Can nuclear power make a comeback?

Is new nuclear energy technology being held in check by Oregon’s moratorium or making its biggest bid yet in the Northwest? Both—while fueling the old debate

Towering presence: Closed in 1993, Oregon’s Trojan Nuclear Power Plant’s massive reactor was buried in a 45-foot-deep pit at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington in 2001. In 2006, its massive cooling tower was imploded. Nearly 800 spent fuel rods are still stored on site in a pool next to the Columbia River. Photo by Tobin/CC

By Jordan Rane, August 5, 2021. Once upon a time (1976), a portentously named nuclear plant (the Trojan) joined the power grid in Columbia County, Oregon.

With its 499-foot, concave cooling tower looming over the Columbia River like a mutated Tetris piece, the 634-acre site was the state’s only nuclear power plant—and for a time the largest of its kind on earth.

It wasn’t exactly a point of pride in the community.

Founded upon Portland General Electric-based reasoning that nuclear was the safest, cleanest, most cost-effective answer to supplementing hydroelectric power, avoiding dirty coal and serving the energy demands of a swelling population, Trojan Nuclear Power Plant would endure ballooning expenses, design flaws, maintenance dilemmas, waste quandaries, the chilling discovery of a major geological fault line running under the site, a brief but noisy occupation by anti-nuclear activists, multiple lawsuits and two unsuccessful ballot initiatives to shut it down.

Trek support: The futuristic vision of 1970s Trojan promotional images suggested bright times ahead. Archive photo posted by Scott Beale/Flickr

For 17 years, Trojan pushed along—until a pair of leaks served the plant its pink slip.

The first leak was from a faulty steam generator tube that led to the facility’s indefinite closure for inspection.

Another “leak”—of confidential documents from scientists at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission deeming Trojan to be unsafe to operate—dealt a final blow.

Trojan closed for good in 1993.

In the wake of Oregon’s 1980 moratorium on any new nuclear power projects in the state without voter approval and an established federal repository for the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste (the United States still appears to be nowhere near having one), Oregon’s one and only, long-decommissioned nuclear power plant would likely be its last.

Or will it?

A spate of nuclear initiatives in the state has yet to prove otherwise, but they do keep coming. Lately in higher doses.

Old time revival

In 2017, a nuclear power exemption bill (SB990) passed the Oregon Senate before failing to get a public hearing or committee work session in the House. Two years later, no votes were taken on a 2019 nuclear proposal (SB444) to exempt small modular reactors (SMRs) from nuclear plant restrictions in the state.

In March 2021, three separate bills were introduced in the Oregon Legislature to loosen a variety of nuclear production restraints in the state.

Only one of them (SB360) made it as far as a lopsided public hearing—featuring 90 minutes of scathing opposition from scientists, health authorities and people involved in the original 1980 state nuclear moratorium, and zero minutes of supporting testimony.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The United States produces by far the most nuclear power in the world with nearly 100 nuclear reactors in 28 states.[/perfectpullquote]

What do these persistent but fast fizzling nuclear bids signify in Oregon, and beyond? Are they simply hard rejections of more nuclear power production? Or are they also harbingers of a broader if contentious revival?

If you answered “revival” you may already accept that the one possibly underway is being led by the latest new commercial advancement in nuclear technology: the small modular reactor (SMR), a portable, scalable, more efficient nuclear fission unit designed for factory-style serial production. The nuclear industry calls it a “game changer” and at least one Oregon state senator has championed SMRs as a “nuke in a box” with a straight face.

“With or without the U.S., nuclear power will grow worldwide,” wrote geoscientist Scott L. Montgomery in a recent Seattle Times editorial, pointing to a global nuclear energy proliferation that includes several multi-reactor sites breaking ground across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as well as over 30 additional countries now working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to build their own programs.

“Other nations understand nuclear power provides vast amounts of reliable non-carbon power,” says Montgomery, as do “dozens of nuclear startup companies in the U.S. and Canada, including two in the Pacific Northwest: TerraPower, founded partly by Bill Gates, and NuScale in Corvallis, Oregon.”

