MARI YAMAGUCHI
AP
Tue, October 29, 2024
This photo shows the Onagawa nuclear power plant, operated by Tohoku Electric Power Company, Inc., in Onagawa, northeastern Japan, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024.
Tue, October 29, 2024
This photo shows the Onagawa nuclear power plant, operated by Tohoku Electric Power Company, Inc., in Onagawa, northeastern Japan, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024.
(Juntaro Yokoyama/Kyodo News via AP)
People protest against resuming operations of the Onagawa nuclear power plant, background, in Onagawa town, northeastern Japan, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024.
(Miyuki Saito/Kyodo News via AP)
TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese nuclear reactor which survived a massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that badly damaged the nearby Fukushima nuclear power plant was restarted Tuesday for the first time since the disaster after a safety upgrade, as the government pursues a renewed expansion of nuclear energy to provide stable power and reduce carbon emissions.
The No. 2 reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant on Japan's northern coast was put back online and is expected to start generating power in early November, operator Tohoku Electric Power Co. said.
The reactor is one of the three at the Onagawa plant, which is 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant where three reactors melted following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, releasing large amounts of radiation.
The Onagawa plant was hit by a 13-meter (42-foot) tsunami but was able to keep its crucial cooling systems functioning in all three reactors and achieve their safe shutdowns.
All of Japan's 54 commercial nuclear power plants were shut down after the Fukushima disaster for safety checks and upgrades. Onagawa No. 2 is the 13th of the 33 still useable reactors to return to operation. It is also the first restart in Japan of the same type of reactor damaged in Fukushima.
Tohoku Electric President Kojiro Higuchi said the reactor's restart highlights the area's recovery from the disaster.
Last year, Japan's government adopted a plan to maximize use of nuclear energy, including accelerating restarts of closed reactors, extending the operational life of aging plants, and developing next-generation reactors, as the country struggles to secure a stable energy supply and meet its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
“Nuclear energy, along with renewables, is an important power source for decarbonization," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tuesday. “We will maximize its use while ensuring safety.”
Restarting nuclear reactors is also increasingly important for Japan's economic growth, Hayashi said.
Concern about the government's revived push for nuclear energy grew after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit Japan's Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024, killing more than 400 people and damaging more than 100,000 structures. Minor damage was reported at two nuclear facilities and evacuation plans for the region were found to be inadequate.
For the Onagawa No. 2 reactor, Tohoku Electric in 2013 began upgrading its safety, including tsunami risk estimates and anti-quake measures. It also built an anti-tsunami wall extending up to 29 meters (95 feet) above sea level, and obtained safety approval from regulators in 2020.
Twenty-one of Japan's nuclear reactors, including six at Fukushima Daiichi and one at Onagawa, are currently being decommissioned because their operators chose to scrap them instead of investing large amounts for additional safety equipment required under the much-stricter post-Fukushima safety standards.
Japan’s Nuclear Power Revival Threatened by Lack of Workers
Shoko Oda and Tsuyoshi Inajima
Tue, October 29, 2024
TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese nuclear reactor which survived a massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that badly damaged the nearby Fukushima nuclear power plant was restarted Tuesday for the first time since the disaster after a safety upgrade, as the government pursues a renewed expansion of nuclear energy to provide stable power and reduce carbon emissions.
The No. 2 reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant on Japan's northern coast was put back online and is expected to start generating power in early November, operator Tohoku Electric Power Co. said.
The reactor is one of the three at the Onagawa plant, which is 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant where three reactors melted following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, releasing large amounts of radiation.
The Onagawa plant was hit by a 13-meter (42-foot) tsunami but was able to keep its crucial cooling systems functioning in all three reactors and achieve their safe shutdowns.
All of Japan's 54 commercial nuclear power plants were shut down after the Fukushima disaster for safety checks and upgrades. Onagawa No. 2 is the 13th of the 33 still useable reactors to return to operation. It is also the first restart in Japan of the same type of reactor damaged in Fukushima.
Tohoku Electric President Kojiro Higuchi said the reactor's restart highlights the area's recovery from the disaster.
