Decaying in Storage: the Closures of Three Nuclear Reactors in the Pacific Northwest

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Celia Oney for the degree of Master of Arts in History and Philosophy of Science presented on June 7, 2021.

Title: Decaying in Storage: The Closures of Three Nuclear Reactors in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract approved: ______Jacob Darwin Hamblin

People involved in a nuclear activity, whether they are developing it, benefiting from it, or opposing it, see inherent connections between various aspects of nuclear science and technology. This thesis investigates three nuclear sites: a university research reactor, a dual-purpose reactor that produced plutonium for the U.S. military and electricity for civilian use, and a commercial power reactor, all located in the Pacific

Northwest. It examines the decisions that led to the closure and disposal of these reactors and the ways these decisions were influenced by factors that were more directly related to other forms of nuclear science and technology. Each site had both obvious nuclearity as an example of nuclear reactor technology and hidden nuclearity that came from the ways people connected these reactors with other kinds of nuclear activities. Oregon State University attempted to give its AGN-201 research reactor to several other institutions, but each arrangement was complicated by one of the factors that made it desirable: the AEC’s involvement in both promoting and regulating

nuclear reactors, the possible ties between research reactors and nuclear weapons development, and the reactor’s utility as a training tool for future nuclear power industry workers. The N Reactor at the Hanford site closed down due to the nearly simultaneous occurrence of several factors: new public knowledge of the radioactive contamination that Hanford had released over several decades, increased scrutiny following the Chernobyl disaster, and a senator with moral objections to nuclear weapons in a position that gave him influence over Hanford’s budget. Activists who opposed the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant tended to oppose nuclear technology more broadly, including both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. While their strategies targeted the Trojan plant directly, their communications demonstrated a clear desire for a non-nuclear future. Thus, the eventual closure of the plant was not a complete victory, due to the spent nuclear fuel left behind at the reactor site. This thesis makes use of newspaper articles and publicly available interviews from several oral history projects. For the chapter on OSU’s AGN-201 reactor, extensive research was done from the reactor’s operating records and related correspondence, all of which remains in storage at the OSU Radiation Center.

Decaying in Storage: The Closures of Three Nuclear Reactors in the Pacific Northwest

by Celia Oney

A THESIS

submitted to

Oregon State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Presented June 7, 2021 Commencement June 2021

Master of Arts thesis of Celia Oney presented on June 7, 2021

APPROVED:

Major Professor, representing History and Philosophy of Science

Director of the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion

Dean of the Graduate School

I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my thesis to any reader upon request.

Celia Oney, Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor, Jacob Hamblin, for his encouragement and support over the past two years. He has helped me learn to question my assumptions, improve as a researcher, and think beyond the goals I had when I first started in this program.

Thank you to my committee members, Linda Richards, Marisa Chappell, and

David Bernell. Thanks also to Trina Hogg for her advice and encouragement when I was first forming the ideas that became this thesis.

I would like to thank my fellow graduate students for welcoming me into the department. I am grateful that we have been able to keep in touch over this past year despite remote classes and campus closures.

I appreciate my colleagues at the Radiation Center, who helped me get access to records, supported me in balancing my work and class schedule, and shared my interest in the history of the old AGN core, which makes up the heart of this thesis.

Finally, I would like to thank my family. My parents, for introducing me to the Chicago Manual of Style at a young age. My husband, Brenden, for supporting my goals no matter what other challenges life threw at us (and for having the patience for a hundred conversations that all started with, “I think I finally figured out what

I’m trying to say in this chapter.”) And my daughter, Lyra, for being a constant source of joy in my life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Introduction ...... 1

1. Free to a Good Home: Efforts to Relocate an AGN-201 Research Reactor ...... 8

Introduction ...... 8 Local Interest: Negotiations with Oregon Museum of Science and Industry ...... 12 International Efforts: Negotiations with the Instituto Politécnico Nacional ...... 15 Last Transfer Attempts and Final Decommissioning ...... 23 Conclusion ...... 29

2. Blowing in the Wind: Hanford’s Contamination, the Chernobyl Disaster, and the Closure of the N Reactor...... 31

Introduction ...... 31 The Hanford Site and the N Reactor ...... 33 Chernobyl’s Effects ...... 40 Legislative Action ...... 45 Conclusion ...... 48

3. Oregon’s Anti-Nuclear Movement and the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant ...... 50

Introduction ...... 50 The Beginnings of Opposition: The Trojan Decommissioning Alliance ...... 54 Nuclear Issues at the Ballot Box ...... 61 Monuments to Failure: Disposal of Trojan’s Core Vessel, Cooling Tower, and Fuel ...... 69 Conclusion ...... 75

Conclusion ...... 77

Bibliography ...... 83

Introduction

In the summer of 1980, Dr. Chih Wang, a professor of nuclear engineering, notified Oregon State University’s vice president that the university’s AGN-201 research reactor had been fully decommissioned. Wang mentioned that this event marked “the decommissioning of the first nuclear reactor in the state and, in fact, in the entire Pacific Northwest, inasmuch as the decommissioning task for production reactors at the Richland site has not been completed.”1 Wang was alluding to the plutonium production reactors at the Hanford site near Richland, Washington. Many of these reactors were no longer operating, but there was no plan in place yet for how to dismantle or dispose of the reactors, or for cleaning up the significant amount of radioactive contamination that had accumulated on and near the site over several decades. At this point, Oregon had a single nuclear power reactor, the Trojan Nuclear

Power Plant, which had been operating since 1975.2 In the upcoming general election,

Oregon’s voters would decide on a ballot measure that would restrict further nuclear development in the state. This ballot measure was the second in a long series of votes on nuclear issues, which would continue until Trojan’s eventual closure in 1993, more than twenty years before the expected end of the power plant’s operations.

The history of nuclear issues in the Pacific Northwest is somewhat paradoxical. No nuclear weapons tests were carried out in the region, but the Hanford

1This wording is slightly confusing. The AGN-201 was in fact the first nuclear reactor in Oregon, but judging by the reference to the older reactors at the Richland site in Washington, it seems that Wang was emphasizing the fact that this was the first completed decommissioning. Chih Wang to Clifford Smith, 2 July 1980, Radiation Center Records, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR. 2The state also had two TRIGA research reactors, one at Oregon State University in Corvallis, and one at Reed College in Portland.

site in Washington was the source of most of the plutonium produced in the United

States during and after the Manhattan Project. No high-profile accidents took place there, but the activities at Hanford led to the contamination of the Columbia River as well as a large area of land. Oregonians challenged nuclear power through ballot measures and direct action, attempting to block further expansion of the industry and force the closure of the state’s single nuclear power plant. In this thesis, I will explore the events and decisions that surrounded the closure and decommissioning of three nuclear reactors in the Pacific Northwest: the AGN-201 research reactor at Oregon

State University in Corvallis, Oregon; the N Reactor at the Hanford site in

Washington; and the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant near Rainier, Oregon. Parallels in these stories reveal how the fate of a specific nuclear facility is impacted by events at other nuclear sites and by attitudes towards every aspect of nuclear science and industry. While these three reactors differed greatly in size, complexity, impact, and purpose, the people who had an interest in these facilities – the owners and operators, elected officials, and concerned citizens – believed that each of these facilities was connected to broader nuclear issues with local, regional, and global impact.

It may seem counterintuitive to draw direct comparisons between these three reactors, as Chih Wang did when he noted that OSU’s research reactor was the first in the region to decommission. It took only a few weeks to disassemble the AGN-201 reactor and make its former location usable for other purposes. In contrast, there was no end in sight for the cleanup efforts at Hanford, and the United States had no plan for permanent disposal of the fuel that was being irradiated at the Trojan plant.

However, despite the different missions and impacts of these three sites, they are

connected by their designation as nuclear sites. Gabrielle Hecht coined the term

“nuclearity … to signal how places, objects, or hazards get designated as ‘nuclear.’”3

Hecht used this term in examining the way that Africa has previously been overlooked in many conversations around nuclear issues, despite being the source of much of the world’s uranium supply. The three sites I will explore in this thesis all had nuclearity in some obvious ways, but there was also some hidden nuclearity in each case: conversations and decisions around these sites often depended on attitudes towards entirely different forms of nuclear technology. Even parts of these sites that contained no radioactive material were designated as “nuclear” in many people’s perspective.

Nuclear power followed the development of nuclear weapons in the United

States as the Atomic Energy Commission attempted to promote peaceful uses of nuclear technology. In Washington state, these efforts included a shift in the mission of the Hanford site. In his work on commercial nuclear power in the Pacific

Northwest, Daniel Pope has examined this shift, including the efforts to build multiple power reactors in eastern Washington. This project, which was abandoned after only one reactor was built, was proposed as a way of developing the area’s economy into purposes beyond military industry.4 John M. Findlay and Bruce Hevly have looked at the extent to which local residents and politicians favored the

3Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012, 3-4. 4Daniel Pope, Nuclear Implosions: The Rise and Fall of the Washington Public Power Supply System, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008; Daniel Pope, “Antinuclear Activism in the Pacific Northwest: WPPSS and Its Enemies,” in The Atomic West, ed. Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay, 236- 254, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998.

development of the Hanford site, seeing it as a key part of economic development of the region.5

Less has been written about the role of research reactors in the development of nuclear technology. One notable work on this topic is Abena Dove Osseo-Asare’s

Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence is one notable exception.6 Osseo-Asare looks at the history of Ghana’s nuclear program, in particular the country’s decades-long effort to acquire a research reactor. Ghanaian scientists hoped that a research reactor would give them an entry point into nuclear science that could one day lead them to a nuclear power plant. Before they succeeded in acquiring a research reactor, they focused on developing expertise in other areas of nuclear science, such as radiation protection and nuclear medicine.

In this thesis, I will argue that the people involved in these three nuclear sites

– the owners and operators, the politicians who governed them, and the activists who opposed them – connected these sites to other aspects of nuclear science and technology. Each site’s nuclearity came not only from the activities performed and the materials held at the site, but also from the connections and associations that people drew between that site and other nuclear activities. They saw inherent links between nuclear science research, nuclear weapons, and nuclear power. Significant events or legal changes in one of these areas tended to have an impact on the others.

For this thesis, I have made use of newspaper articles and publicly available

5John M. Findlay and Bruce Hevly, Atomic Frontier Days: Hanford and the American West, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. 6Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

interviews from several oral history projects. For the chapter on OSU’s AGN-201 reactor, extensive research was done from the reactor’s operating records and related correspondence, all of which remains in storage at the OSU Radiation Center.

In the first chapter, I discuss the unsuccessful attempts to relocate Oregon

State University’s AGN-201 research reactor prior to its decommissioning. Staff at the OSU Radiation Center offered the reactor for free to any institution that was able to pay for the costs of relocating it. There were several organizations that made serious efforts to acquire the reactor: the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry

(OMSI) in Portland, Oregon; the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) in Mexico City,

Mexico; and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Each of these organizations was ultimately unable to complete the transfer for very different reasons. OMSI was simply unable to secure the funding they needed. The deal with the IPN collapsed due to disagreements between the United States and Mexican governments over non-proliferation policies. The meltdown at Three Mile Island interrupted the arrangement with Northwestern University, and the ensuing downturn in interest in nuclear energy made it unlikely that any other American university would want OSU’s reactor. Ultimately, the Radiation Center staff decommissioned the reactor without finding a new owner for it. The reactor core was put into indefinite storage in the Radiation Center. The desirability of this reactor was limited not just by the expense of acquiring and operating it, but also by changing attitudes towards nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

In the second chapter, I examine the closure of the N Reactor at the Hanford site in Richland, Washington. This reactor, like the other reactors at Hanford, was

designed to produce plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. Unlike the other reactors, the N Reactor also supplied electricity to nearby residents. Most of the reactors at

Hanford had been permanently shut down by the early 1970s, but utility companies and politicians felt that the dual purpose of the N Reactor justified its continued operation. The Hanford site had a long history of releasing airborne, liquid, and solid radioactive materials into the surrounding environment. The 1986 accident at the

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, caused many Americans to become concerned about the N Reactor, which shared some design features with the

Soviet reactor. Around this time, documentation of Hanford’s operating history had been newly released to the public, revealing some of the site’s significant radioactive contamination. Public officials, including some who generally supported nuclear disarmament, no longer believed that the need for plutonium was great enough to justify the risks of operating the N Reactor, and the facility was shut down permanently in 1987.

In the third chapter, I look at the history of opposition to the Trojan Nuclear

Power Plant near Portland, Oregon. Members of the Trojan Decommissioning

Alliance conducted non-violent protests at the plant with the dual goal of forcing the plant to shut down and bringing greater public attention to the risks of nuclear technology. Activists posed legal challenges to nuclear power through a series of ballot measures that sought to close down the Trojan plant and limit nuclear power development in the state. When the plant eventually closed, anti-nuclear activists celebrated the closure, but they were still concerned about the spent nuclear fuel that

remained on-site in indefinite storage; the lack of a federal facility for storing spent fuel had consistently been one of the activists’ reasons for objecting to nuclear power.

1. Free to a Good Home: Efforts to Relocate an AGN-201 Research Reactor

Introduction

In the 1970s, staff at Oregon State University’s Radiation Center gained first- hand experience with one of the major challenges of nuclear technology. Disposing of a reactor that is no longer needed would prove to be as challenging and time- consuming as the process of acquiring it in the first place. At this point in time, there were two operating nuclear research reactors at the Radiation Center. One was a small reactor made by Aerojet General Nucleonics, the AGN-201, which produced a thermal power level of 0.1 watts. It had been operating since 1958. The other was a newer and larger reactor, the TRIGA Mark II (“Training, Research, Isotopes, General

Atomics”) that had started up in 1967 and operated at 1 megawatt. The growing nuclear engineering department needed the space occupied by the AGN-201 for other projects. The larger, higher-powered TRIGA reactor was more reliable and could perform the experiments and training for which the AGN-201 had previously been used.7 Thus, by 1973, the Radiation Center staff found themselves in an unusual position: they were trying to find an organization that wanted to acquire a second- hand nuclear reactor.8

Over the following decade, Oregon State University offered the AGN-201 reactor to any organization that could complete all regulatory requirements for

7Chih Wang to Milosh Popovich, 4 December 1978, Radiation Center Records, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR (hereafter cited as Radiation Center Records). 8Chih Wang to Bobby E. Leonard, 28 August 1973, Radiation Center Records.

possessing it and pay for the costs of relocating it. At first, this project seemed achievable. Numerous other institutions were interested in the reactor. The reactor had also been moved once before: it had spent its first ten years in another building on

OSU’s campus before the Radiation Center was built.9 However, the process of relocating the reactor was complicated by some of the same factors that made the reactor desirable in the first place. Research reactors had a strategic significance that went beyond their direct physical impact. Acquisition of a research reactor was often a major step in establishing what Gabrielle Hecht calls the nuclearity of a site, institution, or nation.10 The history of OSU’s two reactors reflects this significance.

