Washington is taking another shot at nuclear power development at the same site where a major project failed nearly 40 years ago. This time, one of the state’s biggest energy users, Amazon, is helping to make it happen.
“We’re working near the remains of an unfinished reactor, so that history will always be on our minds,” said Gregory Cullen, a vice president at Energy Northwest.
The site is home to Energy Northwest’s Reactor No. 1, which was never completed. It’s located near the Columbia Generating Station reactor, north of Richland. Back in 1982, the Washington Public Power Supply System WPPSS—a group of 28 public utilities—stopped work on four reactors at Hanford and Satsop because the project ran wildly over budget. That failure caused the second-largest bond bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Out of those reactors, only Reactor No. 2 was finished. Later, in 1998, WPPSS rebranded itself as Energy Northwest to move past its troubled past. Today, Reactor No. 2 is known as the Columbia Generating Station and produces 1,000 megawatts of electricity.
Now, Energy Northwest is planning to build four small modular reactors SMRs at the same site. These SMRs are a new trend in nuclear energy, seen as a way to meet the growing demand for carbon-free electricity. By using this federal land, they can take advantage of existing infrastructure like roads and utilities built in the 1980s.
This project is getting a big boost from Amazon, which has committed almost $334 million to a multi-year study on the feasibility of building the reactors. “Amazon stepped up to support this,” said Cullen. Energy Northwest, with its large resources, can handle this kind of expensive and complex project, something smaller utilities couldn’t manage alone.
The plan is to build four small modular reactors, which will produce 320 megawatts of electricity for the Northwest power grid. Amazon would have priority access to the power, likely to support its data centers in the region. If successful, the cluster could eventually expand to include up to 12 reactors, producing 960 megawatts.