Tribes, environmentalists gather forces against Amazon’s Northwest nuclear plan

Chuck Johnson was 25 years old when he helped bring Oregon’s nuclear energy industry to a sudden halt.

Fresh out of college, Johnson helped lead signature gathering and field organizing to pass Ballot Measure 7, which banned all new nuclear power plants in the state until the U.S. had a federally licensed permanent disposal facility. When Oregon’s only nuclear energy facility was closed in 1992, the measure effectively ensured that nothing would take its place unless major changes happened.

For decades those changes seemed unlikely, but a new push by the power-hungry tech industry has reignited interest in nuclear energy in the region.

Amazon announced in October that it is partnering with Energy Northwest to develop and build nuclear reactors in southeast Washington that would power its data centers in Umatilla and Morrow counties. Amazon would work with its partners to develop and roll out a novel technology – small modular nuclear reactors – without brushing up against the limits of Measure 7 because the reactors would be north of the Columbia River.

For Amazon, SMRs would allow the tech and e-commerce giant to harness the immense, low-carbon power potential of nuclear energy while staying true to its climate goals, and avoiding the safety and environmental concerns that have plagued traditional reactors. More than 40 years after passing Measure 7, Johnson isn’t convinced.

“If you can’t get rid of the waste produced by these plants, it’s irresponsible for us to – for the sake of some electricity right now – leave this legacy to future generations,” he said.

Johnson is a part of a group of environmentalists, academics and American Indian tribes who are gathering force against a nuclear energy revival in the Northwest.

Nuclear energy opponents argue that SMRs are simply a new coat of paint on the industry’s old problems. Like traditional reactors, they say that SMRs aren’t economically feasible and risk exposing people to nuclear radiation in a region still recovering from its World War II legacy.

‘It’s for their profit’

M.V. Ramana’s argument against SMRs is economic as much as it is scientific.

A professor in the School of Public Affairs and Global Policy at the University of British Columbia, Ramana said the global share of electricity generated from nuclear reactors has been shrinking for decades, mainly due to the cost of building them.

Ramana pointed to the U.S.’s newest nuclear reactor project as an example. A nuclear reactor expansion at Plant Vogtle in Georgia went billions of dollars over budget before its first reactor went online in 2023.

Proponents say SMRs could solve the cost problem. At about one-tenth the size of a traditional reactor, SMR parts could be manufactured offsite, a process expected to save considerable money. While SMRs might sacrifice total capacity, their output is anticipated to far exceed other forms of low-carbon energy like solar and wind.

Ramana is skeptical of this argument, too. He said traditional reactors rely on an economy of scale: Their large size carries a great expense but it also means more energy to generate and sell. While an SMR might be one-tenth the size of a traditional reactor, Ramana said not all the costs of running and operating it are going to shrink by the same margin. SMR developers have also yet to realize decreased construction costs, Ramana said. He referenced NuScale, a Portland company whose SMR project in Idaho ballooned its cost 75% to $9.3 billion before it was canceled.

Amazon and other tech companies are backing nuclear as they promote technologies reliant on artificial intelligence because the hardware used to compute that data has extensive energy needs. The International Energy Agency projects data center energy consumption to double from 2022 to 2026. But optimistic timelines for the completion of the Amazon SMRs in Washington estimates they wouldn’t be built for at least seven years. Ramana said that’s enough time for the data demand bubble to burst.

“They need the power right now, because right now is when the market is hot,” he said. “There is no guarantee that in 10 years the market is going to be hot and they will need all this power.”

In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said it won’t abandon its other green energy efforts as it pursues nuclear projects.

“We will continue to invest in new sources of solar, wind, and energy storage, alongside nuclear facilities … Expanding our energy investment strategy to include other forms of carbon-free energy, including nuclear, is the most viable option to bring new sources of carbon-free energy online quickly enough to help bridge this gap,” the company said in a written statement.

If Amazon and other tech companies were truly interested in protecting the world from climate change, Ramana said, they would take steps to reduce their data businesses rather than growing its energy usage.

“It’s for their profit,” he said. “It is not for the environmental good that they are doing it.”

Hanford’s legacy

Columbia Riverkeeper staff attorney Simone Anter describes Hanford Reach as an idyllic spot, the last undammed, free-flowing part of the Columbia River and an important spawning grounds for Chinook salmon.

It’s also near the most nuclear waste-polluted area in the Western Hemisphere.

During World War II and the Cold War, the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington was the top producer of weapons-grade plutonium in the U.S. While Hanford stopped producing plutonium in the 1980s, the site left behind hundreds of billions of gallons of nuclear waste in underground storage tanks that leached into the soil.

Anter said Columbia Riverkeeper was formed when two groups worried about nuclear pollution in the Columbia merged.

“A lot of our work centers around this idea that Hanford is not a nuclear waste dumping ground, it is a place that has a future that people want to use and will use,” she said.

Building new nuclear reactors would be a literal barrier to clean-up efforts as new buildings could cover contaminated areas, Anter said. Columbia Riverkeeper is also concerned that SMRs could mean further nuclear pollution in the event of a meltdown.

SMR backers say that the size and technology of these reactors significantly reduces the risk of a meltdown. But even if the reactors avoid meltdowns, Ramana said they would still generate waste that will take hundreds or even thousands of years to decay.

The tribes respond

Indigenous tribes often bear the brunt of the nuclear energy industry’s follies.

Tribes in the Southwest have long protested uranium mining near their communities, highlighting how radiation exposure has hurt tribal members’ health.

In the Pacific Northwest, the Yakama Nation has religious sites at Hanford and is directly involved in clean-up efforts. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation also has ceded land at Hanford and has opposed SMRs for years. They reiterated their opposition in a December statement, writing that they were against any “expansion of nuclear energy” unless developers sought permission through the CTUIR government.

Amazon has spent several years building a relationship with the CTUIR, including the establishment of an educational lab on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in 2022. But the tribes are concerned about how SMRs would affect water quality, fish and game habitat and plant life, all integral parts of the tribes’ First Foods.

Early signs also point to nuclear energy becoming a hot topic at the upcoming legislative session in Salem. State Rep. Bobby Levy, R-Echo, has already said she will sponsor a bill that would authorize an SMR pilot program in Umatilla County. A legislative committee also received a presentation on SMRs from nuclear energy officials in December.

It’s a fight Johnson, who helped curtail the nuclear energy industry by leading the effort to pass Measure 7 in 1980, hasn’t let go.

In the years that followed the measure’s passage, he worked as a fundraiser for Portland State University and Western Oregon University, but Johnson re-engaged with the nuclear issue following the 2011 nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima, Japan.

He steered his career track back toward nuclear opposition, becoming a program manager for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, first moving to Boston and then Switzerland to lead the organization’s Geneva office.

Johnson intends to retire later this year and return to Oregon, where he plans to remain active in opposing nuclear energy. He sees the sudden push for SMRs as an act of hubris from the country’s “tech bros,” an unearned confidence that they could unlock the potential of nuclear energy where previous generations have failed. Given the long, uncertain timeline for SMRs, Johnson thinks it’s just a ploy for tech companies to consume however much energy they want, whether it’s low carbon or not.

“I think it’s cynical,” he said. “They’re basically saying, ‘We got a promise to be carbon free, and fortunately for us, it’s something that’s going to take a while to do.’”