The university had purchased the AGN-201 reactor with part of a $250,000 grant from the Atomic Energy Commission that was intended “to broaden the scope of the training programs in nuclear engineering and nuclear science.”11 Part of the funding for the TRIGA reactor came from a grant from the State Emergency Board. When

Professor Chih Wang and University President James H. Jensen requested that funding from the state legislature, Jensen brought up a recent Soviet nuclear weapon test as justification for investing in nuclear science.12 Sean F. Johnston has examined the early development of nuclear engineering as an academic field, arguing that political context, military connections, and industry all had an influence on the

9“ The Chronological Development of the Radiation Center and Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering,” 1-2. Courtesy Oregon State University Memorabilia Collection, ca. 1860-present, Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Oregon State University Libraries, Series 1, Radiation Center - History, 1967, Box 135.3. 10Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012). 11“Chronological Development of the Radiation Center,” 2. 12For details of this event, see Linda Richards, “Rocks and Reactors: An Atomic Interpretation of Human Rights, 1941-1979,” (PhD diss., Oregon State University, 2014), 211-214.

discipline.13 These influences were certainly apparent within OSU’s nuclear engineering department throughout the time period that I will explore in this chapter.

In her 2014 doctoral dissertation on human rights in the atomic era, Linda Richards discussed the history of nuclear engineering at OSU, including the AGN-201 reactor.14 Richards explores the ways that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

(AEC) shaped the beginnings of the nuclear engineering program at OSU by supporting the projects that would in turn support the AEC’s goals. In discussing the

AGN-201, Richards focuses primarily on legislative, technical, and safety-related challenges in the reactor’s early days. I hope to continue this story by exploring how the final operating years and eventual decommissioning of the AGN-201 reactor were impacted by broader trends in nuclear science and engineering.

A few authors have examined the importance of research reactors in nuclear programs outside of the United States. Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez-Díaz have looked at how Mexico established its nuclearity through exclusively non-military uses of nuclear technology.15 Mexico’s TRIGA research reactor was central to the country’s nuclear science program, which focused on radiochemistry, nuclear physics, and isotope production rather than weapons production. As I will demonstrate later in this chapter, a disagreement with the United States over non-

13Sean F. Johnston, “Implanting a Discipline: The Academic Trajectory of Nuclear Engineering in the USA and UK,” Minerva 47 (2009): 51-73. 14Richards, “Rocks and Reactors,” 184-228. 15Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez-Díaz, “Peaceful Atoms in Mexico,” in Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America, ed. Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014), 287-303; Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez-Díaz, “ ‘We Are Not a Rich Country to Waste Our Resources on Expensive Toys’: Mexico’s Version of Atoms for Peace,” History and Technology 31, no. 3 (2015): 243-258.

proliferation policy led the Mexican government to cancel plans to transfer OSU’s

AGN-201 to a university in Mexico City. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare has written a detailed account of Ghana’s decades-long effort to acquire a research reactor.16

Scientists at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission hoped that a research reactor would provide a gateway into the world of nuclear science and perhaps someday the development of nuclear power. Osseo-Asare demonstrates that international developments in the status of nuclear technology impacted the chances of success of

Ghana’s nuclear program.

In this chapter, I will argue that the efforts to transfer the AGN-201 reactor were made difficult by the same factors that made the reactor desirable. The Oregon

Museum of Science and Industry wanted to acquire the reactor and use it as an educational tool for the public, but the Atomic Energy Commission’s promotion of peaceful uses of atomic energy went hand in hand with a regulatory burden that was beyond the museum’s financial means. An effort to transfer the AGN-201 to a

Mexican university was unsuccessful because of a conflict in the two countries’ views on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act. The partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island

Nuclear Generating Station in 1979 disrupted an attempt to transfer the reactor to

Northwestern University, which scaled back its nuclear engineering program in anticipation of a loss of interest in nuclear energy. In the end, OSU staff networked with groups at other research reactors and related businesses in order to decommission their own facility and assist with other decommissioning efforts.

16Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Tracing the story of the AGN-201’s final years provides a case study of how the actual and prospective owners of a small research reactor attempted to navigate the larger forces that influenced the development of nuclear science and technology.

Local Interest: Negotiations with Oregon Museum of Science and Industry

In the mid-1970s, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in

Portland was organizing a new “Energy Wing” with exhibits about various power sources.17 In 1974, when they learned that OSU’s AGN-201 reactor was available,

OMSI staff thought that a working reactor would be a valuable addition to their nuclear energy exhibit.18 OMSI’s director, Loren D. McKinley, started communicating with OSU’s Radiation Center Director, Chih Wang, to negotiate a transfer of the reactor to the museum.19

The possible transfer of the AGN-201 to OMSI drew some interest from organizations outside of Oregon. Dixy Lee Ray, then Chairman of the Atomic Energy

Commission (AEC), learned about the project and was excited at the prospect of the museum owning a working reactor.20 An operating nuclear at a museum would

17Chih Wang to Loren D. McKinley, 20 January 1975, Radiation Center Records. 18Dixy Lee Ray to Loren D. McKinley, 13 September 1974, Radiation Center Records; George E. Carter to Norman E. Fuller, 19 September 1974, Radiation Center Records. 19Loren D. McKinley to Chih Wang, George Carter, and Duke Wieden, 20 September 1974, Radiation Center Records. 20Ray was a native of the Pacific Northwest. A decade before this, she had been working as the director of another museum, the Pacific Science Center. Perhaps this personal connection led her to take an interest in OMSI’s ambitious plan. Cristine Russell, “Profile: Dixy Lee Ray,” BioScience 24, no. 9 (September 1974): 490. For a detailed look at the life of Dixy Lee Ray, including her enthusiasm for public science education, see Erik Ellis, “Dixy Lee Ray, Marine Biology, and the Public Understanding of Science in the United States (1930-1970),” (PhD diss., Oregon State University, 2005).

further the AEC’s goal of educating the public about peaceful uses of atomic energy.

Ray offered the assistance of some of her staff at the AEC to facilitate the museum’s efforts.21 The American Nuclear Society (ANS), a professional organization for the nuclear energy industry, assembled an advisory committee to help OMSI with technical and regulatory challenges that they might encounter.22 The advisory committee was chaired by John E. Grund of the Portland General Electric Company

(PGE), a local utility company with a long history of supporting the museum.23 PGE owned the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, which was under construction at the time, which gave them an interest in promoting nuclear energy to the public.

OSU offered the reactor to OMSI free of charge, but the museum would need to pay for the cost of removing the reactor from the building. OMSI would also be responsible for the expense of transporting the reactor to the museum, as well as licensing and operating costs once the reactor was in OMSI’s possession. Wang informed McKinley that removing the reactor from the Radiation Center would cost about $30,000 for construction, labor, and transportation.24 The reactor structure was six and a half feet in diameter, nine feet tall, and at least 22,000 pounds, and it would be necessary to remove and later replace one of the building’s walls in order to remove the AGN-201.25

21Dixy Lee Ray to Loren D. McKinley, 13 September 1974, Radiation Center Records; George E. Carter to Norman E. Fuller, 19 September 1974, Radiation Center Records. 22Norman E. Fuller to George E. Carter, 23 September 1974, Radiation Center Records. 23 Rusty Whitney to John E. Grund, 21 November 1974, Radiation Center Records. 24Chih Wang to Loren D. McKinley, 16 November 1974, Radiation Center Records. 25T. V. Anderson, J. C. Ringle, and A. G. Johnson, “Detailed Disassembly Procedures for the Oregon State University AGN-201 Reactor,” Radiation Center Records.

There would be other significant expenses for OMSI’s initial acquisition of the reactor and for the duration of its time at the museum. In an internal memo, OMSI employee Rusty Whitney provided information about cost estimates, which included

$5000 in licensing fees due to the AEC and $25,000 to $60,000 to build the addition onto the museum where the reactor would be housed.26 Whitney predicted that staffing the reactor would require one full-time employee, paid $12,000 to $16,000 a year, and a part-time employee, paid $3000 to $5000 a year for ten to twenty working hours per week. The full-time employee would operate the reactor and perform demonstrations for the public. The part-time technician would mostly be needed for electronics repairs. Whitney described the AGN-201’s electronic systems as “vacuum tube technology from the early fifties that breaks down every few hours.”27 (The reactor was prone to automatic shutdowns and had once been described as “so safe it hardly ran.”28) Whitney’s judgment about the reactor’s technical challenges may have come from conversations with Chih Wang and other OSU staff; Whitney notes that the reactor’s current users thought that the staffing needs of the reactor may be greater than the museum was prepared for. OMSI did have some potential assistance for their staffing needs: PGE and Pacific Power and Light Company (PP&L) offered to have an employee on call at all times to provide assistance to OMSI, which would allow the museum to avoid the usual expense of hiring a legally-mandated resident expert.

26Rusty Whitney to Loren D. McKinley, 16 October 1974, Radiation Center Records. 27Whitney to McKinley, 16 October 1974, Radiation Center Records. 28“Radiation Center History: 40th Anniversary: Stories from Chih Wang” 1, Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Safety Department, OSU. Quoted in Richards, “Rocks and Reactors,” 202.

Still, it is clear that owning the reactor would present the museum with significant up- front and ongoing expenses.

Ultimately, the expense of acquiring and maintaining the reactor was out of reach for OMSI at the time, and the potential transfer deal fell through.29 Early in

1975, McKinley informed Wang that the museum’s fundraising efforts for the previous year had come up short, and OMSI would not be able to support the reactor’s installation and operating costs. McKinley explained that the current economic recession had caused the museum to lose several of its potential donors.30

McKinley still hoped that the museum could showcase nuclear energy in its new

Energy Wing with the support of OSU’s Radiation Center, but OMSI would not have an operating reactor on-site.

International Efforts: Negotiations with the Instituto Politécnico Nacional

The Instituto Politécnico Nacional (National Polytechnic Institute, abbreviated

IPN) of Mexico started looking into the prospect of acquiring a second-hand research reactor from the United States in 1973. By this point, several universities had reactors that they were no longer using, and an interested party had some options in terms of operating power, characteristics, and ease of installation and use. Starting in August

1973, two members of the IPN’s staff, Vice-Chancellor Manuel Munoz Baget and

Professor Francisco Munguia, communicated with Bobby E. Leonard of the Institute

29Loren D. McKinley to Chih Wang, 8 January 1975, Radiation Center Records; John E. Grund to Loren D. McKinley, 9 January 1975, Radiation Center Records. 30Loren D. McKinley to Chih Wang, 23 January 1975, Radiation Center Records.

for Resource Management about the possibilities. At the time, this included a 10 watt

Atomics International Model L-77 reactor from the University of Wyoming, a 10 kilowatt reactor from Mississippi State University, and OSU’s 0.1 watt AGN-201 reactor.31 While the IPN staff were considering these choices, Leonard informed them that an unused 250 kilowatt TRIGA reactor was also available. An American university was under contract to buy the TRIGA from Gulf General Atomics (GGA) but no longer wanted to install or use it. The university wanted to sell off the reactor to defray the costs of the contract.32 (Leonard did not specify which university this was, but a later communication between Chih Wang and AEC employee Richard G.

Muranaka indicates that it may have been Stanford University.)33 The overall picture painted by these communications shows a dynamic network of institutions that owned and operated these reactors. Research reactors were complex and costly enough that their owners were reluctant to dispose of them when the original institutions no longer needed them, which resulted in a variety of options for a potential second-hand customer.

The AGN-201 had the physical characteristics that the IPN’s nuclear engineering staff was seeking, and the prospect of making a deal with OSU directly was also appealing.34 Professor Francisco Munguia visited OSU and saw the reactor

31Bobby E. Leonard to Manuel Munor Vazet [sic], 31 August 1973, Radiation Center Records; Bobby E. Leonard to Francisco Munguia, 26 September 1973, Radiation Center Records. The Reactor at Mississippi State University (MSU) had originally been used at North Carolina State University. In 1967, it was disassembled and transferred to MSU, but the latter university was unable to raise the funds to rebuild it and was instead keeping it in storage. 32Bobby E. Leonard to Francisco Munguia, 28 September 1973, Radiation Center Records. 33Richard G. Muranaka to Chih Wang, 14 March 1974, Radiation Center Records. 34Francisco Munguia to Chih Wang, 12 December 1973, Radiation Center Records.

in late November 1973.35 Munguia and his colleagues decided to try to acquire the reactor after this visit. The relatively small size and low operating power made the it an appealing choice. Higher-powered reactors, especially ones that had already been used for years, would contain more radioactive material, which would make the process of transporting a reactor more dangerous, complicated, and costly. The IPN’s choice to work directly with OSU rather than with Bobby Leonard at the Institute for

Resource Management was partly due to a preference to avoid a “turn-key” arrangement, a contract under which the IRM would be responsible for all the work of transporting and assembling the selected reactor.36

While this arrangement would be convenient for the IPN, Vice-Chancellor

Muñoz Baget expressed some hesitance about the arrangement.37 A turn-key contract would mean their staff would not get the potentially valuable experience of setting up the reactor themselves. A direct deal with OSU would leave the IPN staff with the responsibility of assembling the reactor, and the AGN-201’s simple design and small size made this an achievable project. The terms of the deal were similar to what was offered to the museum that year: OSU would not ask for any money for the reactor itself, but the IPN would be responsible for the expenses of removing it from the building and all costs after that point.38 The IPN had already allocated enough funding to acquire a reactor.39 Thus, on November 15th, 1974, almost a year after

35Supervisor’s Log Book Vol. 6, 205, Radiation Center Records. 36Bobby E. Leonard to Manuel Muñoz Baget, 11 November 1973, Radiation Center Records. 37Manuel Muñoz Baget to Bobby E. Leonard, 16 October 1973, Radiation Center Records. 38Chih Wang to Francisco Munguia, 20 March 1974, Radiation Center Records. 39Manuel Muñoz Baget to Bobby E. Leonard, 16 October 1973, Radiation Center Records.

