Groups rally against bill that would exempt Umatilla County from statewide nuclear ban

Alex Baumhardt | Oregon Capital Chronicle | May 20, 2025

A bill that would exempt Umatilla County from the statewide ban on new nuclear energy facilities has drawn the opposition of environmentalists, tribes, doctors and northeast Oregon community groups who showed up Monday at the Capitol in Salem to rally against it.

If passed, House Bill 2410 would allow the state’s Energy Facility Siting Council to approve development of a modular nuclear reactor in northeast Oregon’s Umatilla County. Oregon voters in 1980 approved a statewide ban on new nuclear development, barring the federal government creates a national repository for nuclear waste or voters decide to appeal. Neither has happened.

The bill’s architects characterize it as allowing a “demonstration project” of modular nuclear that would operate on a microgrid and support “community energy resilience.” Small reactors have about one-third the generating capacity of a traditional reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and can power individual neighborhoods, factories and facilities such as data centers that consume large amounts of energy.