Tucked into a bill calling for additional data collection on Oregon’s carbon dioxide sequestration potential is a provision directing the state’s energy department to study the viability of small modular nuclear reactors to help reach greenhouse gas reduction goals.
These reactors are smaller and housed underground in large pools of water, making the technology safer than traditional nuclear reactors, according to developers of the technology. But critics say their safety is questionable and Oregon should instead be looking to wind and solar, which are cheaper and pose less risk.
Rep. David Brock Smith (R-Port Orford) brought House Bill 3433 forward last month to accompany the passage of Oregon’s cap-and-trade legislation. He told fellow members of the Joint Committee on Carbon Reduction that more data is needed to determine Oregon’s net carbon output. His bill would direct further analysis into several areas, including forestry and agriculture carbon dioxide sequestration, logging after forest fires to enable replanting, electric vehicle infrastructure, and whether small nuclear reactors could supplement Oregon’s other power sources.
His bill has garnered co-sponsorship from 26 other Republicans and three Democrats and now sits with the Joint Committee on Ways and Means after passing through committee. Brock Smith’s office did not respond to our request for comment.
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While there was much discussion among lawmakers on the logging and agriculture provisions of the bill, the nuclear piece was mentioned only once outside of its reading, when before giving it a “courtesy yes” vote, Rep. Ken Helm (D-Beaverton) said, “I fear for the safety of the folks who might have to listen to testimony on nuclear power.”
Historically, nuclear power has faced strong opposition in Oregon. The state has a nearly 40-year-old moratorium on nuclear reactors.
Under existing law, no nuclear facility can be financed or constructed in Oregon until there is a permanent place to store radioactive nuclear waste and voters approve the construction of a new nuclear power plant. In 2017 and again earlier this year, Oregon Senate bills aimed at carving out an exemption in the moratorium for small modular nuclear reactors were introduced but not passed.
But ironically, it’s a company headquartered in Oregon that’s developed a new way of producing nuclear power. That company, NuScale Power, took over efforts to develop a safer, smaller form of nuclear energy production that began in 2000 at Oregon State University.
The company expects to have its design for small-scale nuclear reactors approved relatively soon and plans to build its first power plant in Idaho in the mid-2020s.
These small modular reactors, or SMRs, create less energy on their own but can be grouped to create almost as much energy as a larger plant.
Each reactor generates 60 megawatts of electricity, which is potentially enough to power a small town. However, unless heavily subsidized, it wouldn’t be cost effective to construct a facility to house just one of these small reactors, which is why facilities are designed to house up to 12.
Each core contains a smaller amount of hazardous material, and the modules that house the reactors’ cores sit in a shared pool of 7 million to 8 million gallons of water, or about 11 Olympic-size swimming pools. Sitting in a large pool of water eliminates the need to pour water over the core to cool it and will continue to provide cooling in the case of power loss.
To date, development of NuScale’s SMRs has cost about $850 million, with more than half the investment coming from the Texas-based holding company Fluor Corp., and the rest coming from the federal government, said NuScale’s chief strategy officer, Chris Colbert.
Traditional nuclear power plants have emergency evacuation zones surrounding them and are required to undergo emergency planning and regular emergency training drills.
But with NuScale’s SMRs, “there is not a need for an enhanced emergency planning zone outside of the plant boundary,” Colbert said. “The reason for that is with the smaller reactor, there are smaller amounts of fuel in each reactor so that even in the very, very unlikely event of a release of radioactive material outside of the reactor itself, the fact of distance and physics, by the time you get to our site boundary, the levels of radiation are below that which are harmful to the public or environment.”
Through safety analysis, the chance of a meltdown, he said, has been estimated at once every 3 billion years. And the chance that radioactive material would seep outside the module is once every 13 billion to 14 billion years. “So about once a universe,” he said.
But critics argue that no nuclear reactor is safe and that NuScale can’t make these safety claims without having ever had an operational SMR facility.
Additionally, the credibility of the government agency that licenses and approves construction and design of nuclear power facilities, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was recently called into question.
Last month, its former chairman, Gregory Jaczko, penned an op-ed for The Washington Post. He said he witnessed the nuclear industry’s power in the political process and how it was able to stonewall safety reforms and push through the licensing of new projects.
He said that even as he spent months reassuring the American public that nuclear energy is safe following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, “I was starting to doubt those claims myself.”
Ultimately, Jaczko argues nuclear energy should be phased out of the U.S. energy sector entirely.
Canadian particle physicist M. V. Ramana has been studying small modular reactors for years. He said companies like NuScale Power are trying to eliminate emergency evacuation zone planning to get costs down.
“These guys want to save that bit of money because they (SMRs) are really not economical, so they are trying to cut every possible cent,” he said.
He said because SMRs must be grouped together to be cost effective, an assertion Colbert agreed with, the facility ends up housing nearly as much radioactive fuel as a larger plant.
“You can never rule out that one of them will have a meltdown or an explosion,” he said. He also said a system that relies on a pool of water for cooling a core will find itself with no way to cool the core if the pool loses its water for some reason.
“In order for nuclear energy to compete economically, they have to cut costs in some fashion or the other, and those measures are typically ones that make it less safe,” Ramana said.