Munguia’s visit to OSU, the IPN’s Director General, Jose Gerstl Valenzuela, submitted an official request to OSU president Robert W. MacVicar asking for the transfer of the AGN-201 reactor.40

Mexico had already established itself as a nuclear country through possession of a research reactor and other technology, though its plans for that technology differed significantly from those of the United States.41 A TRIGA Mark III reactor

(similar to OSU’s TRIGA Mark II) had been operating at Mexico’s National Institute for Nuclear Research since 1968.42 The IPN also had a subcritical assembly that was used for training students.43 The AGN-201 reactor would be a useful addition to the

IPN’s existing facilities. Mexico’s nuclear scientists used their reactors to study radiochemistry and nuclear physics, and they hoped to construct power reactors as well.44 These projects were similar to the original goals of OSU’s nuclear science program.45 However, unlike the United States, Mexico never had any intentions of developing nuclear weapons. The Mexican nuclear program was strictly civilian- controlled, not a military program, and Mexico was an early leader in non- proliferation policy within Latin America and beyond.46

There was one complexity to an international reactor export that would not have been a factor in a domestic transfer: the ownership of the AGN-201’s enriched

40Jose Gerstl Valenzuela to Robert W. MacVicar, 15 November 1974, Radiation Center Records. 41Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “Peaceful Atoms in Mexico,” 287-303. 42International Atomic Energy Agency, “Research Reactors in Latin America and the Caribbean,” https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/research-reactors-latin-america-caribbean.pdf, 29-30. 43Ibid., 27-28. 44Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “‘We Are Not a Rich Country,’” 243-258. 45Chronological Development of the Radiation Center,” 1-2. 46Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “‘We Are Not a Rich Country,’” 244.

uranium fuel. OSU owned the reactor, but the fuel plates belonged to the AEC. Thus,

OSU could not transfer the fuel to another organization without the AEC’s approval, and an international agreement would require the participation of non-U.S. regulatory agencies. Early in 1974, Chih Wang reached out to Richard Muranaka of the AEC to figure out what this process would require.47 Muranaka explained that at that time, the

United States and Mexico did not have an agreement in place that would allow a direct transfer of fuel between the two governments. Instead, the AEC would need to transfer the fuel to the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA would then form a separate arrangement with the government of Mexico to transfer the fuel to the IPN.48 At this point, Muranaka thought that the process would be relatively straightforward: each agency would complete the necessary paperwork, and the fuel could be shipped directly from OSU to Mexico. He also did not anticipate any objections on the part of the AEC, since the United States had a small surplus of available research reactors at the time.

OSU and the IPN were mutually enthusiastic about the plan to transfer the

AGN-201, but the process would not be quick. In January 1975, two months after

Valenzuela submitted his formal request to MacVicar, OMSI withdrew their request due to lack of funding, and OSU officially agreed to transfer the AGN-201 to Mexico, pending approval from all regulators.49 The Radiation Center staff hoped to have the reactor removed by that fall, but the IPN staff found that the necessary preparations

47Chih Wang to Richard Muranaka, 8 February 1974, Radiation Center Records. 48Richard G. Muranaka to Chih Wang, 14 March 1974, Radiation Center Records. 49Chih Wang to Francisco Munguia, 20 January 1975, Radiation Center Records.

took longer than they had anticipated.50 The reactor was permanently shut down in

December 1974, and OSU began to pursue the process of downgrading the reactor’s license to a status that allowed it to “possess but not operate” the AGN-201.51 This step would be a precursor to final decommissioning. While waiting for a response from the IPN, Chih Wang reached out to Bobby E. Leonard of the Institute for

Resource Management to let him know that, if the deal with Mexico did not go through, he would be looking for other potential recipients.52 Then in March 1976, over a year after the IPN transfer agreement had been made, Jose Gerstl Valenzuela contacted Chih Wang to update him on the progress.53 Valenzuela reported that the

IPN staff had started making arrangements through their national regulator, the

Instituto Nacional de Energia Nuclear (INEN). The INEN in turn had reached out to the IAEA to seek approval for the reactor transfer. Wang put the decommissioning process on hold and started making plans for the physical transfer of the reactor.54

The transfer arrangements needed to be approved by the IAEA’s Board of Governors, which met every three months. On multiple occasions over the next year, a delay in paperwork submittal from either the United States or Mexico made it impossible for the Board of Governors to make a decision on the matter of the AGN-201, resulting

50Chih Wang to Jose Gerstl Valenzuela, 21 November, 1975, Radiation Center Records. 51Chih Wang to Dennis L. Ziemann, 18 September 1975, Radiation Center Records; Chih Wang to Dennis L. Ziemann, 19 December 1975, Radiation Center Records. 52Chih Wang to Bobby E. Leonard, 3 December 1975, Radiation Center Records. 53Jose Gerstl Valenzuela to Chih Wang, 19 March 1976, Radiation Center Records. 54Chih Wang to Dennis L. Ziemann, 22 March 1976, Radiation Center Records; Chih Wang to Manuel Muñoz, 23 March 1976.

in at minimum another three-month delay each time.55 Thus, by the end of 1977, there were still no arrangements in place for transferring the reactor.

Before these delays could be resolved, a regulatory change occurred that complicated the arrangements between OSU and the IPN. In March 1978, the United

States passed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act.56 This law implemented policies for the enforcement of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which had gone into effect in 1970.57 Under the NPT, signatories that already possessed nuclear weapons

(“nuclear-weapon States”) agreed not to give them to countries that did not already have them (“non-nuclear-weapon States”), nor would they help those countries develop nuclear weapons technology. The non-nuclear-weapon States agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons technology on their own, but the treaty encouraged the international sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.58 The Nuclear

Non-Proliferation Act included rules for the United States to follow in order to make sure that any nuclear technology it exported was being used for peaceful purposes, in accordance with the treaty. The passage of this law meant that the transfer of the

AGN-201 would involve more interference from the U.S. government than what was originally anticipated.

55Fernando Alba Andrade to Chih Wang, 23 June 1976, Radiation Center Records; Carlos Velez Ocon to Chih Wang, 4 November 1976, Radiation Center Records; Dalmau Costa to Chih Wang, 7 July 1977, Radiation Center Records. 56Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978, 22 U.S.C. 3201 (1978). For discussion of the law’s international reception, see Shane J. Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010): 290-291. 57United Nations, “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),” https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/, accessed May 17, 2021. 58Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 1970.

Mexico had consistently demonstrated a commitment to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation since these issues became part of the international conversation.

In 1967, with its leadership in the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in

Latin America, or the “Tlatelolco Treaty,” Mexico had helped to create a nuclear weapons free zone, making Latin America the first populated region committed to being free of nuclear weapons.59 Mexico was among the first countries to sign and ratify the NPT.60 Margarete K. Luddemann has argued that Mexico resented any perceived overreach by the world’s nuclear super-powers. The NPT was meant to allow its signatories to develop peaceful nuclear technology by encouraging the nuclear weapons states to share technology with other countries. Unilateral restrictions by one of those superpowers went against Mexico’s beliefs about what the

NPT should mean.61 In April 1978, Mexico officially terminated the agreement to acquire OSU’s AGN-201 reactor. Chih Wang heard about this decision via a phone call with the U.S. Department of Energy, and a brief letter confirming the decision did not provide any detailed explanation of the Mexican government’s stated reasons.62 However, in several later communications with other individuals at OSU,

Wang mentions that the deal with the IPN didn’t go through because of “President

Carter’s non-proliferation policy” or “due to our nonproliferation clause.”63 At least

59Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “‘We Are Not a Rich Country,’” 251-252. 60José Angel Gurría, “Mexico’s Position on the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Voices of Mexico no. 32 (July - September 1995): 55. 61Margarete K. Luddemann, “Nuclear Power in Latin America: An Overview of Its Present Status,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 25, no. 3 (August 1983): 405-406. 62Robert N. Slawson to Chih Wang, 19 April 1978, Radiation Center Records. 63Chih Wang to Everett Lillig, 3 July 1978, Radiation Center Records; Chih Wang to Clifford Smith, 16 April 1980, Radiation Center Records.

in Chih Wang’s understanding, the requirements of the NNPA, signed by Carter in

March 1978, were the reason that the AGN-201 was never transferred to the IPN.

Last Transfer Attempts and Final Decommissioning

With no chance remaining for completing the deal with the IPN, Radiation

Center staff began looking again for opportunities to transfer the AGN-201 reactor.

By this point, the reactor had not been used for three and a half years, and the growing nuclear engineering department had plans for new projects that required the space that the reactor still occupied.64 Documents from this time period make it clear that Radiation Center staff was more than ready to be done dealing with the reactor.

In a letter to the director of OSU’s Physical Plant about another potential recipient of the reactor, Chih Wang stated that he and Vice President Milosh Popovich were “very pleased that now we have the opportunity to get rid of this piece of equipment.”65 The small reactor, originally a highly desirable example of nuclear technology, had burdened its operators with frequent automatic shutdowns and component failures since its installation. Since its final shutdown in 1973, it was simply taking up space.

The OSU staff were apparently not the only ones who felt this way about their

AGN-201. In September 1978, Paul Thiess, who ran the AGN-201 reactor at Catholic

University, contacted Wang to invite him to participate in a user’s group for owners of AGN-201 and AGN-211 reactors.66 Thiess stated that one of the purposes of the

64Chih Wang to Milosh Popovich, 4 December 1978, Radiation Center Records. 65Chih Wang to Everett Lillig, 3 July 1978, Radiation Center Records. 66Paul E. Thiess to Chih Wang, 21 September 1978, Radiation Center Records.

group would be “[t]o seek new homes for surplused 201/211’s within the United

States and help those schools, which eventually decide to accept the burden of being a new owner, in their licensing and other problems.” Despite this rather bleak description of the challenges that AGN reactor owners faced, Thiess made it clear that he still saw these reactors as valuable training tools that were worth preserving.

By this point, Radiation Center staff had identified another possible home for their AGN-201: Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. As always, the reactor would be free of charge, and Northwestern would only need to pay for removal and transportation costs. In a letter to Mark Davis, an engineering professor at

Northwestern, OSU professor John Ringle mentioned that the AGN-201 reactor “has been regularly maintained through the years and is in very good condition.”67 This is a much more optimistic assessment than the OMSI memo that described the reactor’s electronics needing repairs every few hours.68 Still, the prospect of a low-cost research reactor would have been appealing to a small nuclear engineering department with limited hands-on facilities.

The transfer to Northwestern would be simpler than the deal with the IPN, since the U.S. government could maintain ownership of the fuel. By this point, the

AEC had been replaced briefly by the Energy Research and Development

Administration (ERDA), which was then split into the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The DOE now owned the AGN-201

67John C. Ringle to Mark C. Davis, 14 July 1978, Radiation Center Records. 68Rusty Whitney to Loren D. McKinley, 16 October 1974, Radiation Center Records.

fuel.69 In December 1978, OSU notified the NRC of the staff’s plans to dismantle the reactor. At this point, the reactor staff had decided to go ahead with decommissioning whether or not Northwestern University was able to take the reactor.70 Mark Davis submitted Northwestern’s license application to the NRC in January 1979.71 Two months later, the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power reactor caused a profoundly negative shift in prevailing attitudes towards nuclear energy and interrupted Northwestern’s plan to acquire a reactor. A year later, Chih Wang told a colleague that Northwestern had merged their nuclear engineering department with mechanical engineering, and the University’s plans of acquiring a reactor were on hold indefinitely.72 Wang told OSU’s Vice President Clifford Smith that he thought it unlikely that they could find another organization interested in taking the reactor at this point, and so the university went ahead with permanently decommissioning the reactor.73

Radiation Center staff had developed a “Dismantling and Disposal Plan” that described the general procedures and safety concerns of decommissioning a reactor.74

This plan covered many of the same issues that would be relevant to power reactor decommissioning, although on a much smaller scale. One concern in any major reactor maintenance is an accidental criticality, when an assembly of nuclear material

69Chih Wang to Lawrence K. Akers, 18 August 1978, Radiation Center Records. 70Chih Wang and Milosh Popovich to Robert W. Reid, 18 December 1978, Radiation Center Records. 71Mark C. Davis to Steve Ramos, 26 January 1979, Radiation Center Records. 72Chih Wang to Everett Lillig, 2 April 1980, Radiation Center Records. 73Chih Wang to Clifford Smith, 16 April 1980, Radiation Center Records. 74T. V. Anderson, J. C. Ringle, and A. G. Johnson, “Dismantling and Disposal Plan Oregon State University AGN-201 Reactor,” December 1978.

undergoes an unintended fission chain reaction. For the AGN-201 reactor, this was prevented by completely removing the reactor’s control rods, which were composed of additional fuel that allowed the reactor to go critical as the rods were inserted. For extra safety during decommissioning, the reactor staff added cadmium, a neutron- absorbing substance or “poison,” to the empty control rod holes.75 Other safety concerns included the possibility of radioactive contamination or exposure to radioactive materials. Staff used radiation-detecting meters to find radioactivity during the process and to assess the dose that they received.76

Staff had completed some parts of the disposal plan (including control rod removal) in early 1979, when the transfer to Northwestern still seemed like a possibility. However, the majority of the dismantling process took place in a ten-day time period, from June 10th to June 19th, 1980.77 The Radiation Center staff had spent seven years trying to find a new home for the AGN-201, but the physical task of taking the reactor apart took only a week and a half. The Nuclear Regulatory

Commission added the AGN-201 reactor’s fuel to the license for the remaining

TRIGA reactor. 78 This change allowed OSU to keep the 250-pound “core can” that held the AGN-201 fuel plates rather than arranging for it to be shipped elsewhere.79

In 1988, the Radiation Center shipped twelve crates of spare reactor parts to Idaho

75Ibid., 3. 76Ibid., 4-5. 77T. V. Anderson, J. C. Ringle, and A. G. Johnson, “Detailed Disassembly Procedures for the Oregon State University AGN-201 Reactor” (annotated copy), December 1978, Radiation Center Records. 78Oregon State University Docket No. 50-243 Amendment to Facility Operating License: Amendment No. 6, 27 August 1981. 79At the time of the completion of this thesis (June 2021), the AGN-201 fuel remains in a barrel in the TRIGA reactor room with no plans for transfer or disposal.

State University, which still used an AGN-201 reactor.80 An internal OSU memo about this shipment included this remark from Radiation Center Director Arthur

Johnson: “RUSH -- University of Utah is also offering their AGN to them. Let’s get ours out of here!”81 It seems that, nearly a decade after decommissioning, the AGN-

201 was still a burden on the Radiation Center.

The reactor staff may have been happy to be rid of the AGN-201, but they also acknowledged the significance of their accomplishment and did what they could to support other facilities going through similar processes. On July 2, 1980, Chih

Wang informed Vice President Smith that the reactor was officially decommissioned, and that this was “the decommissioning of the first nuclear reactor in the state and, in fact, in the entire Pacific Northwest, inasmuch as the decommissioning task for production reactors at the Richland site has not been completed.”82 Wang was referencing the military-run plutonium production reactors at Hanford, Washington.

