Idaho judge keeps lid on AEHI spending plans

The penny stock firm that wants to build a $6 billion nuclear reactor is back in business

The improbable fortunes of Alternative Energy Holdings Inc (OTC:AEHI) took another surprising turn this week when U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge lifted the freeze on $7 million in assets held by the firm.

The action allows AEHI to resume operations. The company immediately issued a press release to notify stockholders and banks that for now things have returned to normal more or less.

"As I said before, the SEC was simply wrong about allegations that AEHI officials were defrauding their investors. After our evidence was laid before the judge, he agreed and made the decision to release the funds," said Richard Roth, Esq., of the Roth Law Firm, PLLC, from New York City, AEHI's attorney.

Judge Lodge required the firm to report any expenditure of more than $2,500 to the SEC. For its part, AEHI accepted the judge’s terms.

Setback for the SEC?

Attorney Roth had argued in court that the SEC failed to prove AEHI had violated federal securities laws. The regulatory agency had contended that AEHI engaged in a scheme to illegally pump up the price of its penny stock.

The SEC also alleged that CEO Don Gillispie and his VP Jennifer Ransom had used the company as a personal fund for expensive cars and other trappings of the rich and famous lifestyle.

SEC lawyer Mark Fickles said the SEC investigation into AEHI would continue. In the Feb 3 hearing he introduced copies of email messages, some four years old, in which Gillispie appears to be telling another person to purchase AEHI stock to boost the price which would attract new investors.

Fick told Judge Lodge, “What we’re alleging is a broad based scheme to defraud investors.”

The emails appear to have had no impact on the judge’s decision. They may come back to haunt Gillispie if the SEC is able to take its case to trial. Unfreezing the funds doesn’t stop the agency’s investigation. Other allegations about AEHI's business practices remain to be answered by the firm. Future dates for the firm to appear in court are on the judge's calendar.

Setback for the Snake River Alliance

The Snake River Alliance (SRA), an anti-nuclear group in Boise, had repeatedly alleged that AEHI was a scam. At one point, AEHI sued the SRA for slander, but later withdrew the suit. SRA director Andrea Shipley, who’s fiery rhetoric got the activist organization into hot water, has since left it, in an unrelated decision, to work at another nonprofit in the Boise, ID, area.

The SRA took credit for pushing the SEC to investigate AEHI. Last December SRA spokesperson and policy analyst Liz Woodruff said that "victories in our business don't come often, but this one counts." The SRA’s website does not list a news release about this week’s federal district court ruling.

Success factors scarce

Pro-nuclear groups in Idaho have told this blog they don’t have much to say when AEHI’s name comes up. The main reason is that many regard the firm’s claims it will attract investors to build a $6 billion nuclear reactor in Idaho as failing to pass the laugh test.

CEO Gillispie has repeated turned down invitations to talk to pro-nuclear business and civic groups especially those in eastern Idaho which is home to the Idaho National Laboratory.

There are multiple reasons why the case for construction of a 1,000 MW reactor in Payette, ID, doesn’t add up. There isn’t enough transmission and distribution capability, or market demand, in the region to take the output of the plant. The greenfield site has no infrastructure to support the construction activity.

Financing falls short

AEHI has gone through three investment banking firms none of which raised the billions needed to build a reactor. The second firm charged AEHI $25,000 in fees, but never delivered on its promises. The firm’s CEO subsequently pleaded guilty to charges of investment fraud.

AEHI answers questions about the lack of investor financing by saying it plans to take the project only as far as getting the NRC license and then offering it to the highest bidder. This is an untried business model. It will require $50 million to get there. AEHI’s now unfrozen assets of $7 million fall short of that number.

Even if the stock rose to $1/share, the firm would have to offer 50 million more shares adding to them to the 323 million shares outstanding. On Feb 4, the stock closed at $0.32/share. Financially, AEHI has a long way to go to achieve its objective.

Reactor design not under review at the NRC

The main argument against AEHI success in the U.S. is its insistence it can get the NRC to issue a safety evaluation for a South Korean 1,400 MW reactor in the next four years. The NRC has no schedule to review the reactor design for a U.S. license. However, the reactor is referenced in a $20 billion deal between South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. The first two units are expected to be in revenue service by the end of this decade.

