure...

The Colorado River has been under strain for years from hotter temperatures and prolonged drought. It supplies drinking water to tens of millions of people and provides irrigation for more than 5 million acres of farmland.   And demand has been growing for a shrinking supply. The seven states that rely on water from the river have spent years trying - and failing – to agree on how to divide up les...

Colorado has played a leading role in many films. The state’s western landscapes can be seen in movies like The Hateful Eight and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade .    Then there’s the famous scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which Paul Newman and Robert Redford leap off the edge of a cliff into the rushing river below. That scene was filmed near Durango, above the Animas River.   ...

In an era of high-speed gondolas and sprawling ski resorts, it's easy to forget how some of Colorado's smaller mountains shaped ski culture as we know it today.   Howelsen Hill in Steamboat Springs is one of those mountains. It's a fraction of the size of the resorts in Aspen or Vail – or the bigger resort across town. But Howelsen Hill made a huge impact when it opened back in 1915. The hill bear...

Colorado marks its 150th birthday this Saturday, Aug. 1. Experts at History Colorado have been thinking for a while of different ways to help commemorate the state’s anniversary. One idea was to track down the earliest known photograph of Colorado.    And what they uncovered is striking: It’s a daguerreotype from 1853, taken during an expedition across the West more than 20 years before Colorado b...

It was one of the deadliest disasters in Colorado history: Fifty years ago, a flash flood swept through Big Thompson Canyon between Estes Park and Loveland. It killed at least 144 people on July 31, 1976.  A torrential rainstorm that formed suddenly unleashed more than a foot of rain on the area that evening. Emergency crews rushed to warn people. Many residents and tourists hurried to safety. But...

When a wildfire breaks out in Colorado , scores of emergency responders help fight the blaze and protect residents: wildland firefighters, pilots for air tankers, and law enforcement to help evacuate people.  There's one job you don't hear about as much — but it plays an integral role in how crews respond to a fast-moving wildfire.  A team of incident meteorologists with the National Weather Servi...

On a given night, there are more than 800 people experiencing homelessness in the city of Aurora.   That's according to the most recent survey from the Metro Denver Homelessness Initiative. Some of them find shelter and support at a regional center designed to house up to 600 people.   On Friday nights, one of those people is the city’s top elected official.   Since late February, Aurora mayor Mik...