Last month, Amazon announced it had signed an agreement to develop four small-scale modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, along the Columbia River to power its data centers in Eastern Oregon. The e-commerce giant also touted nuclear energy as a “safe source of carbon-free energy” that would allow it to achieve its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Energy Northwest, a consortium of publicly owned utilities, is partnering with Amazon on the development of the SMRs in southeast Washington. Under the agreement, Energy Northwest could build an additional eight SMRs that would generate enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 770,000 homes in the region. OPB rural communities reporter Antonio Sierra recently looked into this technology, its safety and how it differs from traditional nuclear reactors. He joins us to share what he’s learned.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Last month, Amazon announced it had signed an agreement to develop four small modular nuclear reactors along the Columbia River in Southeastern Washington to power its data centers in Eastern Oregon. The e-commerce giant said that nuclear energy is a “safe source of carbon-free energy” that would allow it to achieve its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2040. OPB’s rural communities reporter Antonio Sierra has been looking into this and he joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Antonio Sierra: Hi, Dave.
Miller: Do you have a sense for how much more electricity Amazon is expecting it’s going to need?
Sierra: Amazon didn’t provide me with a specific number. And if they have one in mind, they’re not communicating that publicly. However, we do know that globally, that data center energy consumption is going up. The International Energy Agency studied the issue and they anticipate that energy consumption will double from 2022 to 2026.
Miller: What’s the biggest driver of that?
Sierra: I think one of the biggest drivers is artificial intelligence, generative AI, something that our audience has probably heard a lot about in recent months and recent years. And in order for generative AI to work, it needs a massive amount of data. So if you are going to have AI draw you a picture or write you an email, it takes more data than the average website needs.
Miller: Why is Amazon considering small nuclear reactors to address this energy need?
Sierra: As you mentioned at the top, Amazon is trying to do all of these things, and expand its web and data businesses, while trying to reach its goal of generating net zero carbon emissions by 2040. In order to do that, they need a power source that is reliable and carbon free, and nuclear generates more power than wind and solar, which Amazon has already invested in. So it’s trying to reach two different goals: It’s trying to ramp up its energy production or at least its energy sourcing, while also trying to meet its climate and environmental goals. So nuclear reactors offer the best of both worlds in their view.
Miller: What is a small modular reactor?
Sierra: So I think people have a popular conception of what a nuclear reactor looks like. And you think of these giant towers that house these big reactors and they take up a lot of space. The small modular nuclear reactor is supposed to be about one-tenth the size of that. These are smaller facilities, they generate less energy, but the thought is that you can put a bunch of them together and they can generate something similar to what a large nuclear power plant would generate.
Miller: How different are they from conventional plants in terms of the amount of energy they generate?
Sierra: A large nuclear reactor produces about 1 gigawatt of energy at peak capacity. So that’s the equivalent of 1,000 megawatts. It is an immense amount of energy for an energy production facility. SMR, a small modular reactor, averages about 50 to 300 megawatts. There’s a lot of different models that produce different amounts of energy, but that’s about what they produce.
Miller: And how would that compare to what a single wind turbine might produce or a big dam, like Bonneville Dam?
Sierra: A single wind turbine produces less than 3 megawatts of power. A solar farm … it takes about 10 acres of solar panels to produce 1 megawatt of power. Now, the Bonneville Dam, that’s a much larger scale. If you look at that dam alone, that produces about 1,000 megawatts of power. And considering that the Columbia is heavily dammed and there’s other dams that are producing power, that’s a lot of power that they’re generating. I did speak with Energy Northwest, which is one of the partners for Amazon, and they said that hydropower is great, but it’s starting to get tapped out, it’s starting to hit its limits of how much it can sustain. So I think Amazon was attracted to nuclear power because the idea is that they would be able to produce a lot more.
Miller: And it’s not just a question of how many megawatts any particular source of energy can produce, right? It’s also a question of how often any particular source is likely to be producing energy at that level?
Sierra: Yeah. And so the figures that I just mentioned, these are capacity, right? That’s like if they’re operating at maximum capacity, this is how much they’re producing. They’re not operating at that all the time. I think the concerns from some of the energy companies from Amazon is that wind power and solar power aren’t producing at the maximum capacity all the time. So the thought is that nuclear power would be more reliable and produce kind of closer to capacity, more often.
Miller: What did you hear from experts about safety here, the safety of these small modular reactors?
Sierra: So first of all, safety … this is such a new and novel technology in the grand scheme of things that safety tests are still ongoing. But the thought is, that smaller makes it inherently safer. So people may be familiar with the large-scale nuclear reactor meltdowns of the 20th century – Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, or Chernobyl in Russia, or Fukushima in Japan, to name a more recent case. And in all those cases, there was some sort of failure in the cooling system or there was something that affected the cooling system, and there was a meltdown or a partial meltdown.
The idea behind a small modular nuclear reactor is that this is operated at such a smaller scale, it’ll be easier to keep them cool or to cool them down in the event that it might get overheated. And I’ve even heard, talked to some experts who say, it’s pretty much impossible to overheat with the way that it’s designed.
Miller: Where are these reactors actually being used?
Sierra: They’re not being used in very many places. So there are a couple of SMR designs that are out there that are being used in China and in Russia. However, the early reports that come back from them is that they are more expensive than anticipated and, although they’re producing power, they’re not kind of harnessing the full extent of what people anticipate SMRs will do. So, it hasn’t yet proven to be what all of their supporters are doing. But they expect that in the very near future that they’ll be able to optimize SMRs, and they’ll be all over the place.