All of these factors resulted in MidAmerican, a Warren Buffet company, to withdraw from a proposal to build a 1,700 MW Mitsubishi reactor in the same area in Payette county, ID. Among Buffets’ reasons, the APWR reactor was years away from being certified by the NRC and no one knew how much it would cost to build one. In Texas Luminant has proposed to build two of the Mitsubishi reactors, but the lack of a federal loan guarantee places the project on a slow track to construction even if it obtains an NRC license in the future.

Small reactor option?

Sensing the problems with size, last June AEHI tagged up with Hyperion Power to assess opportunities to develop a 25 MW fast reactor at the Payette, ID, site. So far not much has come of the deal. For its part, Hyperion appears to be focused on marketing its reactor in eastern Europe as a replacement heat source for coal-fired boilers.

The licensing path forward in the U.S. for the small modular reactor at the NRC is perilous and expensive since the agency as yet has not determined what it needs to do to review such a radical design. This huge uncertainly makes it more likely Hyperion’s initial sales efforts will be focused overseas. However, Hyperion is pursuing development of a prototype at the Savannah River site in South Carolina.

Stockholder lawsuits

AEHI has another problem, and that is multiple class action lawsuits by skeptical investors who think that where there is smoke, e.g., the SEC action, there is fire. A typical complaint alleges the same mis-deeds as those first aired by the federal government.

“The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, AEHI and certain of its officers and directors engaged in a scheme to manipulate and artificially inflate the market price of AEHI stock by:”

• (1) paying stock promoters to create artificial demand in the marketplace through end of day purchases,
• (2) misrepresenting that Company officers and directors never sold any shares AEHI stock, and
• (3) misrepresenting the AEHI’s true financial condition and potential business prospects.”

While the lawyers are circling AEHI, the firm is again pursuing its objectives in Idaho and has revamped efforts to open an energy park in Pueblo, CO. There AEHI supporter Don Banner told the Pueblo Chieftain he wants to secure land for construction of a new nuclear reactor.

CEO Gillispie and VP Ransom had taken leaves of absence from their positions during the SEC freeze on AEHI’s assets. Now that the freeze is lifted, the first expense the SEC is likely to see is back pay for both executives. Whether investors will ever see a reactor built in Idaho remains an open question.

Highlights of blog coverage of AEHI

• December 2010 – SEC files fraud charges against AEHI
• December 2010 – SEC suspends trading of AEHO stock
• April 2010 – Payette approves land use
• January 2010 – KEPCO reactors not certified in US
• June 2009 – AEHI gets another banker
• June 2009 – Nuke suit stopped
• September 2008 - Idaho Statesman skeptical about AEHI
• December 2007 – AEHI claims $150 M for start up
• April 2007 – Idaho's invisible nuclear power plant

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U.K. will depend on France for nuclear revival

EdF and Areva have to get organized at home

The United Kingdom currently has 19 nuclear reactors producing just under 20 percent of the nation's electricity. All but one of the reactors has to be replaced by 2023.

Development of new coal-fired power stations isn't an option, given the challenges of global warming and the finite limitations of North Sea natural gas supplies.

The U.K. government is committed to a plan for seven new reactor sites supporting a build out of 19 GWe of nuclear power.

As many as nine 1600-MW Areva EPRs could be built in the U.K. by Electricite de France (EdF) on four of the sites. Two more sites are wide open in terms of selecting a reactor design.

To deliver this awesome capability, EdF and Areva , which are both owned by the French government, must find new ways to work together. The road to success is full of potholes caused by confusion at the highest levels of the French government on how this is supposed to take place.

Read the full details exclusively at ANS Nuclear Cafe online now.

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Talking about a sputnik moment is a mistake

The reason is you are not looking at the right country when it comes to progress with nuclear reactor technology

The New York Times reported Feb 1 that during the great recession of 2008 the nuclear renaissance in the U.S. went into hibernation. It looks like it is going to stay there for a long time.

The reason is that Congress is unlikely to agree to reform the federal loan guarantee program by expanding it and changing basis for calculating the the credit risk premium. Worse, Congress is not thinking about nuclear energy as a national priority in terms of energy security.

In the President's State of the Union message he talked about a clean energy initiative, but the rhetoric rings somewhat hollow having followed the departure of the key aide in White House who was responsible for climate change and related energy matters. A clean energy standard without a price on carbon will not mobilize the financial resources needed to shift investment to nuclear energy.