Last year, Japan's government adopted a plan to maximize use of nuclear energy, including accelerating restarts of closed reactors, extending the operational life of aging plants, and developing next-generation reactors, as the country struggles to secure a stable energy supply and meet its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
“Nuclear energy, along with renewables, is an important power source for decarbonization," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tuesday. “We will maximize its use while ensuring safety.”
Restarting nuclear reactors is also increasingly important for Japan's economic growth, Hayashi said.
Concern about the government's revived push for nuclear energy grew after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit Japan's Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024, killing more than 400 people and damaging more than 100,000 structures. Minor damage was reported at two nuclear facilities and evacuation plans for the region were found to be inadequate.
For the Onagawa No. 2 reactor, Tohoku Electric in 2013 began upgrading its safety, including tsunami risk estimates and anti-quake measures. It also built an anti-tsunami wall extending up to 29 meters (95 feet) above sea level, and obtained safety approval from regulators in 2020.
Twenty-one of Japan's nuclear reactors, including six at Fukushima Daiichi and one at Onagawa, are currently being decommissioned because their operators chose to scrap them instead of investing large amounts for additional safety equipment required under the much-stricter post-Fukushima safety standards.
Japan’s Nuclear Power Revival Threatened by Lack of Workers
Shoko Oda and Tsuyoshi Inajima
Tue, October 29, 2024
BLOOMBERG
(Bloomberg) -- The restart of the nuclear power plant closest to the epicenter of Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake this week was hailed by the government as a major step toward reviving atomic energy. It’s also been a reminder of the crippling shortage of skilled workers that could slow that comeback.
Onagawa didn’t suffer the meltdown seen at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant, further down the coast. But no corner of the country’s nuclear industry was immune as public opinion soured on a technology that used to generate about a quarter of its electricity.
All of Japan’s reactors were subsequently shut. Restarting them has been a tortuous process, with around 60% of commercially available units still offline. The hiatus and slow revival has dramatically worsened a skills crunch visible across the nation’s nuclear industry.
At Onagawa, a power station near a small fishing port in northeastern Japan, more than a third of its technical staff have never operated a reactor before, and have practiced only on simulators.
An emissions-free and stable source of electricity, nuclear power is undergoing a global renaissance as governments turn to it to meet decarbonization targets and tech companies look for clean energy for the artificial intelligence data center boom. The dearth of skilled workers in Japan is a threat to the industry’s growth.
“Students were driven away from nuclear programs and managers with a great deal of ambition almost certainly looked for other opportunities” after 2011, said Mark Nelson, founder and managing director at Radiant Energy Group, a consultancy focused on the transition to cleaner fuels. If Japan can’t rely on atomic energy, it risks crimping the development and deployment of AI at scale, he said.
Between 33% and 58% of operators at nuclear plants managed by seven Japanese utilities have had no prior experience running them, let alone dealing with an emergency, local newspaper Asahi Shimbun said in a study published in March. The Japan Electrical Manufacturers’ Association said the number of people working in the country’s wider atomic power industry dropped by more than a fifth from 2010 to 2023.
Other nations are grappling with similar issues. France and the UK are facing difficulties hiring engineers for planned reactors. Taiwan, which will shut its last unit next year, is looking for ways to retain personnel from decommissioned plants so there’s a talent pool if the island decides to adopts next-generation reactors in the future.
Affordable and stable electricity “is the basis of people’s livelihood and business activities,” said Masakazu Tokura, the chairman of Japan’s biggest business lobby, Keidanren, in a statement on Tuesday. “We hope that Onagawa No. 2 will contribute to improving Japan’s energy self-sufficiency and achieving carbon neutrality.”
At Onagawa, some 51 of 140 technical staff have no previous experience operating reactors, according to Tohoku Electric Power Co., which runs the plant.
The utility said it had trained inexperienced staff on simulators, sent them to learn at thermal power plants and also assigned seasoned operators to provide them with support. Still, it acknowledged that on-the-job experience is “incredibly important” and that workers need first-hand knowledge of an operating reactor to detect problems.
Despite the lack of experienced staff, Onagawa, and places like it, are set to become training grounds for the next generation of Japanese nuclear workers. Toshiba Energy Systems and Solutions Corp., which was involved in the construction of the reactor and conducted the safety work needed for the restart, has been sending staff there.
