Amazon offers $334M for nuclear reactors to be built at Hanford

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The latest attempt to put Washington at the center of nuclear power development is happening at the site of the state’s last effort, which mostly failed almost 40 years ago. And one of the state’s biggest users of electric power will have a hand in its development.

“We’re building in the shadow of an unfinished reactor. It’ll be constantly on our minds,” said Gregory Cullen, vice president for energy services and development at Energy Northwest.

The site is Energy Northwest’s half-built reactor No. 1, near the Columbia Generating Station reactor north of Richland. In 1982, the Washington Public Power Supply System — a consortium of 28 public utilities including Seattle City Light — halted construction of four nuclear reactors at Hanford and Satsop because of massive cost overruns. That led to the second-biggest bond bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Only Reactor No. 2 was completed. In 1998, WPPSS changed its name to Energy Northwest and Reactor No. 2 became the 1,000-megawatt Columbia Generating Stanton in a massive rebranding to leave bankruptcy in the past.

https://www.cascadepbs.org/news/2024/11/amazon-offers-334m-nuclear-reactors-be-built-hanford

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Just strikes me as absurd

When America was formed, energy was firewood. Local control and production. Now it's all beyond citizens' control and we pay and pay.

$334 million? Peanuts. Why doesn't Amazon just buy the whole company and do what it wants? No, they want some other entity to supply their electricity. We will never be free of these monopolies.

[2naSalit]

2. Billions spent...

Over decades trying to clean up the radiation contamination there, still not done. But sure, let jeffy build whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Who will stop him?

[LiberalArkie]

3. Huh? 3 reactors were never finished. Thus never radioactive. The 4th is actively running.