Look to China, not Russia, for game changing moves

Now the President, and Sec. of Energy Chu talk about "sputnik moments," but the analogy doesn't work. The reason is that while the Russians are selling reactors globally like they were trombones, the people who are beating the U.S. at its own game are the Chinese.

This week China announced it will launch a program to develop a thorium-fueled molten-salt nuclear reactor. Wired magazine says China is taking a crucial step towards shifting to Generation IV nuclear power as a primary energy source.

According to Wired, the project was unveiled at the annual Chinese Academy of Sciences conference in Shanghai last week. The news comes on top of recent reports that China will build at least 40 GWe of new Generation III reactors in the next ten years.

U.S. nuclear renaissance is stuck

Back in the U.S., according to the New York Times, Senator Lamar Alexander, (R-TN) has called for the U.S. to build 100 reactors in the next 20 years. He wants it to be a national priority for energy security and to limit climate-changing emissions.

The NYT reports . . .

But for now, he acknowledges, the economics are not in place. “Right now, it’s stuck,” he said of the planned nuclear revival.

Yep, that's right Lamar. We're stuck. Maybe we should call the auto club in Shanghai for a tow.

The situation is more dire

Getting back to the New York Times report, the situation is actually a lot more dire than reported by the paper. When Toshiba bought Westinghouse in 2007, it looked like a great bet with more than a dozen new reactors on the drawing boards. Since then the wheels have come off the deal in ways that no one could have anticipated when it was put together.

For instance, plans for six 1,100 MW AP1000s have been delayed or are temporarily shelved include units planned by Duke and Progress in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.

The proposed merger of the two firms may revive one or more of these reactor projects due to the larger rate base of the combined firms. However, the actual closing of the merger is at least a year away. Any effort to combine nuclear projects will take even more time. You can't move reactor projects around like they were pieces on a checkers board.

Elsewhere, plans by Florida Power & Light for two more AP1000s near Miami have been pushed back by at least a decade. License applications for two AP1000s at TVA's Bellefonte plant have been mothballed in favor of completing one of the partially built units at the Scottsboro, AL, site.

Ambitious plans by Areva to build a U.S. fleet of 1,600 MW EPRs have suffered several setbacks. The most visible is the Calvert Cliffs III project which may yet be revived if new U.S. investors can be found for the project, However, a plan to build an EPR in upstate New York is in the deep freeze.

Similarly, a plan to build an EPR as a second reactor in Missouri for Ameren is just getting back on track having been derailed by the state legislature two years ago.

Detroit Edison looked at the auto industry in Michigan and began plans to build Fermi III using a GE-Hitachi ESBWR. The project was a poster child for John McCain's 2008 campaign plan on energy policy. At the time no one anticipated the great recession, which tanked the auto industry in the Midwest and took electricity demand with it,

In Texas NRG is struggling to find new investors for the expansion of the South Texas Project, The twin 1,350 MW ABWRs have the distinction of being the "first mover" in terms of filing a license application with the NRC in Fall 2007. The cities of Austin and San Antonio, who were to be the utility’s primary investors, will remain customers for the electricity from the new reactors, but they are no longer major investors.

What’s needed to revive the renaissance?

The U.S. has to get out of the business of relying exclusively on the private sector to build new nuclear reactors. In the rest of the world, the capital requirements have driven governments to create quasi-government corporations.

We have the model for one right here in the U.S., which is the Tennessee Valley Authority with its corporate HQ in Sen. Alexander’s home state.

If he wants to see 100 reactors bloom nationwide, he needs to help create a series of regional nuclear energy building authorities to partner with existing utilities to assemble capital and EPC firms to execute the national priority the President talked about in the State of the Union address. Pick an energy drink Senator, any brand, chug it down and hit the Senate floor running.

The new federal corporation needs to be off-the-books in terms of the appropriation cycle to give financial certainty to utilities who sign up for projects under its sponsorship. It should be open to institutional and individual investors who want to take a stake in nuclear energy. In short, the U.S. has to stop thinking about tinkering with loan guarantees and figure out, financially, how to really get the job done. Nothing less is acceptable.