“Experience on-site is different from inheriting skills face-to-face,” said Yuki Komukai, group manager at the company’s power systems division. “We are sending new recruits to Onagawa to get first-hand experience.”
The number of students studying in nuclear-related departments in Japanese higher education has been falling from a peak as far back as 1993, according to a white paper from the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, with the decline possibly exacerbated by the country’s aging population.
To help stoke interest in nuclear careers, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum started hosting job fairs in the mid-2000s, with almost 2,000 students attending events in Tokyo and Osaka in 2010. Interest plummeted after the Fukushima disaster though, and they’ve only attracted around 300 to 400 jobseekers since then, it said.
With both the government and Keidanren pushing for the nuclear energy revival there are signs more young people are becoming more interested about careers in the industry, however. Sentiment toward nuclear is improving, said Toshiba’s Komukai.
Masato Suzuki, who is studying nuclear safety engineering at Tokyo City University, was one of the attendees at this year’s JAIF job fair in the Japanese capital. Just eight years old at the time of the Fukushima meltdown, he said he’d been interested in nuclear power since reading in a textbook about how much Japan relied on it before the disaster.
“I’ve always thought it’s a waste to not use something that supported Japan for so long,” Suzuki said. “I want to work at a manufacturer and become a nuclear engineer in the future.
WA nears energy crisis as Amazon funds nuclear reactors, sparking controversy
Taylor Winkel
Mon, October 28, 2024
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways
WASHINGTON - A new report indicates Washington could face an energy crisis within five years as its power capacity approaches its limit.
The growing demands from AI and major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are driving this strain on the state's energy resources.
As the ink dries on the deal Amazon just signed with Energy Northwest and X-energy, investing in four new nuclear reactors along the Columbia River in Richland — near Hanford, the most contaminated nuclear site in the U.S. — some groups are asking why we’re risking this again?
"Nuclear kills," Leona Morgan, an indigenous organizer said during a panel hosted by the organization Columbia Riverkeeper. "And nuclear is killing my people. Nuclear is what we call 'a slow genocide.’"
Morgan says the health impacts her family and other indigenous people face stem from radioactive exposure and contamination on their land.
"Just because we can’t see it, it’s out of sight out of mind, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And if you need proof of it, come visit us," Morgan added. "See an abandoned uranium mine anywhere in the world? On Navajo, we have over 2,000."
The panel came just after Amazon's SMR announcement.
Columbia Riverkeeper maintains nuclear energy is far from clean.
"It’s the most expensive, complicated, dirtiest way to boil water," said Morgan, explaining that the carbon footprint of nuclear is only counted at the power plant, not during the process to building it and the toxic waste left behind.
Billions in federal and local funds go toward nuclear site decommissioning and cleaning every year.
Washington state just approved a record $3 billion to spend on cleanup at the Hanford site this year.
Money Amazon is investing in Small Modular Reactors near Hanford could be better invested in other renewables like solar, wind and hydro, according to Columbia Riverkeeper, which says nuclear isn’t the clean energy savior that big tech makes it out to be.
"When it comes to companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, the public has plenty of reasons to be angry at them," panelist M.V. Ramana said. "These companies steal your data, they do bad things, they want to pretend to be good citizens. The reason they can use investment in nuclear energy as a way to pretend they are good citizens is because the hard work of convincing the public has already been done by the nuclear lobby."
Ramana is the author of the book "Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change." He says we should focus on energy conservation instead.
Kelly Rae, who works in corporate communications with Energy Northwest, tells Fox 13 Seattle that the permits for the SMR’s haven’t been secured yet, although lawmakers from Jay Inslee down are already lining up behind the project.
Rae says Amazon’s funding will pay for a feasibility study over the next two years, in which after they are hopeful to fund the SMR’s. If they’re successful, the energy generated from the first four reactors would be available to Amazon only. Rae says after that, other utility companies and municipalities could come to the table to help Amazon fund additional reactors to provide energy for Washingtonians.
Energy Northwest is a collection of 28 utility districts, including Seattle City Light, Tacoma Public Utilities and Snohomish County PUD. Amazon didn’t say how much it's spending on the project, or how much, if any, will come from Energy Northwest.
So far, there aren’t any other small modular reactors like the ones Amazon is investing in, operating in the U.S.