Currently, the United States produces (by far) the most nuclear power in the world—with over 50 active commercial nuclear plants and nearly 100 nuclear reactors dotted across 28 states comprising over a third of the world’s nuclear energy-derived electricity supply.

Power pushers

While recent efforts to budge Oregon’s 41-year-old moratorium look weak and fringe at best, other parts of the Columbia River Basin foretell a different story: possibly nuclear’s biggest power play in decades.

Leading this charge is the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), a multi-phased project from Oregon-based small modular nuclear reactor designer NuScale Power and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (a political subdivision of the State of Utah). They aim to launch the country’s first SMR nuclear facility on a site at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls.

Scaling up: NuScale digital computer rendering of the six-module Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems plant project in Idaho Falls. Courtesy of NuScale Power, LLC

Currently in early application stages, design and operating license submissions to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission are planned for 2022 and 2023 respectively. Construction is slated for 2025 and commercial operation by the end of the decade.

NuScale also recently announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Washington’s Grant County Public Utility District to evaluate the deployment of small modular reactor technology in central Washington.

“The agreement underscores the increasing demand for innovative small modular reactors (SMRs) to provide communities in the Northwest with reliable and affordable clean energy,” says Diane Hughes, vice president of marketing and communications at NuScale Power, which claims to have similar MOUs with 11 countries around the world.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines “small” as under 300 MWe (megawatt electric).

NuScale isn’t the only SMR producer with big sights set on the Columbia River Basin.

X-Energy, a Maryland-based nuclear reactor design company, is also in discussion with Grant County PUD about a new reactor project—a proposed four-unit, 80-megawatt nuclear power plant at an existing Energy Northwest site north of Richland, Washington.

“There are a lot of different advanced small modular reactor companies in design,” says Tom Sicilia, a nuclear expert and Hanford hydrogeologist with the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE). “And because of our location and their daily presence in our neighboring states, those SMRs are slated to be built in the next decade or so. One in Idaho. Maybe two or three at Washington’s Columbia Generating Station. Multiple companies are in the running in the Tri-Cities area.”

Reconsidering Fukushima

What’s fueling the latest nuclear push, along with those recurring initiatives cycling through Oregon politics?

“It’s hard to know why now. Why all of these bills?” says Maxwell Woods, ODOE’s assistant director for Nuclear Safety and Emergency Preparedness. “Because one of the leading companies [NuScale Power] in SMR technology was grown out of Oregon State University, there’s probably some proximity and knowledge of that company and industry in Corvallis and in Portland where they have an office as well—and perhaps more consideration for this new approach. Again, that’s speculative.”

Power packed: NuScale Power Module is 76 feet tall, 15 feet wide. Courtesy of NuScale Power, LLC

Less speculative is that views on nuclear power and its age-old trifecta of talking points—“clean,” “cost-effective” and, above all, “safe”—remain as polarizing and refuted as they were during premieres of The China Syndrome.

“There is no such thing as a foolproof, fail-safe nuclear reactor, no matter how bold the safety promises from nuclear reactor design companies are,” says Damon Motz-Storey, Healthy Climate program director at Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility (OPSR). “Initiating a chain reaction of nuclear fission, which creates an enormous amount of energy, heat and radioactivity, always has the potential to get out of control.”

No need to ask for proof of this. Fukushima. Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. 1979’s Church Rock uranium mill spill in New Mexico. Major nuclear events are well known.

Advocates say they’re also comparatively rare.

“But when they happen—no matter how ‘safe’ nuclear power is deemed to be—the consequences of radioactivity releases are so profoundly devastating that communities should be able to weigh those consequences and have full decision-making power over whether they feel it is worth the risk to their way of life,” says Motz-Storey. “All of those nuclear disasters can be attributed to causes that either could not have been foreseen or safety upgrade recommendations that were ignored.”