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Skeptical about new NRC blog

Transparency is good, but making it a success requires more than just one way communication

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided that having a blog is a good idea. To that end it has started publishing one at: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/

The agency said in a prepared press release that the blog will "enhance [the agency's] communication with the public and support Open Government.

According to the statement, the blog will feature posts from staff members writing about various topics of interest to the public. Moderated comments will be accepted for posting on the blog.

Social media for the government is different

The NRC faces some unique challenges to be successful with this new social media venture. Count me, for now, as skeptical this will work or work well.

First, the blog isn't a substitute for the agency's formal communications channels outbound or inbound. If you want your views related to a regulatory matter part of the record for it, use the established channels. For this reason, the agency is basically saying it has no obligation to make its employees aware of your blog comment or require them to use it as part of their official work.

Second, the blog, as a government information system, is still an "official record" of the agency's communications with the public. This means anything you post on the NRC blog as a comment is retained permanently and could find its way into uses for regulatory matters unrelated to your concern or intentions in posting the comment,

Third, just because the agency has placed the blog outside official channels doesn't mean the agency's employees aren't reading it. Be careful about any overtly enthusiastic responses. They could come back to haunt you.

For instance, if you represent Betty Jo's nuclear powered screen door company in Whitefish, MT, and you think the NRC has unfairly evaluated your technology, saying so on the blog may not earn a "happy to see you" smile the next time you're in Rockville.

Does the light bulb want to change?

“The blog is intended to build upon our extensive efforts to explain and clarify the actions, roles and responsibilities of the NRC, raise awareness about our agency and its mission, and – most importantly – give us an opportunity to hear from the public.”

What's missing from this cheerful statement is what the NRC will do with blog comments. As noted above, the blog is not an official channel for communication. What feedback will agency managers get from the blog and how will they use it?

Grass roots and anti-nuclear groups will likely see the blog as an opportunity for log rolling. In addition to sending waves of contentions for new nuclear reactors through formal channels, they'll tell their members to post comments on the blog. The poor IT staffer at the NRC in charge of comment moderation will need a big, sturdy "delete" button on the keyboard.

Also, media types who want more communication, not less, could find themselves involved with interesting conversations with agency lawyers over comments posted to the blog by the public. If the glacial pace of government decision making elsewhere is any signal, don't expect your comments to show up quickly. A real risk over this "communication thing" is that by the time an even modestly quirky comment gets approved, the audience for it may be long gone.

Sound of one hand clapping?

The NRC public affairs staff is well aware of the world of social media. A key issue is how well people besides the public affairs staff listen to what is said on the blog. That assumes the public or the commission itself take it seriously as an open forum.

If the blog turns out to be just another platform for Chairman Jaczko's anti-Yucca justifications, then it's a waste of cyberspace.

So a question is whether there will be guest blog posts from the other commissioners or even former commissioners?

Also, will commissioners, who have very busy schedules, respond to blog comments or will they assign this role to staff?

The blog represents an opportunity for transparency within the limits of the agency's legal framework. It will take leadership and ownership from the commissioners themselves to make it work. If the blog remains a creature of the PR department, it will descend into the realm of irrelevant chatter.

Unsolicited advice from one blogger to another

Here's my advice to the NRC's blogging staff.

Pay attention to conversations about your “brand” by stakeholders and critics

Produce content and populate social media channels besides the blog, e.g., Youtube.

Note: The NRC is being shredded on YouTube with satire about Jaczko's Yucca tactics.

Have clear goals and objectives, a focus on target audiences, and measure results. Be prepared to adjust the way the blog is managed and the kind of content produced for it,

Authenticity and transparency count. Answer comments and inquiries quickly.

Solicit and use feedback.

& & &

The blog can be reached directly at http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov or by clicking on the blog icon on the NRC website, www.nrc.gov. It can also be accessed on mobile devices such as smart phones by entering the website address in the mobile devices’ Web browser.

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Andrus blasts Idaho spent fuel R&D plan

Decades of distrust drive the former governor’s heated rhetoric

Cecil Andrus (right) is a big man, politically and physically, which means that when he stands up and starts shouting a lot of people pay attention. The former Idaho governor did just that earlier this month in opposition to a plan by the Department of Energy to bring 400 kg (880 lbs) a year of spent nuclear fuel to the Idaho National Laboratory for R&D purposes.