Within the nuclear industry, people were starting to acknowledge the massive extent of Hanford’s radioactive contamination, but it was not known to the general public at this point.83

As many research and power reactors approached either the end of their intended lifetime or usefulness, the challenge of decommissioning drew a lot of

80Arthur G. Johnson to Albert Wilson, 14 November 1988, Radiation Center Records; Albert E. Wilson to Arthur G. Johnson, 1 December 1988, Radiation Center Records. 81Arthur G. Johnson to T. V. Anderson and J. F. Higginbotham, 5 December 1988, Radiation Center Records. 82 Chih Wang to Clifford Smith, 2 July 1980, Radiation Center Records. 83Glenn Zorpette, “Hanford’s Nuclear Wasteland,” Scientific American 274, no. 5 (May 1996): 88-97.

attention within the industry.84 As I will discuss in a later chapter, this period overlapped with an era of increasing public concern about the hazards of radiation and the problem of nuclear waste disposal.85 Much of the focus was on the far more complicated task of disposing of power reactors and the waste associated with them, but the OSU Radiation Center staff fielded inquiries from several other decommissioning research facilities over the following years. When California State

Polytechnic College decommissioned their AGN reactor in 1982, Wang offered the assistance of former AGN operator and current TRIGA supervisor Terry Anderson, and he offered suggestions for the physical disassembly and feedback on the college’s decommissioning plan.86 Arthur Johnson sent OSU’s documentation to the University of Utah to aid in their decommissioning as well.87 In 1987, the University of Geneva offered their AGN-201 to OSU, not realizing that OSU had already decommissioned its own reactor.88 Johnson declined this offer but sent a copy of OSU’s decommissioning report to Geneva.

84Colin Norman, “A Long-Term Problem for the Nuclear Industry,” Science, New Series 215, No. 4531 (Jan. 22, 1982): 376-379. 85For discussions of the debate over nuclear waste, see Hugh Gusterson, “How Not to Construct a Radioactive Waste Incinerator,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 25, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 332-351; Louise Wells Bedsworth, Micah D. Lowenthal, and William E. Kastenberg, “Uncertainty and Regulation: The Rhetoric of Risk in the California Low-Level Radioactive Waste Debate,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 29, no. 3, Special Issue: Reconstructing Order through Rhetorics of Risk (Summer 2004): 406-427. 86Chih Wang to R. Adamson, 4 November 1981, Radiation Center Records. 87Arthur G. Johnson to Gary Sandquist, 1 October 1987, Radiation Center Records. 88E. Heer to Arthur G. Johnson, 21 December 1987, Radiation Center Records.

Conclusion

Between 1973 and 1980, the staff of OSU’s Radiation Center found that arranging for a new home for a used research reactor was a much more time- consuming venture than they had expected, and ultimately an unsuccessful one. They managed to find a facility that took some of the spare parts off their hands, but they were never able to find an institution that was willing and able to take on the technical and bureaucratic challenges of acquiring the AGN-201. The director and board of the

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry were quite interested in the reactor and had the support of the American Nuclear Society, local utility companies, and even the

AEC chair, but the museum was unable to secure adequate funding for the construction, licensing, and staffing that the reactor would require. The Instituto

Politécnico Nacional of Mexico City made a sustained effort to acquire the reactor, but a disagreement over nuclear non-proliferation policies prevented the U.S. and

Mexican governments from reaching a satisfactory deal. The accident at Three Mile

Island interrupted a deal with Northwestern University, the last organization to seriously pursue acquiring the AGN-201, and made it unlikely that any other

American university would try to acquire it.

Ultimately, the Radiation Center staff chose to decommission the reactor without finding a new home for it. The Radiation Center was left with some crates of spare parts, a barrel of enriched uranium to store indefinitely, and a lot of valuable experience to pass on to the staff of other decommissioning research reactors. The

AGN-201 reactor was desirable as an entry-level piece of nuclear technology, but the

same qualities that made it desirable – its connections to nuclear energy and wider uses of nuclear science – ultimately disrupted all efforts to relocate it.

The AGN-201 reactor itself was small and inconspicuous, but the scientists and engineers who worked with it and who decided how to dispose of it believed it was significant for hands-on training and within broader conversations about nuclear technology. By going through the full decommissioning process, the Radiation Center staff gained expertise that they willingly shared with other institutions that owned research reactors. Moreover, the decommissioning of the AGN-201 took place during a pivotal time period for the nuclear industry. Throughout the 1970s, as I will discuss in the next chapter, officials in Washington state struggled to decide what to do with the plutonium production reactors that were still operating at the Hanford site, as well as the ones that were awaiting disposal. During this same time period, the state of

Oregon saw the startup of its first and only nuclear power reactor, which met with repeated legal challenges and public protests, as I will discuss in Chapter 3.

2. Blowing in the Wind: Hanford’s Contamination, the Chernobyl Disaster, and the Closure of the N Reactor

Introduction

In a 1949 experiment, workers at a plutonium production site in Hanford,

Washington, deliberately released thousands of curies of radioactive iodine into the air. In 1986, an explosion at a Soviet reactor near Pripyat released radioactive contamination that could be detected for hundreds of miles. These two events, one near the beginning of the United States’ arms race with the Soviet Union and one near its end, bookend the history of plutonium production at the Hanford site. The 1949 event would soon be eclipsed by even greater releases that occurred at Hanford on a routine basis. At the other end of the site’s history, the Chernobyl accident would provide the final reason to end the Hanford site’s plutonium production program.

When the Chernobyl disaster occurred, only a single plutonium production reactor was still operating at Hanford. The N Reactor was the last plutonium production reactor built at the site and the only one that served a dual purpose: in addition to making plutonium, the N Reactor also supplied electrical power to nearby residents. From its inception, the reactor was meant to bridge the gap between military and peaceful uses of atomic energy. Utility companies and government officials had grand plans for significant development of nuclear energy in Oregon and

Washington. By 1986, these plans were fizzling. As I will discuss in the next chapter,

Oregon had only one nuclear power reactor, which was mired in controversy and financial setbacks. Washington’s plans for nuclear development had yielded only one additional power reactor.

In this chapter, I will examine the factors that led directly to the closure of the

N Reactor. At this point in time, the anticipated growth of nuclear energy was stagnating. In Washington state, the Washington Public Power Supply System had hoped to build five nuclear power plants, but the project defaulted in 1983 after only a single plant had been built. Daniel Pope has examined the financial downfall of the overly ambitious project, as well as the impacts of anti-nuclear activism on the project.89 Public concern over radioactive contamination had increased significantly in recent years, in great contrast to the secretive early days of the Hanford site.

Michele Stenehjem Gerber has explained how information revealed in the 1980s under the Freedom of Information Act allowed real public scrutiny of the Hanford site for the first time; her book On the Home Front, a comprehensive history of

Hanford, made extensive use of these sources.90 Other writers have looked at how the

Hanford site was viewed by those who worked there. In her book Plutopia, Kate

Brown argues that employees at Hanford (and at comparable plutonium production sites in the Soviet Union) enjoyed economic prosperity that helped them tolerate the risky conditions and secrecy at their workplaces.91 John M. Findlay and Bruce Hevly have examined the politics of how the Hanford site was chosen, developed, and

89Daniel Pope, Nuclear Implosions: The Rise and Fall of the Washington Public Power Supply System, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008; Daniel Pope, “Antinuclear Activism in the Pacific Northwest: WPPSS and Its Enemies,” in The Atomic West, ed. Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay, 236- 254, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. 90Michele A. Stenehjem, “Pathways of Radioactive Contamination: Beginning the History, Public Enquiry, and Policy Study of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation,” Environmental Review 13, no. ¾, 1989 Conference Papers, Part One (Autumn - Winter 1989): 94-112; Michele Stenehjem Gerber, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. 91Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, New York: University of Oxford Press, 2013.

expanded. They conclude that local residents and politicians actively encouraged the original development of the Hanford site, hoping that it would bring economic growth to their region.92 Economic benefit was one of the primary arguments for the original construction of the N Reactor and for its continued operation, but by 1986, this reason was not enough to keep it operating.

In this chapter, I will argue that the decision to shut down the N Reactor was made not because of the facility’s actual operating history, but because the legislators who controlled its budget felt that the risks that had always existed could no longer be justified as the demand for plutonium decreased. The Hanford site had a long history of planned and accidental radiation releases, which the United States military had seen as an acceptable cost to pay for the development of nuclear weapons. In 1986, a major accident at Chernobyl Unit 4, a Soviet nuclear power reactor that shared some key flaws and characteristics with the N Reactor, drew new scrutiny and criticism to the N Reactor. Legislators with pro-disarmament views, including Oregon Senator

Mark Hatfield, concluded that the new safety concerns and a decrease in the need for plutonium production meant that the time had come for the N Reactor to shut down permanently.

The Hanford Site and the N Reactor

The Hanford site was one of the major sites of activity for the Manhattan

Project, the United States’ effort to develop nuclear weapons. Nuclear reactors at the

92John M. Findlay and Bruce Hevly, Atomic Frontier Days: Hanford and the American West, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.

site converted uranium-238 into plutonium-239, the fissile material that composed the bombs detonated at the Trinity Test and at Nagasaki.93 After the end of World War II, the reactors at Hanford continued to run, producing tons of plutonium in support of the United States’ arms race with the Soviet Union.94 A side effect of the plutonium was massive amounts of radioactive byproducts. Some of the byproducts were stored as solid or liquid waste, but large amounts of radioactive material escaped and spread contamination across the Hanford site and beyond its borders.95

Unlike Hanford’s other reactors, the N Reactor (short for “New Production

Reactor”) did not have a sole purpose in plutonium production. This reactor generated electricity for the commercial power grid, which also served a public relations purpose by demonstrating a non-military use of this technology.96 Senators from the state of Washington had pushed for the dual-purpose reactor since the mid-1950s, arguing that the electricity supplied by the reactor would justify the expense of building yet another plutonium production reactor.97 The other production reactors at

Hanford were nearing the end of their life spans, and a new reactor would create many employment opportunities in the area. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)

93Stenehjem, “Pathways of Radioactive Contamination,” 94. 94“Hanford History,” Hanford, Department of Energy, last updated April 19, 2020, https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HanfordHistory; “100 Area,” Hanford, Department of Energy, last updated October 25, 2020, https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/100Area. 95Eliot Marshall, “Hanford’s Radioactive Tumbleweed,” Science New Series 236, no. 4809 (June 26, 1987): 1616-1620; Glenn Zorpette, “Hanford’s Nuclear Wasteland,” Scientific American 274, no. 5 (May 1996): 88-97. 96“N Reactor,” Hanford, Department of Energy, last updated December 6, 2020, https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/NReactor. 97Patrick Marshall, “Hanford’s N Reactor,” History Link, posted February 4, 2014, https://historylink.org/File/10702.

approved the reactor design in 1959, and Congress approved its construction in

1962.98 President John F. Kennedy visited Hanford to dedicate the N Reactor in 1963, two months before his death. He described the reactor as “the largest nuclear power reactor for peaceful purposes in the world.”99 This interpretation of the reactor’s purpose was perhaps overly generous, since plutonium production for nuclear weapons was still a major aspect of the facility’s intended use. Still, the dual-purpose reactor was an important step for the United States’ fledgling nuclear power program.

From the earliest days of the Hanford site’s operation, the release of radioactive material was a common occurrence. Plutonium produced inside reactor fuel had to be separated by chemical processing, which left behind solid, liquid, and gaseous radioactive waste. Some of this material was stored in tanks. Some of it was dumped directly into the ground, trenches, or the Columbia River.100

During the Manhattan Project and, later, the Cold War, there was constant pressure from the military to produce plutonium as quickly as possible, which often came at the expense of safety. In 1949, in an experiment known as the “Green Run,” a batch of relatively fresh fuel was processed. Fuel was usually stored for about four months before processing so that some of the radioactive byproducts could decay away, but the fuel used in the Green Run had been stored for only a few weeks, and

98Marshall, “Hanford’s N Reactor.” 99John F. Kennedy, “Remarks at the Hanford, Washington, Electric Generating Plant,” The American Presidency Project, September 26, 1963, accessed December 7, 2020, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/236104; quoted by Cassandra Tate, “President Kennedy Participates in Ground-Breaking Ceremonies for Construction of N Reactor at Hanford on September 26, 1963,” History Link, posted October 9, 2013, https://www.historylink.org/file/10640. 100Zorpette, “Hanford’s Nuclear Wasteland,” 91.

some gases from the process were deliberately released without normal filtering.101

This experiment was intended to generate a large amount of airborne radioactive material that could be tracked by Air Force pilots. Data from this test could help the

U.S. military track similar releases from Soviet plants, providing an estimate of the scale of the Soviet Union’s plutonium production. During the Green Run experiment, thousands of curies of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air.102 In the following years, the magnitude of routine releases would exceed this number many times over. By 1959, the Hanford site was releasing 20,000 curies per day into the

Columbia River.103

The scope of contamination at Hanford may be a result of the regulatory environment under which the site operated throughout most of its history. Ian Stacy has argued that the environmental policies in place at the Hanford site were in line with environmental thinking of the 1940s and 1950s, when most of the facilities at the site were constructed.104 Hanford’s policies in the early days focused on the safety of their employees, based on what the facility’s managers understood of radiation risks at that time. Other historians have discussed the disagreement among scientists about the nature and magnitude of the risks that radiation posed to humans. Christopher

Jolly has examined the differences between geneticists’ and physicians’ attitudes towards risks from radioactive fallout at the start of the cold war. He argues that

101Brown, Plutopia, 167-169; Ian Stacy, “Roads to Ruin on the Atomic Frontier: Environmental Decision Making at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 1942-1952,” Environmental History 15, no. 3 (July 2010): 431. 102Brown, Plutopia, 169. 103Brown, Plutopia, 170. 104Stacy, “Roads to Ruin on the Atomic Frontier,” 415-417.

geneticists tended to believe that any amount of radiation dose is potentially harmful, and they felt responsible for speaking out about these risks. Physicians generally believed that radiation doses below a certain level or “threshold” were harmless. They were reluctant to have public discussions the risks that they viewed as unlikely out of concern that it would create fear that they felt was unnecessary.105 Linda Richards has examined how the AEC attempted to define radiation safety, concluding that radiation safety science was very subjective.106 The AEC’s choices of what to consider important for radiation safety was influenced by Cold War attitudes that often risked individuals’ health and safety in order to compete with the perceived threat of the

Soviet Union. Scientists at Hanford misjudged the future consequences of their waste storage and disposal methods, not realizing how far certain materials would disperse or how long they would remain hazardous.107 When Hanford’s management started to pay more attention to off-site exposure, they were primarily interested in protecting livestock and commercially valuable species rather than the environment as a whole.108 The Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy, the two agencies that governed Hanford throughout most of its history, did not release much information about the site to the public due to security concerns. The work at Hanford was able to continue with very little outside oversight.109

105J. Christopher Jolly, Thresholds of Uncertainty: Radiation and Responsibility in the Fallout Controversy,” (PhD diss., Oregon State University, 2003). 106Linda Richards, “Rocks and Reactors: An Atomic Interpretation of Human Rights, 1941-1979,” (PhD diss., Oregon State University, 2014), 142-183. 107Stacy, “Roads to Ruin on the Atomic Frontier,” 430. 108Stacy, “Roads to Ruin on the Atomic Frontier,” 435-436. 109Zorpette, “Hanford’s Nuclear Wasteland,” 90-91.

