The Umatilla County Courthouse in Pendleton, Ore.
Antonio Sierra / OPB
An Eastern Oregon county is trying to introduce nuclear power to the region through a concept that’s taken some hits in recent years.
At an August meeting, the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners enthusiastically approved a $30,000 contract with Portland law firm Tonkon Torp to help the county draft legislation that would allow it to site small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, in Umatilla County. The commissioners believe the reactors could provide low-carbon energy to county residents, but the move comes after one of SMRs’ biggest backers scuttled a high-profile project.
Commissioner Dan Dorran said the county sees nuclear as a low-carbon energy source preferable to other alternatives like wind or solar energy.
“We think that it’s worth the effort and time to see if we can’t find an alternative to what’s already on the horizon, and see if we can’t expand our zero-carbon footprint and still take care of industry that’s knocking on our door,” he said.
While the concept is still in its early stages, Dorran anticipates the SMRs would come in the form of a pilot project targeting a specific area or project. The proposed reactor would be on a microgrid, meaning it would be a part of a small network independent of a larger grid. The U.S. Department of Energy believes SMRs can cost less than traditional reactors and offer more safeguards.
Dorran said details like an exact location for the reactors or a business partner to build and install the reactors have yet to be identified.
This isn’t the first time SMRs have popped up in Oregon.
In 2015, the Portland-based NuScale Power announced it was planning a partnership with a Utah electrical utility to build a 720-megawatt nuclear power plant in Idaho powered by a dozen of its reactors. NuScale had the only SMR design with approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Eight years later, NuScale scrapped the project, pointing to rising inflation and interest rates, in addition to dwindling commitments from energy buyers.
NuScale declined to comment on a potential SMR pilot project in Umatilla County.
There are no nuclear reactors in Oregon, and SMRs would need to clear a number of regulatory hurdles before they could operate.
One of the chief blocks of SMRs is Measure 7. In a pro-nuclear energy editorial, the libertarian think tank Cascade Policy Institute wrote that Oregon voters approved the measure in 1980 in the wake of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The measure prevents the state from siting any nuclear power plants until the federal government licenses a waste depository. With the federal system in place today, nuclear power plants are effectively prohibited in Oregon.
Legislators have made a number of attempts to loosen Measure 7 in recent years but with little success. A 2023 House bill that would have triggered a voter referendum to reverse Measure 7 received a couple of hearings but never made it out of its committee. A different bill in the Senate that would have allowed counties to site SMRs didn’t receive a hearing at all.
Dorran thinks the county’s draft legislation could potentially “thread the needle” in overcoming the state’s nuclear energy restrictions.
Umatilla County is just across the Columbia River from the Hanford Site in southeast Washington, the most nuclear waste-polluted area in the Western Hemisphere. A one-time site of plutonium manufacturing during World War II, the U.S. government’s clean-up efforts at Hanford are more than a decade behind schedule.
Dorran said SMRs won’t be built at the same scale as the reactors in Hanford, so it won’t come with the same risks.
“It’s going to be a years-long project,” he said. “The first step is to find a path to being a pilot project.”