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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2021
Nuclear power plant pitched in central Washington
By HAL BERNTON
Seattle Times
RICHLAND, Wash. — Near the Colum-
bia River, Clay Sell hopes to launch a new
era of nuclear power with four small reac-
tors, each stocked with billiard ball-sized
“pebbles” packed full of uranium fuel.
Chief executive offi cer of Mary-
land-based X-energy, Sell aims to bring the
project online by 2028 as part of a broader
attempt to develop safer, more fl exible reac-
tors to redefi ne the nation’s energy future.
These eff orts have gained support in
the nation’s capital where many Demo-
crats eager to make progress on climate
change have joined with Republicans to fun-
nel money into development. The federal
Energy Department has received $160 mil-
lion to help fund X-energy, and the infra-
structure bill that cleared Congress earlier
this month ups that amount to cover almost
half the projected $2.2 billion cost of the
Washington reactor project.
“We believe what starts here in Washing-
ton is going to change the world,” Sell said
to public-utility offi cials gathered in Kenne-
wick in late October.
X-energy is one of three companies
with ties to the Pacifi c Northwest that have
received federal funds to help develop a new
generation of small nuclear power plants,
which — since they make electricity without
direct combustion of fossil fuels — could
aid in the global eff ort to drive down cli-
mate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
X-energy, along with Bellevue-based Ter-
raPower, founded by Bill Gates, and Port-
land-based NuScale, proposes reactors that
can ramp up and down their electrical out-
put much more rapidly than the large reac-
tors now operating. This agility could help
keep electrical grids in balance as more wind
and solar power comes online.
TerraPower plans to build its project at
the site of a Wyoming coal plant in a partner-
ship with a subsidiary of Pacifi Corp, a pri-
vate utility. NuScale is proposing a project in
Idaho and has considered eventually locat-
ing a unit in Washington state.
The nuclear industry, in the Pacifi c North-
west and elsewhere in the nation, has a his-
tory of pitching, and sometimes starting,
projects that fail to come to pass. Skeptics
say these next-generation projects are being
oversold and face big challenges in pro-
ducing competitively priced power without
compromising safety and security, and in a
time frame soon enough to help reduce car-
bon emissions by midcentury.
“I’m frankly speechless at the success
that the proponents of these plants have had
in bamboozling … a lot of government offi -
cials,” said Peter Bradford, a former mem-
X-energy
This rendering shows a proposed nuclear power plant by Maryland-based X-energy that would produce electricity from four helium gas-cooled reactors.
ber of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
and former chair of the Maine and New York
utility commissions. “They should be shoul-
dering a much heavier burden when it comes
to the credibility of what they are saying.”
The NuScale project in southern Idaho
involving small reactors cooled by water
is furthest along in development, and has
struggled with delays, design changes and
escalating cost projections.
NuScale has partnered with a Utah-based
utility consortium to develop what initially
was proposed to be a power plant with 12
small reactors. The project, which is now
forecast to cost $5.1 billion, has since been
scaled back to six reactors expected to start
coming online in 2029, according to LaVarr
Webb, a spokesperson for the Utah Associ-
ated Municipal Power Systems.
Though Webb says sign-ups to take
power are “going very well,” some utilities
have had second thoughts and pulled out
of participation in the project. As of early
November, the consortium had secured con-
tracts to take 22% of the project’s proposed
462 megawatts of power.
Central Washington site
Sell has found fervent support for X-en-
ergy in the Tri-Cities area, the hub of Wash-
ington state’s nuclear industry that has long
been buoyed by billions of taxpayer dol-
lars fl owing into the cleanup of the federal
Hanford site, where plutonium produced for
U.S. atomic bombs has left a toxic, radioac-
tive legacy.
The Columbia Generating Station, Wash-
ington’s only commercial nuclear power
plant, is located at the edge of Hanford. And
its operator, Energy Northwest, would man-
age the X-energy reactors under an agree-
ment announced last year.
A third partner is Eastern Washington’s
Grant County Public Utility District, which
would own the reactors and be responsible in
raising about $1 billion in fi nancing.
This utility boasts an abundance of
low-cost hydroelectric power, which has
attracted to the county Microsoft, Intuit and
other companies that require lots of electric-
ity for data centers and other operations.
Kevin Nordt, Grant County Public Util-
ity District’s general manager, is convinced
nuclear could be an important addition to the
utility’s energy portfolio to help meet grow-
ing demand.
But this partnership is a work in progress.
Nordt said that the utility district also is
considering an alternate site project in Grant
County and is exploring another option to
partner with NuScale.
The costs of power produced by next-gen-
eration nuclear are a key concern and source
of uncertainty.
Over the past decade, the cost of renew-
ables has plummeted. But, unlike wind and
solar power, nuclear can be fed into the grid
whenever needed, and for long as needed.
That makes this power more valuable, Nordt
said. Still, he says a more in-depth fi nancial
review is needed, and Grant County might
decide not to move forward with any of
these projects.
“We may say, ‘You know, hey, the nuclear
path was looking favorable, but it’s not for us
right now.’ That’s a possibility,” said Nordt,
who previously worked at Energy North-
west. “I’m not saying it’s a high likelihood.”
X-energy pushes ahead
X-energy was created by Kam Ghaff ar-
ian, an entrepreneurial Iranian immigrant
who founded a major NASA contracting
company and other ventures. In 2009, he
turned his attention to nuclear power to help
deal with what he viewed as a planetary cri-
sis caused by climate change.
He seeks development of a helium gas-
cooled reactor that can operate at higher tem-
peratures, which he says could enable more
effi cient generation of electricity. This tech-
nology has been around for decades but has
never been widely used in the U.S. The com-
pany, under a Defense Department contract,
also is developing small portable reactors.
“My strategies going forward are deploy-
ment, deployment, deployment,” Ghaff arian
declared in a 2017 speech. “We have done
enough research. We have done enough
dancing.”
Ghaff arian in 2019 recruited Sell, a vet-
eran Washington insider who had served
as deputy energy secretary in the Bush
administration.
When prospecting for a place to put the
fi rst project, Sell says he was drawn to Wash-
ington, in part, by a law passed in 2019 that
calls for all fossil-fuel-generated power to be
off the state grid by 2045.
“That is the most transformative thing
that has happened in nuclear-energy markets
in the United States because it has created
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