More nuclear power in the Tri-Cities? Energy Northwest meets with stakeholders for proposed plant expansion near Richland

A new chapter in the history of nuclear power in central Washington is being written.

Local officials, tribes and other stakeholders on Friday toured an area just north of Richland that is the site for a dozen nuclear reactors proposed. While the project is in an area of the state that has long been the center of nuclear production and cleanup, organizers say the power project is separate from the legacy of the Hanford site, a 580-square-mile area immediately northwest of Richland that was key to the development of the two atomic bombs detonated on Japan during World War II.

“There is a long and complex history of the Hanford site that is ongoing in our region and our community,” said Sean O’Brien, executive director of the Energy Forward Alliance and a leader for the reactor project. “That’s why communication and education is so key. These are clean and safe reactors and in no way related to Hanford.”

Since the end of the Hanford project, the federal government has paid out millions to residents of the area who were exposed to excessive levels of radiation.

Decades later, the government is still cleaning the site, ridding it of radioactivity.

O’Brien said the new reactors are planned to be installed adjacent to the Columbia Generating Station on land leased from the federal government. The plant was built by the Washington Public Power Supply System in 1984. The public power agency operated the plant until it changed its name in 1998 to Energy Northwest, which now operates it and leases the land it sits on.

The sole nuclear power plant in the Pacific Northwest and one of only three in the western United States, the Columbia station generates about 10% of Washington’s annual power supply, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

And in January, leaders at Energy Northwest announced plans to expand.

Energy Northwest agreed to a partnership with X-Energy Reactor Co., a Rockville, Maryland-based firm that manufactures nuclear reactors. Reactors are machines that house nuclear reactions that generate heat. A nuclear power plant turns heat into steam that drives turbine generators to create electricity.

Specifically, the company makes “small modular nuclear reactors,” which are many times smaller than traditional reactors. They can be transported by a semitruck and assembled in multiple configurations.

Small reactors are less expensive to build and vary in size from dozens of megawatts to hundreds of megawatts, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Energy Northwest wants to install 12 small modular reactors capable of generating up to 960 megawatts, according to a company release. At 100% power, the Columbia Generating Station produces 1,207 megawatts.

Despite newer, smaller reactors that the department found to be safer and more efficient, there is still some hesitancy to the idea.

While state lawmakers approved $25 million for the project in March, the Washington state Democratic Party considered earlier this month a pair of resolutions during their party convention that discouraged the use of clean energy funding for constructing nuclear reactors. The party’s delegates voted narrowly, by a margin of 12 votes, against adopting those resolutions.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration officials made announcements this spring for plans to “bolster domestic nuclear industry,” and the White House backed a multicountry declaration to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050.

O’Brien said the efforts by the Biden administration were “bold.”

“The Biden Administration is sticking its neck out by leading the conversation with two dozen other countries,” he said. “It puts our community at the front lines not only in the state or nationally, but internationally.”

Theresa Richardson, Richland’s mayor, is fully on board.

“We are proud to be the home of Energy Northwest,” she said in a statement. “We are committed to a future powered by clean nuclear energy.”