Opinion
The Rise and Fall of NuScale: a nuclear cautionary tale
Kelly Campbell
Tue, October 29, 2024
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. is storing 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and hazardous waste produced through the 40 years of plutonium production. (Getty Images)
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. is storing 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and hazardous waste produced through the 40 years of plutonium production. (Getty Images)
A decade ago, NuScale, the Oregon-based small modular nuclear company born at Oregon State University, was on a roll. Promising a new era of nuclear reactors that were cheaper, easier to build and safer, their Star Wars-inspired artist renditions of a yet to be built reactor gleamed like a magic bullet.
As of last year, NuScale was the furthest along of any reactor design in obtaining Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing and was planning to build the first small modular nuclear reactor in the United States. Its plan was to build it in Idaho to serve energy to a consortium of small public utility districts in Utah and elsewhere, known as UAMPS.
This home-grown Oregon company was lauded in local and national media. According to project backers, a high-tech solution to climate change was on the horizon, and an Oregon company was leading the way. It seemed almost too good to be true.
And it was.
Turns out, NuScale was a house of cards. The UAMPS project’s price tag more than doubled and the timeline was pushed back repeatedly until it was seven years behind schedule. Finally, UAMPS saw the writing on the wall and wisely backed out in November, 2023.
After losing their customer, NuScale’s stock plunged, it laid off nearly a third of its workforce, and it was sued by its investors and investigated for investor fraud. Then its CEO sold off most of his stock shares.
NuScale’s project is the latest in a long line of failed nuclear fantasies.
Why should you care? A different nuclear company, X-Energy, now in partnership with Amazon, wants to build and operate small modular nuclear reactors near the Columbia River, 250 miles upriver from Portland. Bill Gates’s darling, the Natrium reactor in Wyoming is also plowing ahead. Both proposals are raking in the Inflation Reduction Act and other taxpayer funded subsidies. The danger: Money and time wasted on these false solutions to the climate crisis divert public resources from renewables, energy efficiency and other faster, more cost-efficient and safer ways to address the climate crisis.
A recent study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that small modular nuclear reactors are still too expensive, too slow to build and too risky to respond to the climate crisis.
While the nuclear industry tries to pass itself off as “clean,” it is an extremely dirty technology, beginning with uranium mining and milling which decimates Indigenous lands. Small modular nuclear reactors produce two to thirty times the radioactive waste of older nuclear designs, waste for which we have no safe, long-term disposal site. Any community that hosts a nuclear reactor will likely be saddled with its radioactive waste – forever. This harm falls disproportionately on Indigenous and low-income communities.
For those of us downriver, X-Energy’s plans to build at the Hanford Nuclear Site on the Columbia flies in the face of reason, as it would add more nuclear waste to the country’s largest nuclear cleanup site.
(Bloomberg) -- The restart of the nuclear power plant closest to the epicenter of Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake this week was hailed by the government as a major step toward reviving atomic energy. It’s also been a reminder of the crippling shortage of skilled workers that could slow that comeback.
Onagawa didn’t suffer the meltdown seen at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant, further down the coast. But no corner of the country’s nuclear industry was immune as public opinion soured on a technology that used to generate about a quarter of its electricity.
All of Japan’s reactors were subsequently shut. Restarting them has been a tortuous process, with around 60% of commercially available units still offline. The hiatus and slow revival has dramatically worsened a skills crunch visible across the nation’s nuclear industry.
At Onagawa, a power station near a small fishing port in northeastern Japan, more than a third of its technical staff have never operated a reactor before, and have practiced only on simulators.
An emissions-free and stable source of electricity, nuclear power is undergoing a global renaissance as governments turn to it to meet decarbonization targets and tech companies look for clean energy for the artificial intelligence data center boom. The dearth of skilled workers in Japan is a threat to the industry’s growth.
“Students were driven away from nuclear programs and managers with a great deal of ambition almost certainly looked for other opportunities” after 2011, said Mark Nelson, founder and managing director at Radiant Energy Group, a consultancy focused on the transition to cleaner fuels. If Japan can’t rely on atomic energy, it risks crimping the development and deployment of AI at scale, he said.