By the early 1970s, most of the reactors at Hanford had been shut down, and the future of the N Reactor was uncertain. Most of the reactors had reached their intended 20-year operating lifespan, and demand for plutonium was decreasing.110 In

1971, the Office of Management and Budget decided to shut down the two remaining reactors, the N Reactor and the K East Reactor.111 The Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense both opposed the decision, as did Senator Henry

Jackson of Washington, who worried about the potential elimination of thousands of jobs in his state. Jackson and Representative Mike McCormack, also of Washington, fought back against the decision and convinced Congress to allocate enough funding to keep the N Reactor operating.112 At this point, Washington’s elected officials clearly saw the dual-purpose reactor as a valuable asset for their state that justified any potential risk from it.

The people who worked at the Hanford site or lived nearby held varying attitudes towards their connections with plutonium production. In her book Plutopia,

Kate Brown argued that despite risky conditions, secrecy, and moral complexity,

Hanford’s workforce remained content due to the economic prosperity and privileged lifestyle that came from nuclear jobs.113 In interviews conducted thirty years after the

N Reactor shut down, former employees reminisced about their experiences there.

Emil Leitz spoke proudly about the 65 billion kilowatt hours of electricity that the N

110Marshall, “Hanford’s N Reactor.” 111P. M. B., “Hanford Reactors Down but Not Out,” Science New Series 171, no. 3971 (Feb. 12, 1971): 555. 112Deborah Shapley, “Mike McCormack: A Potential ‘Mr. Science’ Comes to Congress,” Science New Series 173, no. 3995 (July 30, 1971): 409. 113Brown, Plutopia, 37-43.

Reactor produced over its 24 years of operation.114 Michael Lawrence had positive feelings about his work, but he remembered clashing with local religious leaders who objected to the Hanford site’s role in producing nuclear weapons.115 In a 1984 essay,

Richland resident Benita Brown explained her experiences growing up in a community full of Hanford employees. She describes an overall pro-nuclear sentiment in the community and a sense of pride in the work done at Hanford. She also recalls how, as children, she and her siblings and neighbors would discuss whether they could reach a fall-out shelter in time to survive a nuclear bomb strike.116

Fears of a nuclear weapons strike, common throughout the country during the Cold

War, were harder to ignore when living so close to a plutonium production site.

By the mid-1980s, public interest groups had become more critical of the

United States’ plutonium production program and the radioactive pollution that accompanied it. In February 1986, the DOE released thousands of pages of information about the Hanford site due to a Freedom of Information Act request from public interest groups.117 The newly available information enabled more public scrutiny than the Hanford site had faced in its earlier history. Weeks later, events far away from Hanford would amplify this scrutiny even further.

114Emil Leitz, interview by Laura Arata, The Hanford History Project, November 7, 2013, http://www.hanfordhistory.com/items/show/49. 115Michael Lawrence, interview by Robert Franklin, The Hanford History Project, February 1, 2017, http://www.hanfordhistory.com/items/show/814. 116Benita Brown, “Where Everyone Builds Bombs,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 109-115. 117Stenehjem, “Pathways of Radioactive Contamination,” 94-96.

Chernobyl’s Effects

On April 26th, 1986, halfway around the world from the Hanford site, a tragedy occurred that would have long-term impacts on attitudes towards nuclear reactors. An explosion in Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station near Pripyat, Ukraine, destroyed the reactor, killed dozens of workers in the immediate aftermath, and spread radioactive material that heavily contaminated the surrounding area and traveled throughout the world.118 The Soviet government did not immediately share news of this event with Western countries or with its own people. Nuclear power plant workers in Sweden realized something must have happened when they saw unusually high readings on their own radiation monitoring equipment.119 Finnish,

Danish, and Norwegian officials also detected high radiation levels.120 As experts around the world studied the spreading contamination and pieced together the details of what happened, they also started to wonder: could this happen here?

The N Reactor at Hanford caught the attention of various government and activist organizations. The N Reactor, like the ruined reactor at Chernobyl, used graphite as its moderator and water as its coolant. Both reactors also were housed in confinement buildings, which were less protective than the containment buildings that

118“Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident,” United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, last updated August 15, 2018, https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/factsheets/chernobyl-bg.html. 119“Forsmark: How Sweden Alerted the World about the Danger of the Chernobyl Disaster,” News European Parliament, May 15, 2014, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20140514STO47018/ forsmark-how-sweden-alerted-the-world-about-the-danger-of-chernobyl-disaster. 120Carol J. Williams, “Soviet Nuclear Accident Releases Radiation,” The Oregonian, April 29, 1986, Sunrise Edition.

were standard at commercial reactors in the United States.121 Mark Hatfield, a

Republican senator from Oregon, requested that the General Accounting Office

(GAO) perform a review of the facility.122 Hatfield was the chairman of the Senate

Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee on energy, which meant that he was in a position to influence the allocation of Hanford’s funding. John Herrington, the

Secretary of Energy at that time, also saw the need for a thorough investigation of the

N Reactor’s safety.123 Herrington commissioned independent reviews from six consultants, who were asked to evaluate the status of the reactor and the likelihood of a Chernobyl-type accident.

Members of the media were also quick to draw a connection between the N

Reactor and Chernobyl. In a 2017 interview, Michael Lawrence, a former DOE employee, remembered meeting with reporters less than a week after the Chernobyl accident. Lawrence, who was Hanford’s director of operations in 1986, brought several buses full of reporters and news crews out to the site to see the reactor building.124 With minimal information coming from the Soviet Union, Lawrence and the other workers at Hanford could not tell the reporters much about what had happened at Chernobyl, but they did their best to reassure the media about the safety of the N Reactor. An article in The Oregonian from that week quoted Lawrence and

121J. Raloff, “Hanford Reactor’s Safety Is Questioned,” Science News 130, no. 7 (August 16, 1986): 101-102. 122United States General Accounting Office, Nuclear Safety: Comparison of DOE’s Hanford N- Reactor with the Chernobyl Reactor, August 1986. 123Eliot Marshall, “End Game for the N Reactor?” Science New Series 235, no. 4784 (January 2, 1987): 17-18. 124Michael Lawrence, The Hanford History Project.

others from the Hanford site, as well as critics from anti-nuclear groups.125 The article mentions the safety systems that were designed to prevent a graphite fire or an airborne release of radioactivity, but it also references concerns about whether the confinement structure would provide adequate protection.

The DOE officials who were responsible for the N Reactor were reluctant to give up information about the facility, even as they grappled with the challenges of getting accurate information about the Soviet reactor. Michael Lawrence recalled that his bosses initially told him not to reveal anything to the press.126 Lawrence convinced his superiors at the DOE that it was necessary to be somewhat open. He informed them that the stories reporters would write “can either be based on fact or they can be based upon fiction. If they’re based upon fiction, it’s not going to be pretty.” In a 2017 interview, when asked how he felt about the DOE’s initial desire for secrecy, he stated that if Hanford had had an accident and he was asked to keep quiet about it, he “would have been incensed.” However, with the lack of clear information about the Chernobyl reactor at that time, he understood the importance of refraining from speculation.127

On top of conflicts over the appropriate levels of transparency, employees at

Hanford also had the challenge of conveying technical information about the plant to the media, politicians, and the general public. The American public, after reading about the long-burning fires in Chernobyl’s graphite core, were understandably

125Linda Roach Monroe, “Hanford Feeling Heat from Event,” The Oregonian, April 30, 1986. 126Michael Lawrence, The Hanford History Project. 127Michael Lawrence, The Hanford History Project.

concerned about the consequences of a graphite fire at the N Reactor. Hanford employee Emil Leitz later recalled experiments that demonstrated to plant workers that a graphite fire was unlikely. Still, he recognized that “to tell somebody you’ve got a graphite stack over here that burnt, and then we’ve got a graphite stack over here that’s a little different composition and made up a little different way, it won’t burn…. We just couldn’t prove our stack wouldn’t burn.”128

The accident at the Chernobyl reactor continued to be shrouded in layers of state secrecy and technical obscurity. The Soviet government tended to conceal news of any type of disaster from the western media. The Chernobyl accident, which caused high radiation readings in other countries hundreds of miles away, was too large to conceal completely, but the Soviet government was still not immediately forthcoming with details of the accident or the exact design of the Chernobyl reactor.129 When the General Accounting Office released their report on the N

Reactor’s safety, more than three months after the Chernobyl accident, it included a statement that “information from the Soviet Union on the Chernobyl reactor and accident is still incomplete and, in some cases, has been conflicting.”130 As expert consultants attempted to determine the likelihood of a Chernobyl-type accident occurring at the N Reactor, they had to contend with the challenge that they still did not really know what had happened at the Chernobyl reactor due to Soviet secrecy.

128Emil Leitz, The Hanford History Project. 129Williams, “Soviet Nuclear Accident Releases Radiation”; Bennett Ramberg, “Learning from Chernobyl,” Foreign Affairs 65, no. 2 (Winter 1986): 304-328. 130GAO, Nuclear Safety, 3.

In the months after the Chernobyl accident, the outside experts who had been asked to assess the N Reactor’s safety published their conclusions. The report from the General Accounting Office laid out some of the similarities between the N

Reactor and Chernobyl Unit 4. Both reactors used graphite as a moderator, the material that slows down neutrons until they reach the energy level where they can cause uranium-235 to fission. They were water-cooled, with similar cooling systems.131 The GAO report’s authors were not sure whether the Chernobyl reactor had a containment system, but they explained that the N Reactor relied on a confinement system.132 The confinement system would allow filtered gases to be released during an accident, but it was not as safe as the air-tight containment buildings required for commercial power reactors. Geographic factors meant that the potential human impact of an accident at Hanford was probably smaller: there were only 240 residents living within a ten-mile radius of the N Reactor, while the population within ten miles of the Chernobyl reactor was at least 150,000.133 The

GAO report concluded that some of the N Reactor’s safety features made a

Chernobyl-type accident unlikely, but that the plant would require some safety upgrades estimated to cost $1.2 billion in order to continue operating.134 The conclusions of the independent reviews commissioned by John Herrington, the

131GAO, Nuclear Safety, 10. 132GAO, Nuclear Safety, 2. It is now known that the Chernobyl reactor did not have a containment building: “Frequently Asked Chernobyl Questions,” International Atomic Energy Agency, accessed December 8, 2020, https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/chernobyl/faqs. 133GAO, Nuclear Safety, 11. 134GAO, Nuclear Safety, 2; Colin Norman, “Chernobyl-Type Accident Deemed Unlikely at Hanford Plant,” Science New Series 233, no. 4766 (August 22, 1986): 837-838; Raloff, “Hanford Reactor’s Safety Is Questioned,” 101.

Secretary of Energy, were more pessimistic. The reviewers were concerned that the lack of containment building at the N Reactor could allow a radioactive release on the same scale as the one at Chernobyl. They also pointed out that the DOE did not hold the N Reactor to the same strict standards that commercial reactors were required to follow.135 The GAO report and the other reviewers agreed that N Reactor operations could not continue without major changes.

The N Reactor was not the only target for scrutiny in the United States after the Chernobyl accident. The DOE was also called upon to evaluate the safety of the plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River site in South Carolina.136

Similarities were drawn with the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, not in regard to reactor design but because of the “gross operator incompetence” that may have contributed to both events.137 However, the N Reactor, with its apparent design flaws and its immediate need for costly safety upgrades, became the main reactor to draw attention from legislators looking to divert funding from the nuclear weapons program.

Legislative Action

In May 1987, just over a year after the Chernobyl accident, two Senate committees, including one chaired by Mark Hatfield, made the decision to shut down

135Marshall, “End Game for the N Reactor?” 17-18. 136Eliot Marshall, “How Safe Savannah River Reactors?” Science New Series 235, no. 4796 (March 27, 1987): 1563-1564; Eliot Marshall, “Savannah River Blues,” Science New Series 242, no. 4877 (October 21, 1988): 363-365. 137Ramberg, “Learning from Chernobyl,” 307.

the N Reactor permanently.138 The concerns about a similar accident occurring at

Hanford and the high cost of suggested safety upgrades sealed the N Reactor’s fate.139

On the other side of this issue, John Herrington, the Secretary of Energy, spoke out against the closure of the N Reactor.140 Herrington claimed that the plutonium produced by Hanford’s sole remaining reactor was still crucial for national security.

At this point, the reactor had already been shut down for several months while undergoing repairs, but the planned maintenance would still not be enough to meet the recommended safety standards.141 In spite of Herrington’s objections, the N

Reactor would never start up again.142

Hatfield’s opinion on the N Reactor may have been directly informed by the

GAO report, but his attitude towards nuclear weapons had a much earlier and more personal influence. As a naval officer who served in the Pacific during World War II,

Hatfield had gone into Hiroshima days after the war’s end. Seeing the devastation of the city had a long-lasting effect on Hatfield. After Hatfield’s death in 2011, several of his fellow senators recounted how this experience had caused him to question the morality of war.143 He was outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War.

Throughout his long career as a senator, Hatfield contributed to numerous laws

138E. M., “Two Committees Vote to Mothball the N Reactor,” Science New Series 236, no. 4802 (May 8, 1987): 665. 139Norman, “Chernobyl-Type Accident Deemed Unlikely at Hanford Plant,” 837-838. 140Robert E. Taylor, “Energy Secretary Opposes Closing Hanford N-Reactor,” Wall Street Journal, May 1, 1987, Eastern Edition. 141Ben A. Franklin, “Key U.S. Reactor to Shut 6 Months for Safety Steps,” The New York Times, December 13, 1986; Cass Peterson, “Hanford Repairs Won’t Be Enough, Consultants Say,” The Washington Post, January 10, 1987. 142Marshall, “Hanford’s N Reactor.” 143157 Cong. Rec. S5361-5370 (September 7, 2011).

restricting nuclear weapons testing.144 His vote to close down the N Reactor came at a time when that facility was under close scrutiny, but the closure represented a move in the direction towards which Hatfield was consistently working.

In a 1987 Science article, Eliot Marshall wrote that “[t]he demand for plutonium is an arbitrary number reflecting military plans for new weapons over many years. For this reason, it cannot be calculated from physical principles alone and is more easily kept secret.”145 Plutonium-239, the form used in nuclear weapons, decayed with a half-life of 24,000 years. The country already had a substantial stockpile, and new weapons could be made from material in old weapons that had not been detonated but were too old to be used.146 The United States military had only ever used two nuclear weapons in attacks on another country, the bombs dropped on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of World War II. Between 1945 and 1992, the US military detonated more than one thousand atomic weapons for test purposes, each of which used plutonium or enriched uranium.147 The goals for plutonium production were based on the military’s abstract ideas for future preparedness and anticipated weapons tests. Thus, the production targets could shift along with the country’s plans.

144William J. Eaton, “9-Month Halt of Nuclear Tests voted by Senate,” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 1992, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-04-mn-5056-story.html; Frank N. van Hippel, “The Decision to End U.S. Nuclear Testing,” Arms Control Today 49 (December 2019): 14- 20. 145Eliot Marshall, “Plutonium by the Ton,” Science New Series 236, no. 4801 (May 1, 1987): 515-516. 146Marshall, “Plutonium by the Ton,” 516. 147“The Nuclear Testing Tally: Fact Sheets & Briefs,” Arms Control Association, updated July 2020, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally; “Ending Nuclear Testing,” United Nations: International Day against Nuclear Tests 29 August,” accessed June 9, 2021, https://www.un.org/en/ observances/end-nuclear-tests-day/history.