If you want to talk about throwing one's weight around, Andrus more-or-less exaggerated the scope of the threat in his pubic statements, and an OP ED in the Idaho Statesmen, but that isn’t all he got wrong in his heated rhetoric opposing the new R&D plan.

In what looks like a ray of sunshine in the historically tense relationship between the Idaho National Laboratory and the State of Idaho, a new agreement expands the lab's ability to conduct tests on commercial spent nuclear fuel in small quantities.

The objectives of the tests on about 900 pounds a year of commercial irradiated fuel will be to assess its reliability and to discover any previously unobserved characteristics of the fuel while it was in a commercial nuclear reactor. Bear in mind any fuel shipped to Idaho will have left the reactor in which it was used at least five years earlier.

What’s significant about the new agreement is the strong support the lab is getting from Idaho’s current governor Butch Otter, who served at Lt. Governor under Andrus for eight years. Andrus is a liberal democrat and Otter is a libertarian republican. Otter put his own stamp on moving nuclear waste cleanup ahead in Idaho in 2008.

Where’s the beef?

Given the history of a federal consent decree and the significant progress cleaning up the cold war legacy nuclear waste at the Idaho lab, it is reasonable to ask what is the core of the complaint from former Gov Andrus? It can’t be that the consent decree has been overturned or that the spent fuel limits in the Batt Agreement will be breached by the new arrangement. Neither charge is true.

In an extraordinary OP ED published in the Idaho Statesmen, John Grossenbacher, (left) Director of the Idaho National Laboratory, wrote;

“The agreement does not authorize any additional quantity of used nuclear fuel or radioactive waste to be brought into Idaho beyond that which is already authorized by the 1995 Settlement Agreement. . . . Contrary to what Gov. Andrus said, the settlement agreement has not been abandoned.”

He adds this salient point.

“Andrus argued that the new agreement provides a path for “waste” to be “dumped” in Idaho. That argument is neither reasonable nor credible. The agreement clearly states that there is a restriction on how much used fuel can come to Idaho, and it’s a very small quantity. It will be carefully selected based on its high research value. We will not be receiving any nuclear waste at INL. “

So what is the complaint? As the lady says, “where’s the beef?” At the heart of things is the fact that Andrus has lifelong trust issues with the Department of Energy. In his own OP ED in the Idaho Statements, Andrus wrote;

“Idaho has learned the hard way that DOE, under Democratic and Republican administrations, cannot be trusted when it comes to the incredibly complicated and serious business of nuclear waste storage. “

The fact is that it was Idaho Gov. Phil Batt who closed the deal in 1995 to cleanup the waste and put a deadline on removing spent fuel from Idaho. He successfully defended the agreement in against an ill-conceived state wide referendum that tried to overturn it.

Butch Otter signed a new agreement in 2008 with the Department of Energy resolving a long-standing, and bitterly contested, dispute over “how clean is clean” in terms of removing waste from the Arco desert. The question that comes to mind is whether Andrus defending the environment in Idaho or his place in its history?

History of the waste agreement and the reason for it

Readers are reminded that in the late 1980s, when he was in office, then Gov. Andrus courageously threatened to block waste shipments at the state’s borders. Idaho had been used for decades as an uncontrolled dumping ground for nuclear waste from the Rocky Flats bomb factory in Denver.

When the waste shipments started in the 1950s, the thought was that no one would care what happened to radioactive waste dumped in an arid desert 50 miles west of Idaho Falls, ID. The radioactive waste drums, as shown in this 1969 photo, were simply unloaded into pits and trenches at the remote desert site.

Later, it would be discovered that plutonium particles had migrated more than 200 feet from the surface toward the huge freshwater aquifer under the Snake River plain. The water from that underground source irrigates Idaho’s world famous potato crop and re-emerges to flow into the Snake River at Hagerman, ID. Farmers living in Twin Falls, ID, fueled a statewide political backlash fed by claims from the Snake River Alliance that radioactivity from the waste dump would french-fry the potato crop right on the vine.

The spent nuclear fuel at the INL has come from several sources, including the research reactors that have operated at the INL over the past fifty years. Other sources include;

• DOE reactors in other states.
• Research reactors that the United States helped support in other countries over the past 25 years.
• Reactors operated on submarines and aircraft carriers in the nuclear navy.
• Commercial nuclear power plant—such as the damaged fuel and core debris from the Three Mile Island Unit.