Ramana credits continued government interest in nuclear projects to the power of the nuclear industry, both in the United States and Canada. Plus, he said, nuclear fits well into existing energy systems and there is a desire to consider new technological innovation, such as SMRs.
NuScale Power says on its website that its reactors produce less radioactive waste than a traditional nuclear power plant, which is true, but that’s only because the reactors are smaller, NuScale’s Colbert acknowledged.
Based on the burn-up data released by the company, it actually takes more uranium to produce each megawatt of electricity than it does at a larger nuclear reactor facility, Ramana said, and that creates more waste per megawatt.
Worldwide, nuclear energy is on the decline. It peaked in 1996 when it produced 17.6% of the world’s electricity, but in 2017, it had dropped to just over 10%.
“And the most optimistic forecast sees nuclear power holding that market share; that’s the best that they can hope for,” Ramana said.
On HBO, a new series about the Soviet Union’s nuclear disaster in 1986, “Chernobyl,” has brought the gruesome reality of a nuclear meltdown back into public consciousness. The images of firefighters, who came into contact with radioactive material, as their skin decomposes while they slowly die in a Moscow hospital are not far from the reality of acute exposure, Ramana said.
Those who are exposed to lower levels of radiation may not have immediate symptoms but will have an increased risk of developing cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The higher the dose, the higher the risk.
Physicians for Social Responsibility has historically advocated against nuclear technology, and NuScale’s SMRs are no exception. Damon Motz-Storey, the clean-energy organizer for its Oregon chapter, said doctors see prevention as the only means of combating radiation exposure because once a person is exposed, there is no cure.
He said that while nuclear power plants may not produce carbon dioxide at the point of generation, “it’s still a very polluting energy source that does harm at every stage of the fuel cycle. From the extraction of uranium from mines that have predominantly been on Indigenous land in places like the Navajo Nation or the Spokane Nation to the disposal of waste, which we still have not, as a country, figured out.”
His organization fought attempts to exempt SMRs from Oregon’s moratorium on nuclear construction, and it wants the last remaining nuclear power plant in the Northwest to shutter.
Located near Richland, Wash., the Columbia Generating Station, as it names suggests, sits right on the bank of the Columbia River. It’s also near several fault lines that he said pose a threat if the Northwest gets hit with a major earthquake.
“There are a lot of communities, including Portland, that live downriver from that,” he said.
Motz-Storey said Physicians for Social Responsibility see investment in nuclear energy as unethical due to the health risks it poses, the problems the waste poses and the way uranium is mined.
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“It’s also impractical for meeting our climate goals because history has shown us time and time again that new nuclear builds are always behind schedule, and they’re always over budget, and it tends to be one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity,” Motz-Storey said.
But Colbert said SMRs are all about nuclear integration into a larger system that might also use wind and solar, such as in Idaho, where the first plant will be built.
“If you only want power when it’s being generated, then wind and solar are definitely very cheap, but we need power 24-7, 365 days a year,” he said, and SMRs provide a continuous source of energy.
In Oregon, 40% of electricity comes from hydroelectricity, 32% comes from coal, 17% comes from natural gas, 6% comes from wind, 3% comes from nuclear (from the plant in Washington) and 0.27% comes from solar. These numbers are from 2014 to 2016, and Oregon is removing coal and adding more renewable sources of energy.
While solar and wind may be intermittent sources of energy, the field of energy storage is growing quickly as battery prices drop, said Rachel Wray, Oregon Department of Energy spokesperson.
With the passage of House Bill 2193 in 2015, Oregon became the second state to require investor-owned utility companies to build energy storage systems. There are two storage facilities currently operating in Oregon with a 10-megawatt capacity.
The energy department also has two large-scale energy storage projects underway, the Obsidian Solar Center and Bakeoven Solar Project, as well as two approved wind facilities that are looking to add solar and battery storage capacities and an operating natural gas facility that wants to add battery storage, Wray said in an email to Street Roots.
Motz-Storey argues that spending money attached to Oregon’s cap-and-trade legislation to study nuclear energy production in the state is a waste of resources that could be going to solar and wind projects.
And NuScale doesn’t appear to have its sights set on Oregon either. Although it testified in support of the initial legislation that would allow SMR production in the state, it hasn’t been involved in legislation this year, and Colbert was unaware of Brock Smith’s bill.
“We’re looking at a large portion of our market being overseas, where there are many developing countries that don’t have an extensive electricity grid that need smaller units to add to their system,” Colbert said. “Many places don’t have cheap natural gas or cheap coal or cheap hydro to rely upon, so having this as an alternative, to have clean energy generation that’s reliable and cost effective, is an important means to meet what we all want to do in terms of decarbonizing the electricity sector.”
And, he said, Oregon’s moratorium isn’t a problem for the company’s continued operations here. There are about 30 staff members who work at the headquarters in Portland and more than 300 who work in Corvallis on engineering and technology. NuScale Power also has offices on the East Coast and in the U.K. He said the company will likely maintain its staffing levels in Oregon as it finds ways to expand nuclear technology into other areas of the economy that need to decarbonize, such as transportation and processing. Nuclear power can generate hydrogen for fuel and heat for chemical plants. It can also provide heat for water desalinization, he said.
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.