By 1987, when Congress decided to shut down the N Reactor permanently, the military’s demand for plutonium had started to drop.148 At that point, Secretary of

Energy Herrington believed that the closure could compromise national security.149

By the following year, when the remaining plutonium production reactors at the

Savannah River site were temporarily shut down for repairs, Herrington stated that the country was “awash in plutonium” and that the interruption would cause no problems.150 A shift in the priorities of the U.S. government had changed the country’s need for plutonium without any change in material conditions.

Conclusion

While demand for plutonium in the United States was beginning to decline in the mid-1980s, the Chernobyl reactor accident was the pivotal event that precipitated the closure of the N Reactor at the Hanford site. Releases of airborne, liquid, and solid radioactive materials had been a routine occurrence at Hanford since the 1940s.

The accident at Chernobyl brought sudden public and political attention to the N

Reactor at the same time that information about Hanford’s overall operating history had been released to the public for the first time. Public officials who were supportive of the cause of nuclear disarmament saw no reason to continue operating the production reactor when the United States already had a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. The risks presented by the N Reactor were not substantially different than

148Marshall, “Plutonium by the Ton,” 516. 149Taylor, “Energy Secretary Opposes Closing Hanford N-Reactor.” 150Marshall, “Savannah River Blues,” 363.

they had been at any prior point in the plant’s operating history, but the U.S. government no longer felt that the promise of an ever-increasing horde of plutonium was enough to justify these risks.

By the time the N Reactor stopped operating, the extensive contamination of the Hanford site was receiving significant attention from the general public, nearby residents who worried that the site’s contamination had harmed their health, the U.S. government, and experts in the nuclear industry. However, the N Reactor itself was only the focus of significant controversy for a few relatively brief periods. In the next chapter, I will discuss the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant which, unlike the N Reactor, was the target of protests and legal challenges for nearly its entire operating history.

3. Oregon’s Anti-Nuclear Movement and the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant

Introduction

On May 22, 2006, a headline on the front page of The Oregonian declared

“Nine Seconds End Trojan Era.”151 In the early morning hours of the previous day, a demolition company had used nearly 2800 pounds of dynamite to bring down the

499-foot cooling tower of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant. The cooling tower’s implosion was the most dramatic and visible event to occur in the plant’s history, which stretched back to 1968 when construction began. However, calling this moment the end of the Trojan era overlooks the full scope of the plant’s history. The plant had not produced electricity since the end of 1992, when the reactor was shut down permanently. Moreover, a significant part of Trojan’s nuclear legacy also remained after the dust of the cooling tower settled: 781 used fuel rods were still on site, waiting indefinitely for the federal government to create a permanent spent fuel repository.

Oregon’s nuclear history includes some apparent contradictions. The state has been the site of relatively little nuclear activity. Oregon did not develop significant nuclear power infrastructure, unlike California and many eastern states; the Trojan

Nuclear Power Reactor was the state’s only nuclear power plant. Unlike Nevada and

New Mexico, Oregon was not the site of any nuclear weapons testing, but some fallout was measured there from tests in other states and from Hanford’s Green Run.

There was some uranium mining within the state, including the Lakeview site, which

151Gail Kinsey Hill, “Nine Seconds End Trojan Era,” The Oregonian, May 22, 2006.

the EPA designated as a priority cleanup site in 1995.152 The state was not home to any nuclear weapons labs, such as Lawrence Livermore or UC Berkeley in California, or Idaho National Lab in Idaho. There were also no plutonium production facilities in

Oregon, although contamination from the Hanford site in eastern Washington traveled to the ocean via the Columbia River, which forms part of the border between the two states. Yet, there has been a long history of anti-nuclear activism in the state.

Groups such as Forelaws on Board and the Trojan Decommissioning Alliance battled against the Trojan plant for nearly its entire existence. Oregonians saw more nuclear- related ballot measures than voters in any other state. In fact, Oregon’s minimal nuclear development was partly due to the success of activists’ sustained and strategic opposition.

Oregon’s antinuclear movement fits within two larger movements: the national antinuclear movement that was gaining prominence during this time period, and the Pacific Northwest’s long-running history of environmentalism. The result was a particularly robust opposition to nuclear power in the region, much of it starting at the grassroots level. Daniel Pope has examined the history of anti-nuclear activism in the Pacific Northwest in his essays on the Washington Public Power Supply System and the Eugene Water and Electric Board.153 Pope concludes that the activists’ success in these cases was the result of their varied arguments that included

152“Lakeview Uranium Sites,” Oregon Department of Energy, accessed June 9, 2021, https://www.oregon.gov/energy/safety-resiliency/Pages/Uranium.aspx. 153Daniel Pope, “Antinuclear Activism in the Pacific Northwest: WPPSS and Its Enemies,” in The Atomic West, ed. Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay, 236-254 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998); Daniel Pope, “‘We Can Wait. We Should Wait.’ Eugene’s Nuclear Power Controversy, 1968- 1970.” Pacific Historical Review 59, no. 3 (August 1990): 350-351.

economic, health, and environmental concerns about nuclear power. A recent book edited by Char Miller and Jeff Crane examined the importance of grassroots organizing in the environmental movement. The book includes a chapter by Jeffrey C.

Sanders about the role of mothers as activists against nuclear weapons testing in the

1950s and 1960s.154 Sanders acknowledges the importance of citizen scientists and the “women who worked to make the science of radioactive risks legible” by collecting their children’s baby teeth to be analyzed for traces of radioactive fallout.155 Nuclear activists’ desire to educate themselves about the science behind nuclear technology was also apparent in the movement in Oregon in the 1970s. In another chapter, Ellen Stroud explores an important episode of Portland’s environmental history, the pollution of the Columbia Slough.156 Stroud argued that state and city policy makers treated the Columbia Slough as throwaway land that could be polluted freely because most of the residents of the North Portland peninsula, who were most affected by this pollution, were low income, Black, or recent immigrants. Stroud explains how North Portland’s residents were left out of the mainstream environmental movement for these same reasons, and how Oregon’s reputation as a haven for environmentalism often ignores the impacts on marginalized groups.

154Jeffrey C. Sanders, “From Bomb to Bone: Children and the Politics of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,” in The Nature of Hope: Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change, ed. Char Miller and Jeff Crane, 112-129 (Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 2018). 155Sanders, “From Bomb to Bone,” 117-118, 126. 156Ellen Stroud, “Returning to the Slough: Environmental Justice in Portland, Oregon,” in The Nature of Hope: Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change, ed. Char Miller and Jeff Crane, 59-73 (Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 2018).

Peter J. Leahy and Allan Mazur attempted to analyze the fluctuations in opposition to nuclear power and other controversial technologies using quantitative methods.157 They concluded that these movements tend to follow a pattern in which opposition leaders increase their activities, which leads to increased media attention, which in turn leads to increasing public opposition to those technologies. Their analysis, written in 1980, predates much of the opposition to the Trojan plant and several significant nuclear accidents. While I do not attempt a quantitative analysis of the activities and press coverage of the activists who opposed Trojan, it appears that some of the activists’ strategies relied on this pattern, deliberately seeking out media attention in the hopes of generating public support.

Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of nuclearity, the way that uranium comes to be considered a nuclear thing, provides an interesting lens for examining the decommissioning of the Trojan plant.158 Hecht argued that uranium has been treated variously as either an ordinary material or an exceptional, nuclear thing depending on the political and technological context in which it exists. I will use this concept of nuclearity to examine how one certain part of the Trojan site, its cooling tower, became an important symbol of nuclear technology even though that structure contained no radioactive material.

In this chapter, I will demonstrate that Oregon’s anti-nuclear activists focused their actions on the facilities in their own communities, believing that these sites were

157Peter J. Leahy and Allan Mazur, “The Rise and Fall of Public Opposition in Specific Social Movements,” Social Studies of Science 10, no. 3 (August 1980): 259-284. 158Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012).

both the most imminent threat and the most within their power to influence; however, the activists also remained concerned with the global threat of nuclear technology as a whole. The Trojan Decommissioning Alliance wanted to shut down the Trojan

Nuclear Power Plant specifically because they believed it was unsafe, but they framed their protests and statements in a way that would draw attention to broad issues, such as nuclear weapons and the national problem of nuclear waste storage. Some of

Oregon’s many nuclear-related ballot measures sought to limit nuclear power within the state, but these measures consistently cited the issue of a national spent fuel repository. As I will discuss later in this chapter, the problem of spent fuel storage received attention throughout this time period from both proponents and opponents of nuclear energy. Anti-nuclear activists celebrated the eventual closure of the Trojan plant, but they were not satisfied with the circumstances of this outcome: some of them wished the cooling tower had remained standing as a reminder of what Trojan had been. In the end, the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant left behind exactly the legacy that anti-nuclear activists had tried so hard to prevent: spent nuclear fuel stored on

Oregon Land, with no plan on the horizon for it to be transferred elsewhere.

The Beginnings of Opposition: The Trojan Decommissioning Alliance

Construction of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant began in 1968, at a time when the continued expansion of nuclear power in the United States seemed inevitable.159

Utility companies in the Pacific Northwest, including Portland General Electric, the

159Craig Wollner, “Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/trojan_nuclear_power_plant. Accessed 4/24/2021.

majority owner of the Trojan plant, predicted that energy demand in the region would increase significantly in the near future. At this point, much of the region’s electricity came from hydroelectric power.160 This energy source was inexpensive and consistent, but there was little room left on the region’s rivers for further development. If there was going to be a significant increase in the region’s electricity supply, it would need to come from thermal generation, and utility companies pinned their hopes for the future on nuclear technology. While the Trojan Nuclear Power

Plant was under construction, several other utility companies in Oregon were exploring the possibility of constructing additional nuclear power reactors. The

Eugene Water and Electric Board started looking for a site to build a reactor that could power the city of Eugene and beyond. At Oregon State University, home of the

AGN-201 reactor discussed in Chapter 1, Dr. Chih Wang predicted that the state would need a significant number of workers with nuclear engineering degrees within the following decade.161 Those working within or close to the nuclear industry believed that its expansion was inevitable, but opposition was starting to emerge.

The Trojan reactor began operating in 1975 amid a political climate that had shifted significantly since the plant was approved. Trojan was soon challenged by a group called the Trojan Decommissioning Alliance (TDA).162 In late July 1977, members of the TDA notified Portland General Electric that they would be staging a

160Pope, “Eugene’s Nuclear Power Controversy,” 350-351. 161Richard Floyd, “OSU To Begin Training Nuclear Engineering Students,” The Oregonian, August 6, 1968. 162Daniel Pope, “Anti-Nuclear Movement,” https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/anti_nuclear_movement/, Accessed 4/25/21; Craig Wollner, “Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.”

sit-in at the power plant the following month.163 About 90 activists arrived at the plant on August 6, 1977, blocking the security gates and declaring their intention to stay there until the plant shut down or until they were arrested.164 This day was the 32nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The sit-in ended two days later with the arrest of 82 of the non-violent protesters.165 A few months later, on November 25th, members of the TDA blocked Trojan’s gates again.166 This time, police arrested 123 of the protesters within hours of their arrival. The TDA was committed to principles of non-violence and passive resistance.167 Many of the demonstrators were dragged or carried away by Oregon State Police officers.168

Following these arrests, the TDA and the defense attorneys who represented the protesters used the courtroom as an opportunity to put nuclear energy on trial, which was often a goal of civil disobedience. In December 1977, a trial was held for

96 of the protesters who had been arrested for trespassing in either the August or the

November occupation.169 They planned to use a strategy known as the “‘choice of evils’ defense,” claiming that the defendants chose to continue their demonstration until they were arrested because they believed that Trojan was an imminent threat to

163“Protesters Plan Sit-In at Trojan,” The Oregonian, July 27, 1977. 164Steven Carter and Steve Jenning, “Protesters Vow to Close Trojan N-Plant: Vigil to Continue Pending Arrests.” 165“82 Protesters Arrested at Trojan Plant: Police Put End to 38-Hour Sit-In.” The Oregonian, August 9, 1977. 166Ed Mosey, “123 Arrested at Non-Violent Trojan Plant Protest,” The Oregonian, November 26, 1977. 167 “Trojan Decommissioning Alliance Occupation Handbook,” 1978, 4-7. 168Mosey, “123 Arrested at Non-Violent Trojan Plant Protest”; “Police Arrest 123 Trojan Protesters, Clear Plant Gates,” The Oregonian, November 26, 1977. 169Jim Hill, “Jury Acquits 96 Trojan Protesters in Trespass Case,” The Oregonian, Sunrise Edition, December 17, 1977.

public health and safety.170 The protesters believed that trespassing was justified in order to prevent a much more serious crime. Several expert witnesses testified for the defense about the dangers of nuclear power. Lon Topaz, who had previously served as the director of the Oregon Department of Energy, stated that he would order Trojan to close down if he were in a position to do so.171 Sister Rosalie Bertell, a cancer researcher, testified that she believed current limits on radiation emissions were not restrictive enough to protect the public.172 Bertell, a Catholic nun with a doctorate in biometrics, went on to write a book about the ways radiation damages human bodies.

She continued to advocate against nuclear power and nuclear weapons until her death in 2012 at age 83.173

The trial did not result in clear legal answers to all of the questions the TDA raised, but it did generate more publicity for the group’s message. The judge who oversaw the trial, James Mason, eventually ruled that the “choice of evils” defense could not be used in this case. Mason did not believe that the risk from Trojan was truly imminent, which was a necessary factor for this defense.174 Mason also decided that the testimony of the expert witnesses for the defense was irrelevant. This ruling removed testimony from the jury’s consideration, but it did not strike it from the public record. The judge’s decision also took away the prosecution’s opportunity to call their own expert witnesses to rebut the defense’s arguments. Frustrated by what

170Jim Hill, “Trojan N-Plant Trespass Jury Seated in St. Helens,” The Oregonian, December 13, 1977. 171Jim Hill, “Ex-State Energy Chief Would Close Trojan Plant,” The Oregonian, December 14, 1977. 172Jim Hill, “Cancer Researcher Calls Trojan Plant Serious Danger,” The Oregonian, December 15, 1977. 173Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, “Remembering Dr. Rosalie Bertell: Her Letter on Fukushima,” DiaNuke.org, https://www.dianuke.org/rosalie-bertell-fukushima/, accessed May 22, 2021. 174Hill, “Jury Acquits 96 Trojan Protesters.”

they saw as uneven representation of the issues in the trial and its press coverage,

PGE’s supporters expressed their belief in the Trojan plant’s safety in a press conference and in newspaper editorials.175 Ultimately, the case was decided on a technicality: the jury did not believe that Trojan’s employees had the authority to order the TDA members from the area where they were protesting, which was actually the property of the Burlington Northern Railroad.176 The TDA had not succeeded in closing down the Trojan plant, but the organization had gained a great deal of publicity for its beliefs in the risk posed by the reactor.