Between 33% and 58% of operators at nuclear plants managed by seven Japanese utilities have had no prior experience running them, let alone dealing with an emergency, local newspaper Asahi Shimbun said in a study published in March. The Japan Electrical Manufacturers’ Association said the number of people working in the country’s wider atomic power industry dropped by more than a fifth from 2010 to 2023.
Other nations are grappling with similar issues. France and the UK are facing difficulties hiring engineers for planned reactors. Taiwan, which will shut its last unit next year, is looking for ways to retain personnel from decommissioned plants so there’s a talent pool if the island decides to adopts next-generation reactors in the future.
Affordable and stable electricity “is the basis of people’s livelihood and business activities,” said Masakazu Tokura, the chairman of Japan’s biggest business lobby, Keidanren, in a statement on Tuesday. “We hope that Onagawa No. 2 will contribute to improving Japan’s energy self-sufficiency and achieving carbon neutrality.”
At Onagawa, some 51 of 140 technical staff have no previous experience operating reactors, according to Tohoku Electric Power Co., which runs the plant.
The utility said it had trained inexperienced staff on simulators, sent them to learn at thermal power plants and also assigned seasoned operators to provide them with support. Still, it acknowledged that on-the-job experience is “incredibly important” and that workers need first-hand knowledge of an operating reactor to detect problems.
Despite the lack of experienced staff, Onagawa, and places like it, are set to become training grounds for the next generation of Japanese nuclear workers. Toshiba Energy Systems and Solutions Corp., which was involved in the construction of the reactor and conducted the safety work needed for the restart, has been sending staff there.
“Experience on-site is different from inheriting skills face-to-face,” said Yuki Komukai, group manager at the company’s power systems division. “We are sending new recruits to Onagawa to get first-hand experience.”
The number of students studying in nuclear-related departments in Japanese higher education has been falling from a peak as far back as 1993, according to a white paper from the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, with the decline possibly exacerbated by the country’s aging population.
To help stoke interest in nuclear careers, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum started hosting job fairs in the mid-2000s, with almost 2,000 students attending events in Tokyo and Osaka in 2010. Interest plummeted after the Fukushima disaster though, and they’ve only attracted around 300 to 400 jobseekers since then, it said.
With both the government and Keidanren pushing for the nuclear energy revival there are signs more young people are becoming more interested about careers in the industry, however. Sentiment toward nuclear is improving, said Toshiba’s Komukai.
Masato Suzuki, who is studying nuclear safety engineering at Tokyo City University, was one of the attendees at this year’s JAIF job fair in the Japanese capital. Just eight years old at the time of the Fukushima meltdown, he said he’d been interested in nuclear power since reading in a textbook about how much Japan relied on it before the disaster.
“I’ve always thought it’s a waste to not use something that supported Japan for so long,” Suzuki said. “I want to work at a manufacturer and become a nuclear engineer in the future.
WA nears energy crisis as Amazon funds nuclear reactors, sparking controversy
Taylor Winkel
Mon, October 28, 2024
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways
WASHINGTON - A new report indicates Washington could face an energy crisis within five years as its power capacity approaches its limit.
The growing demands from AI and major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are driving this strain on the state's energy resources.
As the ink dries on the deal Amazon just signed with Energy Northwest and X-energy, investing in four new nuclear reactors along the Columbia River in Richland — near Hanford, the most contaminated nuclear site in the U.S. — some groups are asking why we’re risking this again?
"Nuclear kills," Leona Morgan, an indigenous organizer said during a panel hosted by the organization Columbia Riverkeeper. "And nuclear is killing my people. Nuclear is what we call 'a slow genocide.’"
Morgan says the health impacts her family and other indigenous people face stem from radioactive exposure and contamination on their land.
"Just because we can’t see it, it’s out of sight out of mind, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And if you need proof of it, come visit us," Morgan added. "See an abandoned uranium mine anywhere in the world? On Navajo, we have over 2,000."
The panel came just after Amazon's SMR announcement.
Columbia Riverkeeper maintains nuclear energy is far from clean.
"It’s the most expensive, complicated, dirtiest way to boil water," said Morgan, explaining that the carbon footprint of nuclear is only counted at the power plant, not during the process to building it and the toxic waste left behind.
Billions in federal and local funds go toward nuclear site decommissioning and cleaning every year.
Washington state just approved a record $3 billion to spend on cleanup at the Hanford site this year.