The inventory of spent nuclear fuel at INL increases each year due to new shipments to the INL. This increase will continue until a permanent solution, such as reprocessing, and a repository opens for disposal of high level waste from spent fuel.

Numbers count

Like the exaggerated claims of the Snake River Alliance long ago, Governor Andrus has a problem in the current era getting the facts straight. Actually very little fuel by volume or weight is coming to the lab. Under the new agreement, no more than 400 kilograms (880 lbs) heavy metal content of commercial spent nuclear fuel can be received into the state in any calendar year.

The agreement specifies that 400 kg, or roughly 880 pounds, of fissile material like uranium or plutonium, which are very dense metals, can be brought into Idaho. A nuclear fuel assembly, including the metal parts holding the fuel, weighs between 300 Kg (BWR) and 600 Kg (PWR) or about 700-to-1,400 lbs. A 400 Kg bundle, as specified in the new Idaho agreement, would be roughly equal to one spent fuel assembly from a boiling water reactor (BWR).

If the current arrangement lasted for the next 25 years, the equivalent of only 25 more spent fuel bundles could be brought to Idaho for testing. By comparison, A BWR reactor, depending on size, can hold 300-to-900 fuel assemblies. So, 25 fuel assemblies represents a very small percentage of the fuel in a commercial reactor. The argument by Andrus that the new Idaho agreement opens the door to getting a new and large inventory of spent fuel from the nation’s commercial nuclear reactors is not supported by the numbers.

Also, under the agreement, any commercial spent fuel that is allowed into the INL will be counted as part of the total amount of fuel allowed under the original 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement. So this new spent fuel agreement will not result in a net increase in the total amount of spent fuel that is allowed to be stored in Idaho.

Another voice weigh in

The issue of getting the numbers right is a key point in an OP ED in the Idaho Statesmen written by Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson. (right) He writes’

“I am disappointed in his opposition to this sensible agreement and even more disappointed that he is using outdated and unfounded arguments to oppose it.”

Then he gets to the heart of the reason why the Department of Energy wants the lab to conduct R&D evaluations of the spent fuel.

“Governor Andrus also laments that the agreement comes with no assurance of new jobs or new investments at the Laboratory. This statement is misleading at best . . . INL has grown from a business volume of roughly $500 million a year to over $1 billion a year. Employment at INL has grown by hundreds of jobs, and some of the most difficult cleanup efforts have been tackled or are in the process of being tackled.”

The future of the deal

Andrus doesn’t have a vote in deciding whether the spent fuel agreement will be executed over time. If he challenges the deal, via litigation, as a violation of the consent decree, the Department of Energy should be able to defend it because it does not exceed the volume allowed under the Batt Agreement.

In terms of public policy implications, Lab Director Grossenbacher gets the last word. He writes:

“If, as Andrus suggests, we can never again trust DOE to discharge its important roles and responsibilities, then nuclear energy technology research and use are severely impaired. Meanwhile, countries like France, Japan, Korea, China and India will grab our weak hold on leadership in this technology and pass us by with what I believe will be substantial benefits to their citizens.”

Readers are reminded that Grossenbacher is well-versed in the concept of energy as a key factor in national security. He had a distinguished career with the U.S. Navy, achieving the rank of Vice Admiral and Commander of the U.S. Naval Submarine Forces.

Back to the land not an option

So the bottom line is either you lead or get out of the way. The surprise in all the sound and fury is that Andrus, who was a progressive while in office, turns out to be the radical conservative out of office. If he were to be successful in blocking the new spent fuel agreement, he could be seen as seeking to return the State of Idaho to an era of timber, mining, and agriculture as the mainstays of the economy.

You don’t need a lot of energy if your paradigm is to get off the grid. If you intend to live well in the 21st century, you are going to need all the energy you can get.

Prior coverage on this blog

• January 7, 2011 – Idaho inks new spent fuel agreement

Video - Where's the beef?

In the 1980s, a few years before Cecil Andrus began his protests about the uncontrolled dumping of nuclear waste in Idaho, a ground breaking TV commercial was aired which became a legend.

The term "where's the beef" entered the English language as an idiomatic phrase for "what is the significance of your statement?" Here’s the original video.

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