The TDA’s work continued after the trials from the first demonstrations.

Members of the group held another occupation at Trojan the following summer.

Twelve hundred people attended a rally against nuclear power on August 5th, 1978, in a park near the power plant.177 The following day, August 6th, a group of protesters marched to Trojan’s entrance. About 140 of the protesters were arrested almost immediately.178 More arrests followed on the next three days: another forty-three demonstrators on August 7th, twenty-four on August 8th, and seventy-two on August

9th.179 Like the protest the previous summer, the dates of this demonstration included the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima (August 6th) and Nagasaki (August

9th).

175Hill, “Jury Acquits 96 Trojan Protesters.”; “Travesty at Trojan,” The Oregonian, December 19, 1977; Dr. Jack W. Lentsch, “Distorted Data,” The Oregonian, December 26, 1977; Irv Jones, “’Hogwash’,” The Oregonian, December 27, 1977. 176Hill, “Jury Acquits 96 Trojan Protesters.” 177“Anti-Nuclear Rally Attended by 1,200,” The Oregonian, August 6, 1978. 178Ed Mosey, “Trojan Protesters Arrested,” The Oregonian, August 7, 1978. 179Ed Mosey, “Arraignments Begin: 43 Protesters Arrested at Trojan,” The Oregonian, August 8, 1978; Ed Mosey, “Arrests of Trojan Protesters Near 200,” The Oregonian, August 9, 1978; Paul Pintarich, “Protesters Make Final Assault,” The Oregonian, August 10, 1978.

The protesters intended to be arrested when they staged these protests. The members of the TDA were inspired by the technique of active non-violence that leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., had encouraged. The handbook for the 1978 Trojan occupation included an explanation of the term

“satyagraha,” defined in the handbook as “a force born out of truth and love,” a term for Gandhi’s method of non-violent resistance.180 Some of the protesters had personally been involved in protests of the Vietnam War.181 The TDA required that everyone taking part in the occupations attended a session of non-violence training prior to the demonstration.182 Their handbook encouraged non-cooperation with the police, including going limp when police attempted to remove or arrest the demonstrators and refusing to answer questions during booking.183

During the demonstrations, police carried or dragged away many of the activists they were arresting.184 Arthur Honeyman, a demonstrator who led the march to Trojan for the first demonstration, had cerebral palsy and used a wheelchair. In a written statement, Honeyman said that he felt “a personal need to stop nuclear power at all personal cost.”185 Along with many of his fellow protesters, Honeyman was later carried away by police, who left his wheelchair behind at the Trojan plant.186

180 “Trojan Decommissioning Alliance Occupation Handbook,” 1978, 5. 181Ed Mosey, “News Analysis: Effect of Nuclear-Power Protests Cloudy,” August 13, 1978. 182“Trojan Decommissioning Alliance Occupation Handbook,” 1978, 4. 183“Trojan Decommissioning Alliance Occupation Handbook,” 1978, 30. 184“82 Protesters Arrested at Trojan Plant: Police Put End to 38-Hour Sit-in,” The Oregonian, August 9, 1977. 185Steve Jenning, “Wheelchair Leads Way in March on N-Plant,” The Oregonian, August 7, 1977. 186“82 Protesters Arrested at Trojan Plant.” Arthur Honeyman was also a disability rights activist and a writer, who published many poems, essays, and children’s books. See Inara Verzemnieks, “Art Honeyman Hits the Streets,” The Oregonian, July 31, 2005, updated March 27, 2019, https://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/2007/07/art_honeyman_hits_the_streets.html.

The members of the TDA were willing to risk their personal safety and security in the hopes of not only shutting down the Trojan plant, but also convincing the general public to pay attention to their cause. The group intended to be disruptive and conspicuous while maintaining the moral high ground.

While the Trojan Decommissioning Alliance focused their protests on a single power reactor, it is clear that their opposition was not limited to the Trojan Nuclear

Power Plant, or even to commercial nuclear power. Rather, their efforts were part of a larger opposition to the idea of a nuclear world. Written materials from the organization describe one of their planned occupations as part of “an historic effort to create a non-nuclear future for ourselves and future generations.”187 The TDA

Occupation Handbook from 1978 lists several reasons for participation, including concern about the effects of nuclear waste and “the symbiotic relationship that exists between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.”188 Ronald Richard, a participant in the

November 1977 occupation, stated that the TDA “occupied Trojan because of our belief that it poses a serious and immediate threat to the health and safety of the people of Oregon, Washington, and the world. We believe that Trojan’s low-level radiation is a hazard. We believe that the use of nuclear power around the world will lead to a proliferation of nuclear weapons.”189 Members of the TDA focused their direct actions on the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, which they believed was the closest

187“Trojan Decommissioning Alliance Occupation Handbook,” 1978, 6. 188“Trojan Decommissioning Alliance Occupation Handbook,” 1978, 7. 189Ronald Richard, “Protest Report,” The Oregonian, December 7, 1977.

and most imminent threat to their communities’ safety, but their concerns extended to the nuclear power industry and nuclear weapons development as a whole.

The dates chosen for two of the occupations also had significance beyond events in Oregon: the two August occupations, in 1977 and 1978, coincided with the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United

States at the end of the second world war. Other anti-nuclear groups staged their own events and demonstrations to commemorate the anniversaries. On August 6th, 1977, two anti-nuclear groups from the east coast, the Clamshell Alliance and the Catfish

Alliance, marked the 32nd anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing by releasing thousands of balloons. The balloons were meant to represent nuclear fallout from a nuclear power plant accident. Some of them held messages, such as “If this message reached you, so can radioactivity.” The release sites included proposed and existing nuclear power plants and the city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where much of the country’s enriched uranium came from.190 Like the TDA demonstrators, these other anti-nuclear groups hoped to remind the public of the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Issues at the Ballot Box

Oregon’s anti-nuclear activism predated the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, and it was not limited to direct action. Political opposition to nuclear power in Oregon first emerged in the city of Eugene, where the Eugene Water and Electric Board

190Associated Press, “Antinuclear Messages Go Aloft,” The Oregonian, August 7, 1977.

(EWEB) was pursuing the possibility of building a nuclear power plant. In the 1968 general election, the city had voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bond that granted

EWEB $225 million in funds for the development of nuclear power. Nearly 80% of voters voted for the bond measure.191 After the bond measure was approved, some local residents began to question whether a nuclear power plant was a good choice for the city. Those who opposed EWEB’s nuclear plans formed a group called the

Eugene Future Power Committee (EFPC).192 Over the next year and a half, the members of the EFPC focused on educating themselves on nuclear issues and raising awareness of these issues locally. In 1970, the group proposed a moratorium that would put any funding for a new nuclear power plant on hold until 1974.193 The

EFPC collected enough signatures to get the moratorium on the ballot for a special election in May 1970. The ballot measure passed by a narrow margin, with 51.8% of voters supporting it.194 While the moratorium was officially a four-year pause on nuclear development, its effects became permanent. EWEB did not pursue any plans for the construction of a nuclear power plant after the moratorium expired.

Daniel Pope has explored the reasons for the surprising reversal of opinions among Eugene’s electorate indicated by the change from overwhelming support in

1968 to a narrow margin of opposition in 1970.195 Pope mentions several reasons for the success of the Eugene Future Power Committee, including a willingness to

191“Eugene Election History,” https://www.eugene-or.gov/DocumentCenter/View/468/City-of-Eugene- Election-History?bidId=. 192Pope, “Eugene’s Nuclear Power Controversy,” 357-358. 193Pope, “Eugene’s Nuclear Power Controversy,” 361-362. 194“Eugene Election History,” https://www.eugene-or.gov/DocumentCenter/View/468/City-of-Eugene- Election-History?bidId=. 195Pope, “Eugene’s Nuclear Power Controversy,” 349-373.

compromise, a pro-science approach that included support from many scientists affiliated with the University of Oregon, and a position that was “civic-minded and responsible rather than obstructionist and extreme.”196 The EFPC was not ideologically opposed to nuclear power. Instead, the group asked for caution and patience, expressing uncertainty about the safety of the proposed plant. Members of the EFPC also doubted whether their area would really see the increased demand for electricity that EWEB predicted. It seemed likely that much of the proposed plant’s generating capacity would be sold elsewhere in the region to support industrial projects rather than being needed for the homes and businesses of Eugene. The

EFPC’s moderate stance was encapsulated by its slogan, “We can wait. We should wait.”197 The group’s strategy and position were successful in persuading enough voters to pause nuclear development in the Eugene area.

When construction began on the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, Portland

General Electric was relying on the federal government’s plans to take possession of its highly radioactive spent fuel. In 1975, the year that Trojan began operating, this plan became even more necessary: Oregon passed a law that banned permanent nuclear waste disposal facilities in the state.198 Trojan would be able to store fuel on- site briefly, but PGE would eventually need to send it elsewhere. One possible plan was for used fuel to be reprocessed, which would involve chemically separating the remaining fissile atoms of elements like uranium and plutonium from the fission

196Pope, “Eugene’s Nuclear Power Controversy,” 371. 197Pope, “Eugene’s Nuclear Power Controversy,” 361. 198ORS 469.525 [Formerly 459.630], “Radioactive Waste Disposal Facilities Prohibited.”

products. The fission products would need to be stored as radioactive waste, but the longest-lasting radioactive isotopes could be made into new fuel. Reprocessing had several downsides, including high economic costs and the risk that other nations could use reprocessing technology to develop nuclear weapons.199 The prospect of reprocessing was eliminated in 1977, when President Jimmy Carter announced his decision that the United States would not pursue reprocessing of spent fuel.200

Carter’s stated reason for this decision was his concern that reprocessing technology could allow other countries to divert plutonium for weapons development.

Activists in Oregon started to challenge nuclear power through state-level ballot measures soon after the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant started operating. The first of these, Measure 9, appeared on the ballot in November 1976.201 This measure would have placed more restrictions on any nuclear power plants seeking approval in the future. The measure did not pass, with 58% of voters opposing it. In 1980, voters approved Measure 7, which prevented any proposed nuclear plant from receiving a site certificate until a “federally licensed permanent nuclear waste disposal facility” was available.202 Measure 7 blocked the expansion of nuclear power in Oregon, but it did not apply to the Trojan plant, which was already operating.

199A. David Rossin, “U.S. Policy on Spent Fuel Reprocessing: The Issues,” Nuclear Reaction: Why do Americans Fear Nuclear Power? PBS Frontline, April 1997, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/reaction/readings/rossin.html. 200Nuclear Power Policy: Statement by the President on His Decisions Following a Review of U.S. Policy, April 7, 1977. Presidential Documents: Jimmy Carter, 1977. 201Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Regulation_of_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Construction,_ Measure_9_(1976), accessed April 11, 2021. 202Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Voter_Approval_for_Nuclear_Waste_Facilities,_ Measure_7_(1980), accessed April 11, 2021.

The U.S. federal government held responsibility for all spent fuel produced by nuclear power reactors. In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.203

This law made the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for creating national repositories for spent nuclear fuel. In the following few years, the DOE started considering several sites where a repository could be located. The DOE soon focused on three places: a site in the Texas Panhandle, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and the Hanford site in Washington state. Of these three states, only Washington’s governor expressed positive feelings towards the idea of hosting a federal nuclear waste repository.204 Washington already held a great deal of stored nuclear waste and contamination at Hanford due to the site’s use for plutonium production, so a repository for nuclear fuel may have felt like familiar territory for the people of eastern Washington. Environmentalist groups in all three states objected to the possibility of a waste repository. Some locals near each of the possible sites were optimistic about the jobs that might be created for building and managing a repository, but others expressed fears about what could go wrong, such as contamination of aquifers needed for agriculture, or the nuclear wrongs that had been done in their states already, including the extensive nuclear weapons testing performed in Nevada by the United States military.205

While nuclear power plants across the nation waited for a nuclear fuel repository to materialize, the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant was already running into

203Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Public Law 97-425, 97th Congress. 204Iver Peterson, “Issue of National Nuclear Waste Dump Polarizes Three States,” New York Times, January 25, 1985. 205Peterson, “Issue of National Nuclear Waste Dump Polarizes Three States.”

legal difficulties. PGE needed to replace one third of the fuel in the reactor’s core after roughly a year of maximum power output. The facility was equipped with a storage pool that could hold one and one-third cores’ worth of fuel. The storage pool was intended to hold the fuel for several months so that its shortest-lasting radioisotopes could decay away before transfer. In March 1978, the reactor was ready for its first refueling.206 However, there was no federal facility to receive the spent fuel, and Oregon law prevented permanent storage within the state. With no other options available in the near future, the Oregon Department of Energy and the Oregon

Energy Facility Siting Council allowed PGE to temporarily expand its capacity for storing used fuel.207 This was an unsatisfying solution for many of Trojan’s opponents.

In 1986, with a decade’s worth of spent fuel accumulating in Trojan’s storage facilities, activists brought nuclear issues before Oregon’s voters once again. This time, a proposed ballot measure, Measure 14, would stop nuclear power plant operations in the state until a federal repository for high level radioactive waste was ready to receive spent fuel.208 One of the cosponsors for this ballot measure was

Lloyd Marbet, a Vietnam War veteran who had been involved in the antiwar movement before turning his focus to antinuclear activism. Marbet had been involved in the opposition to several nuclear power plants that were proposed but never built in

206Ed Mosey, “Analysis: State Eyes Nuclear Showdown,” The Oregonian, March 16, 1978. 207“State Will OK More Space for Atomic Waste Storage,” The Oregonian, May 17, 1978. “Council Balks on Trojan Storage,” The Oregonian, May 23, 1978. 208Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Plant_Operations_Until_ Waste_Site_Licensed,_Measure_14_(1986), Accessed April 11, 2021; Voters’ Pamphlet, State of Oregon General Election November 4, 1986, 72.