Money Amazon is investing in Small Modular Reactors near Hanford could be better invested in other renewables like solar, wind and hydro, according to Columbia Riverkeeper, which says nuclear isn’t the clean energy savior that big tech makes it out to be.
"When it comes to companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, the public has plenty of reasons to be angry at them," panelist M.V. Ramana said. "These companies steal your data, they do bad things, they want to pretend to be good citizens. The reason they can use investment in nuclear energy as a way to pretend they are good citizens is because the hard work of convincing the public has already been done by the nuclear lobby."
Ramana is the author of the book "Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change." He says we should focus on energy conservation instead.
Kelly Rae, who works in corporate communications with Energy Northwest, tells Fox 13 Seattle that the permits for the SMR’s haven’t been secured yet, although lawmakers from Jay Inslee down are already lining up behind the project.
Rae says Amazon’s funding will pay for a feasibility study over the next two years, in which after they are hopeful to fund the SMR’s. If they’re successful, the energy generated from the first four reactors would be available to Amazon only. Rae says after that, other utility companies and municipalities could come to the table to help Amazon fund additional reactors to provide energy for Washingtonians.
Energy Northwest is a collection of 28 utility districts, including Seattle City Light, Tacoma Public Utilities and Snohomish County PUD. Amazon didn’t say how much it's spending on the project, or how much, if any, will come from Energy Northwest.
So far, there aren’t any other small modular reactors like the ones Amazon is investing in, operating in the U.S.
Opinion
The Rise and Fall of NuScale: a nuclear cautionary tale
Kelly Campbell
Tue, October 29, 2024
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. is storing 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and hazardous waste produced through the 40 years of plutonium production. (Getty Images)
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. is storing 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and hazardous waste produced through the 40 years of plutonium production. (Getty Images)
A decade ago, NuScale, the Oregon-based small modular nuclear company born at Oregon State University, was on a roll. Promising a new era of nuclear reactors that were cheaper, easier to build and safer, their Star Wars-inspired artist renditions of a yet to be built reactor gleamed like a magic bullet.
As of last year, NuScale was the furthest along of any reactor design in obtaining Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing and was planning to build the first small modular nuclear reactor in the United States. Its plan was to build it in Idaho to serve energy to a consortium of small public utility districts in Utah and elsewhere, known as UAMPS.
This home-grown Oregon company was lauded in local and national media. According to project backers, a high-tech solution to climate change was on the horizon, and an Oregon company was leading the way. It seemed almost too good to be true.
And it was.
Turns out, NuScale was a house of cards. The UAMPS project’s price tag more than doubled and the timeline was pushed back repeatedly until it was seven years behind schedule. Finally, UAMPS saw the writing on the wall and wisely backed out in November, 2023.
After losing their customer, NuScale’s stock plunged, it laid off nearly a third of its workforce, and it was sued by its investors and investigated for investor fraud. Then its CEO sold off most of his stock shares.
NuScale’s project is the latest in a long line of failed nuclear fantasies.
Why should you care? A different nuclear company, X-Energy, now in partnership with Amazon, wants to build and operate small modular nuclear reactors near the Columbia River, 250 miles upriver from Portland. Bill Gates’s darling, the Natrium reactor in Wyoming is also plowing ahead. Both proposals are raking in the Inflation Reduction Act and other taxpayer funded subsidies. The danger: Money and time wasted on these false solutions to the climate crisis divert public resources from renewables, energy efficiency and other faster, more cost-efficient and safer ways to address the climate crisis.
A recent study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that small modular nuclear reactors are still too expensive, too slow to build and too risky to respond to the climate crisis.
While the nuclear industry tries to pass itself off as “clean,” it is an extremely dirty technology, beginning with uranium mining and milling which decimates Indigenous lands. Small modular nuclear reactors produce two to thirty times the radioactive waste of older nuclear designs, waste for which we have no safe, long-term disposal site. Any community that hosts a nuclear reactor will likely be saddled with its radioactive waste – forever. This harm falls disproportionately on Indigenous and low-income communities.
For those of us downriver, X-Energy’s plans to build at the Hanford Nuclear Site on the Columbia flies in the face of reason, as it would add more nuclear waste to the country’s largest nuclear cleanup site.