Miller: But these reactors would be the first of their kind outside of Russia and China?
Sierra: Yeah. It’s hard to say, just given that this is a worldwide thing, a worldwide effort to develop this technology. But yeah, the idea is that, as the U.S. is starting to develop SMRs, that they would be kind of spearheading this technology, that they’d be trailblazers here.
Miller: Antonio, the data centers in the Northwest that we’re talking about in Oregon, they’re in Boardman and Hermiston. Why is Amazon proposing to have nuclear plants in Washington, not Oregon?
Sierra: Because you cannot build a nuclear reactor in Oregon, as the law currently stands right now. Back in 1980, Oregon voters banned nuclear reactors unless there was some sort of nuclear waste storage site that was built somewhere in the U.S., that was kind of officially licensed by the federal government. That hasn’t happened since 1980. So, as it stands right now, nobody can build a nuclear reactor within the state of Oregon.
Miller: What would it take for that to change?
Sierra: It would take a change in law. I mean, it would take an act from the legislature or an act of voters to allow nuclear reactors in Oregon again. And there’s been many efforts over the years. They’ve never reached the governor’s desk, so they’ve never got in front of voters.
Miller: Is there any effort like that underway right now? I’m asking, not just because of this Amazon project, but because in recent years, it does seem like there has been renewed interest from some quarters in an increase, nationally, in nuclear energy.
Sierra: Yeah. There are some efforts that are underway. Umatilla County is trying to start a pilot project for SMRs within the county, and they are partnering with State Representative Bobby Levy to try to pass a bill in the next session that would do just that. Levy told me that she supported SMR efforts in the past and nuclear energy in general, and that she is going to continue to try to make that happen.
Miller: So going back to Amazon’s proposal here, would the company be the exclusive user of this electricity?
Sierra: To start, it would get priority in sourcing the electricity and having it sent to its data centers. What Energy Northwest described to me is that the hope is that, as time goes on and they continue to build more of these SMRs, that energy will start to flow to other utilities and could be felt by consumers, that they would be the beneficiaries of this plentiful power source. They said that wouldn’t really be possible without Amazon’s investment, that most utility companies would not take the risk on SMRs at this stage, without the backing of a company like Amazon.
Miller: Our regular listeners will probably remember that we recently spent a week in the Tri-Cities, with a focus on Hanford. The vast majority of the work that’s happening at the site right now is massive cleanup from decades-long, and now finished, production of plutonium. But there is a conventional, large-scale nuclear power plant still operating there. It’s called the Columbia Generating Station. It’s run by the same company that would develop these smaller modular reactors.
Is that part of their pitch – “hey, folks, you’re already trusting us to run a large reactor, so trust us to run a bunch of small ones”?
Sierra: Yeah, I think their familiarity with nuclear technology is definitely what kind of helped put that partnership together. Greg Cullen, who’s an executive with the company, told me that they were already looking into ways to expand their nuclear energy efforts when they started partnering with Amazon. Energy Northwest is involved in hydropower, and wind power, and solar power. But they’re involved with nuclear power right now, which is not something that a lot of energy companies can say. And they’re involved with kind of all the ins and outs of that, including disposing of nuclear waste, which is always a big concern considering their proximity to Hanford.
Miller: Is there any organized pushback in the region for this proposal right now?
Sierra: Yeah, I would say that while we might not be seeing a ton of stuff right now, in terms of visible opposition, that there has been opposition in the very recent past. There are always a lot of environmental groups that are concerned about nuclear power. Their argument is that this is just the nuclear power industry trying to rebrand themselves as safer and more efficient, but that the risk of SMRs are still the same as they are with large nuclear reactors, both as a public safety issue and a public health issue.
There’s also been some tribal opposition to nuclear power. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, that area of Southeast Washington is a part of their traditional lands that was ceded to the U.S. government. They have written letters in the past opposing SMRs and other tribal organizations have also opposed them. So this isn’t something that is just completely embraced. And I imagine there will be a debate going forward.
Miller: Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary serves on the board of directors of a Silicon Valley developer of small modular reactors. Trump, himself, has spoken positively about nuclear power. Does the federal government have a role to play, would they have a role to play in this project?
Sierra: President Joe Biden recently committed $900 million in support of nuclear technology development and implementation. As you said, Trump has been supportive of it, if maybe not quite as specific in how he would support it. So, yeah, I think federal backing will be important. And I think it just kind of remains to be seen how this will all work out. Nuclear power is one of those things that has a kind of a bipartisan consensus, in that there are both Democrats and Republicans who support it. And if this is something that [is] kind of one of those rare things that can get bipartisan support at the federal level, then it may make it easier to implement.
Miller: I imagine there are a lot of regulatory hurdles that would need to be cleared. What is a possible timeline at this point for this project?
Sierra: I was quoted an optimistic timeline of having these reactors go online [is] “sometime between 2032 and 2035.” So it could be as far out as a decade away from happening, even though they made the announcement very recently. And I think that’s where a lot of the rub is. As I mentioned earlier, tech companies are advertising AI products today. Everywhere you go, anytime you turn on the TV, anytime you watch a video online. And these SMRs, while they are kind of a very well discussed technology, they haven’t been implemented at a wide-scale yet. So it will be important to see how energy demands around the country are affected, while they’re still developing this technology and still waiting to see if it will be an effective carbon-free energy alternative.
Miller: Antonio, thanks very much.
Sierra: Thanks, Dave.
Miller: Antonio Sierra is OPBs rural communities reporter. He joined us to talk about Amazon’s hopes to get energy from a series of new small modular nuclear reactors to power its data centers in the future.
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