A bill to research the manufacture and shipping of small nuclear reactors is now in the hands of the state House's Democratic leaders. The House Technology & Economic Development Committee recommended 11-2 on Wednesday that a bill by Sen. Sharon Brown, R-Kennewick, be passed. The Republican-controlled Senate has already passed the bill, mostly along party lines.
It is now up to House leaders to decide whether the full House will vote on the bill.
The reactors in question would be small and prefabricated; their parts manufactured in one location and then transported to the reactor site for final assembly.
The concept is still on the drawing board. No one has built a commercial small modular reactor yet, although supporters contend they are similar to the small reactors that operate on U.S. Navy ships.
Critics of the concept point to the lack of any track record on cost or safety for small modular reactors, plus concerns over the nation’s lack of a permanent place to store used nuclear fuel.
Energy Northwest (a consortium of Washington public utilities, including Seattle City Light), the NuScale company of Corvallis, Ore., and the U.S. Department of Energy facility at Idaho Falls have agreed to build a full-scale small modular reactor in Idaho by 2023. Tri-Cities interests hope to attract mass production to a half-built, never-finished Energy Northwest reactor site at the Hanford reservation.