On the other side of the gate, NuScale says its U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved small modular reactor design “incorporates lessons learned from Fukushima.”

“Fukushima would have been a non-event for a NuScale power plant,” says NuScale’s Hughes, adding that safety features have been embedded into the company’s SMR model to specifically address the issues that occurred in Japan’s nuclear calamity 10 years ago, providing it with “a level of resiliency unmatched by any operating nuclear plant in the world.”

Fired up: Motz-Storey advocates for clean, renewable energy. Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s safer to work at a nuclear power plant than in the manufacturing sector, leisure and hospitality industries, and financial sectors,” adds Hughes. “The level of safety of nuclear is still greatly underappreciated.”

The level of risk is still greatly brushed aside, says OPSR’s Motz-Storey, and further sedated with flexible words like “small.” As in “small” modular reactor.

“One thing to remember in the case of these so-called small modular nuclear reactors is that most proposals—including the one at Idaho Falls—are comprised of assemblies of multiple reactors stacked on top of each other,” says Motz-Storey. “The NuScale Power pilot project in Idaho near the Snake River proposes 12 SMNRs at one site, aggregated together to have a much larger footprint and risk than their name suggests.” (Opponents tend to add the “N” for “nuclear” to the acronym for “small modular reactor,” while the IAEA and proponents leave out the letter.)

Motz-Storey believes “small” misnomers in cases like this are intentional.

“The nuclear industry knows from public opinion polling that people are more open to just a little bit of nuclear power than conventionally sized reactors,” he says.

What does clean mean?

Is there any marginal agreement on the “clean energy” front—given that nuclear fission is carbon free, and thus provides a path to less fossil fuel dependency alongside renewables like wind, solar and hydroelectric?

Blowing in the wind: In 2011 leaks were found in at least six underground tanks containing nuclear waste at Columbia Generating Station in Washington, the Northwest’s only currently operational commercial nuclear reactor. Photo AFP/Mark RALSTON provided by OPSR

“The need for deep decarbonization in the U.S. and around the world presents a significant opportunity for SMR companies to sell tens if not hundreds of gigawatts of generation to customers given the current state of climate change,” says Hughes of NuScale. She argues that renewables aren’t capable of supporting 100% of global energy needs. “Achieving climate goals cannot be done without carbon-free nuclear energy as part of the equation.”

Not so, say nuclear opponents, who claim that the materials and processes used to build reactors weakens any arguments about clean energy.

Another major concern is spent nuclear fuel (aka nuclear waste), which is stored at the facility where it’s created—or was created decades ago.

“In the absence of a national repository, that’s America’s system right now and for the foreseeable future,” says ODOE’s Woods. “Spent nuclear fuel from the Trojan nuclear facility is still here in Columbia County today in air-cooled, dry storage casks. That’s true, I believe, for every power plant in the country. It just sits on the site where it’s generated.”

That waste will grow considerably with the addition of more nuclear power plants.

“The bare minimum health-protective baseline should be to not create any new radioactive nuclear waste while we seek out community-based solutions to the waste we already have,” says Motz-Storey.

Containing costs

Finally, there’s the expense of building and running a new nuclear power plant.

These include capital costs in excess of $1 billion to bring a new nuclear technology to market, according to NuScale, which emphasizes that otherwise SMRs are cost-effective—with “a Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) comparable to wind, solar and hydro.”

Not surprisingly, OPSR provides different math in its own commissioned report “that offers a nice SMNR case study on the kinds of reasons why these proposals so often get bogged down and shelved.”

NuScale’s current pilot SMR project at Idaho Falls, says OPSR, was an estimated $4.2 billion in February 2018. Last summer it rose to $6.1 billion. It was originally projected to open in 2015 or 2016.

“Now we learn that the timeline has been extended to no sooner than 2029,” says Motz-Storey.

Whether or not the Idaho project hits that deadline, debate on nuclear power will surely continue long after 2029, and likely grow even more powerfully and politically charged.