Oregon and Washington.209 Another cosponsor was Gregory Kafoury, a lawyer from

Portland. Outside of his work in opposition to the Trojan plant, Kafoury tended to work in cases involving “personal injury, false arrest, malpractice, and civil rights.”210

Later in his career, Kafoury summed up his firm’s goals, saying, “we represent individuals who are wronged, never corporations.”211 The Oregon Voter’s Pamphlet for the 1986 election included statements of support for the measure from Marbet,

Kafoury, and other activists, including Ralph Nader, a nationally known consumer advocate and later presidential candidate, who started an antinuclear group called the

Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project.212 The activists’ arguments were broad and varied, discussing the health risks of radioactive materials, the shortcomings of current fuel storage practices, concerns about Trojan’s safety record, and confidence in the region’s power supply even without Trojan’s contributions.213 There were also several pages of arguments against the measure, all from a group called Oregonians

Against the Shutdown of the Trojan Electric Plant. The arguments against Measure

14 included concerns about greater reliance on coal power, economic impacts, and

209Lloyd K. Marbet, “Resume,” The Website of Lloyd Marbet, https://www.marbet.org/, accessed May 19, 2021. 210Nancy Rommelmann, “The Avenger,” Oregon Business Journal, March 27, 2014. Accessed at “Greg Featured in Oregon Business Journal Article,” Kafoury & McDougal, https://www.kafourymcdougal.com/greg-featured-in-oregon-business-article-2014-04-12/, April 12, 2014. 211Ibid. 212“Ralph Nader,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ralph-Nader, updated February 23, 2021. 213Voters’ Pamphlet, State of Oregon General Election November 4, 1986, 73-78.

job loss, as well as positive statements about the plant’s safety record.214 Oregon’s voters rejected Measure 14 by a wide margin, with 64% voting against it.215

Activists, including Kafoury and Marbet, continued to challenge Trojan with another ballot measure in the 1990 election and two more in the 1992 election. Each of these measures would have shut down the plant until a permanent waste storage facility was available, along with various other conditions.216 Each measure was rejected, with about 60% of voters opposing them. Even though they didn’t pass, the ballot measures were a significant burden on PGE; the utility company spent $5 million on its campaign against the 1992 grassroots ballot measures alone.217

PGE’s success was extremely short-lived. Shortly after the election, Trojan shut down due to the discovery of a leak in one of its steam generator tubes, and investigation revealed that the tubes would need extensive and costly repairs before the reactor could resume operations.218 A few weeks later, some internal memos from the NRC were leaked to the public. These memos questioned whether it was possible for the Trojan plant or other reactors like it to operate safely. The NRC had granted a waiver allowing the Trojan plant to continue operating with some very small cracks in its steam generator tubes. The leaked memos showed that there was disagreement

214Voters’ Pamphlet, State of Oregon General Election November 4, 1986, 78-81. 215Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Plant_Operations_Until_ Waste_Site_Licensed,_Measure_14_(1986), Accessed April 11, 2021. 216Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Standards,_ Measure_4_(1990), Accessed April 11, 2021; Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Close_ Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Until_Conditions_Met,_Measure_5_(1992), Accessed April 11, 2021; Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Ban_Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Operation_Unless_ Conditions_Met,_Measure_6_(1992), Accessed April 11, 2021. 217Wollner, “Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.” 218Ibid.

within the NRC on the likelihood that these cracks could cause leaks, or even a meltdown.219 The steam leak and the document leak, happening in close succession, damaged the Trojan plant’s already shaky reputation. In January 1993, PGE decided that the reactor would remain shut down permanently.220 The plant had operated for less than half of its planned 40-year lifetime.221

Monuments to Failure: Disposal of Trojan’s Core Vessel, Cooling Tower, and Fuel

Once Portland General Electric decided to decommission the Trojan Nuclear

Power Plant, the massive project of disassembling and disposing of the reactor began.

The difficulty of this process came from one of the challenges of nuclear energy that critics had been pointing out for decades: the problem of nuclear waste storage. All of the fuel rods that the Trojan reactor had used during its 17 years of operating were still stored on-site. Additionally, many other reactor components were radioactive due to contamination (radioactive materials deposited on their surface) or activation (the atoms in a component becoming radioactive due to exposure to neutron radiation).

The Trojan plant had reached the end of its usefulness, but PGE was just beginning the long and costly decommissioning process.

One of the major challenges of the decommissioning process was the removal and storage of the reactor vessel, the roughly cylindrical steel structure that had

219Spencer Heinz, “Two Leaks Stir Doubts on Safety of Trojan,” The Oregonian, December 20, 1992. 220Spencer Heinz, “PGE Gives Up on Trojan,” The Oregonian, January 5, 1993. 221Matthew L. Wald, “A-Plant to Be Shut Because of Its Cost: Oregon Reactor To Be Shut Down,” The Oregonian, August 11, 1992.

housed the fuel while the reactor was operating. Initially, PGE considered cutting the

875,000-pound vessel into 50 pieces that would be carried by trucks to the Hanford

Nuclear Reservation, but the utility company and state officials decided it would be cheaper and safer to leave the vessel in a single piece.222 The vessel’s size made it too difficult to transport over land, so PGE planned to carry it up the Columbia River on a barge. This would not be a unique event. Nuclear submarine compartments had already been shipped to Hanford for disposal using similar procedures.223 Still, PGE would need permission from the NRC to diverge from their original decommissioning plan.

In addition to the large size, the radioactive material that composed the Trojan reactor vessel greatly complicated the transportation and disposal process. The vessel contained over two million Curies of radioactivity. Nearly all of this was in the form of activated metal: a fraction of the atoms that made up the steel vessel had become radioactive due to their years of exposure to neutrons released by the fuel during operations.224 PGE planned to encase the reactor vessel with several inches of steel to shield the radiation it emitted. Plastic wrap would contain any loose contamination that the vessel might otherwise shed.225

PGE was confident that their plan was safe enough to implement, but some of

Trojan’s critics disagreed. Russell Jim communicated his objections as a

222Bill MacKenzie, “PGE Hopes to Haul Trojan Reactor Upriver on Barge,” The Oregonian, January 22, 1997. 223“Editorial: Moving Trojan to Hanford,” The Oregonian, February 2, 1977. 224“Trojan Reactor Vessel Package: Safety Analysis Report,” March 31, 1997, 1.15-1.16. 225Michelle Cole, “Trojan on the Move: Nuclear Reactor Heads for Burial,” The Oregonian, August 7, 1999.

representative of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Indian Nation.226

In this role, he advocated for Native Americans’ interests in the cleanup of the

Hanford site.227 Jim described his nation’s stance as “neither pro-nuclear or anti- nuclear. We are pro-safety for all people.”228 Jim had concerns about the prospect of an accident involving the barge. If the reactor vessel sank in the Columbia River, it would likely be impossible to retrieve it, and the massive radioactive object would remain in the river. Jim also objected to the idea of the vessel being added to the large volume of radioactive materials already buried at Hanford. As an alternative, Jim favored the idea of leaving the Trojan reactor components in place for 75 years, like the cocooned reactors at Hanford.

Greg Kafoury, the lawyer and activist who had cosponsored some of the ballot measures that challenged the Trojan reactor, also believed the reactor should be mothballed instead of being disassembled immediately.229 Leaving the reactor components in place for 50 to 100 years would allow some of its radioactivity to decay away, and in the meantime, it was possible that the United States would come up with a solution for its nuclear waste storage problem. Lloyd Marbet, another long- term Trojan opponent, also expressed concerns about the possibility of the vessel sinking to the bottom of the river.230 In spite of these objections, PGE still preferred

226Russell Jim to Dr. John Erickson, 24 September 1998, NRC ADAMS Public Documents. 227“In Memoriam: Russell Jim,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, https://www.atomicheritage.org/article/memoriam-russell-jim, accessed May 19, 2021. 228Russell Jim, interview by Cynthia Kelly, Tom Zannes, and Thomas E. Marceau, Voices of the Manhattan Project, September 2003. 229Michelle Cole, “Trojan on the Move: Nuclear Reactor Heads for Burial,” The Oregonian, August 7, 1999. 230“Oregon Nuclear Reactor Goes Gentle (Very) Into the Night,” New York Times, August 7, 1999.

immediate disposal of the reactor. In October 1998, nearly six years after the reactor had shut down, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the plan for transporting the reactor up the Columbia River.231 The reactor vessel left the Trojan site early on Saturday, August 7, 1999, and arrived at Hanford late Sunday night.232

The reactor vessel completed the trip without getting stuck at the bottom of the

Columbia River, but its intended destination (a trench on the Hanford Nuclear

Reservation) was not an ideal outcome from the activists’ perspective.

The most dramatic moment in Trojan’s decommissioning occurred at 7:00 am on Sunday, May 21st, 2006.233 This was the time chosen for the demolition of the plant’s 499-foot cooling tower. The implosion lasted only a few seconds, and the dust settled within minutes. Not everyone was happy to see the tower come down. Many former employees were among the spectators. One of the described the moment as

“bittersweet,” and another said it was “like losing a friend.”234 Even among Trojan’s opponents, the demolition was not seen as a simple victory. Lloyd Marbet, also present to witness the event, had opposed the destruction, preferring that the cooling tower should remain standing as a reminder of what had been and what still was going on at Trojan. He described the structure as “a monument to the failure of that technology and to the arrogance of the people promoting it.”235

231William F. Kane to Stephen M. Quennoz, 29 October 1998, NRC ADAMS Public Documents. 232These dates coincided with the anniversary of two of the Trojan Decommissioning Alliance’s occupations, which were scheduled to coincide with the week of Hiroshima Day and Nagasaki Day. This appears to be just a coincidence. Mark Larabee, “Trojan Reactor Travels 270 Miles Up Columbia without Incident,” The Oregonian, August 9, 1999. 233Hill, “Nine Seconds End Trojan Era.” 234Hill, “Nine Seconds End Trojan Era.” 235Hill, “Nine Seconds End Trojan Era.”

The reactor vessel and the cooling tower were alike in their massive size weight, but beyond that, it would seem that their differences should overshadow their similarities. The vessel was highly radioactive after seventeen years of exposure to the nuclear reactions sustained in the operating reactor’s fuel. The cooling tower, which had held water and steam only from the reactor’s “secondary” system, contained no radioactive materials. The visual impact of the two components differed as well. The reactor vessel spent nearly its entire existence hidden from view. During the years when the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant was operating, the vessel had been hidden from public view inside the reactor’s containment building. Preparations for disposal included filling the vessel with concrete, encasing it in steel, and wrapping it in plastic. Any spectators who saw the vessel during its shipment would have gotten a sense of its size and weight, but the public could not see the vessel itself under its packaging. The trucks and barge that transported the vessel displayed a few discreet radioactive materials placards, hardly visible from a great distance. Work crews wore no safety gear except hard hats. The vessel could have been any large piece of industrial equipment. Its two million Curies of radioactive material were invisible to onlookers.

The cooling tower, on the other hand, was conspicuous and highly visible from its construction to its destruction. Even though the cooling tower contained no radioactive material, people who saw it tended to perceive it as a nuclear thing, with the quality that Gabrielle Hecht calls nuclearity.236 Among Trojan’s supporters and

236Hecht, Being Nuclear, 3-4.

detractors, those who wanted to see the tower remain and those who were eager to see it fall, it was a symbol of the Trojan plant and nuclear energy in general. The 499-foot tower was the tallest structure on the site. To many people, the cooling tower was

Trojan. The characteristic hyperboloid shape had been associated with nuclear power plants in the public consciousness since the 1970s. The cover of the Trojan

Decommission Alliance’s handbook for their 1978 occupation featured a crossed-out image of a steaming cooling tower.237 The cooling tower’s demolition was a public event. The end of the cooling tower was, in many people’s perspective, the end of the

Trojan era. However, the spectacle of the cooling tower’s destruction overshadowed the fact some of Trojan’s most radioactive waste, its 781 spent fuel rods, remained on-site with no certain plans for removal.

The problem of Trojan’s spent fuel had been present throughout the plant’s operating history. As I have discussed above, the need for a national spent fuel repository was part of the conditions of each of the ballot measures that would have shut down Trojan, as well as the ballot measure that stopped further nuclear power development in Oregon. The question of what would happen to the fuel was raised as soon as PGE announced its decision to close down the plant.238 When the cooling tower imploded thirteen years later, the fuel was still on-site. The fuel rods had been moved to dry casks in 2003 for longer-term storage.239 At this point, the federal government was still working on its proposed nuclear waste repository, located at

237“Trojan Decommissioning Alliance Handbook,” 1978. 238Spencer Heinz, “Closure Not End of Trojan Problem,” The Oregonian, January 10, 1993. 239Peter Sleeth, “Answers to Your Trojan Concerns,” The Oregonian, May 14, 2006.

Yucca Mountain in Nevada.240 However, the Department of Energy, which was legally responsible for finding a home for the country’s spent nuclear fuel, stopped work on the project in 2010.241 Trojan’s spent fuel had to stay in Oregon indefinitely, with no permanent disposal options in the foreseeable future, just as anti-nuclear activists had feared from the beginning.

Conclusion

The most visible reminder of Oregon’s nuclear history, the Trojan Nuclear

Power Plant’s cooling tower, imploded in a cloud of dust on a May morning in 2006.

The reactor’s spent fuel remains on the site in non-descript cylindrical casks, a less conspicuous but far more troublesome part of Trojan’s legacy. Oregon’s exploration of nuclear energy was briefer than many other states. The Trojan plant, the state’s only power reactor, operated for only seventeen years. However, from the first days that the plant operated, it had begun producing nuclear waste that would remain radioactive for millennia. Anti-nuclear activists worked diligently over several decades to limit nuclear power development in the state, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but none of their efforts could unmake the waste that had already been produced.

Oregon’s anti-nuclear activists targeted the existing or potential nuclear sites that were close to home, but they also remained engaged with nuclear issues on a national and global scale. The Trojan Decommissioning Alliance’s primary goal was

240“Editorial: Take It Away,” The Oregonian, June 8, 2002. 241“DOE Asks to Halt Yucca Mountain,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 3, 2010.

to force the Trojan plant to shut down, but the group’s actions reflected its members’ beliefs about the risks of nuclear technology in general and their commitment to non- violent resistance. Even though the group never succeeded in forcing a shutdown, their actions increased awareness of the growing anti-nuclear movement. Activists brought nuclear power before Oregon’s voters repeatedly, including one ballot measure that blocked the development of plants other than Trojan. When Portland

General Electric eventually decided to shut down the plant for financial reasons,

Trojan’s opponents celebrated the closure but did not lose track of the problem they had been worried about all along, namely the long-term consequences of running a reactor with no definite plan in place for storing its waste.

The prolonged controversy over the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant sets it apart from the other reactors discussed in the previous chapters. Unlike OSU’s AGN-201 reactor and Hanford’s N Reactor, the Trojan plant faced challenges from the public from before its initial startup up to its early closure. However, the opposition to the

Trojan plant had its roots in some of the same factors that led to the closure of the N

Reactor and OSU’s failure to relocate its AGN-201 reactor. Each of the reactors was tied to nuclear weapons, through either regulatory policies, actual purpose of operation, or associations in public discourse. Connections between various aspects of nuclear technology influenced the circumstances of each plant’s closure and disposal.

Conclusion

In 1986 and 1987, voters in Washington and Oregon, respectively, voted overwhelmingly in favor of a pair of similar ballot measures. The ballot for

Washington’s Referendum Bill 40 asked, “Shall state officials continue challenges to the federal selection process for high-level nuclear waste repositories and shall a means be provided for voter disapproval of any Washington site?” More than 82% of

Washington voters answered yes.242 In a special election the following year,

Oregonians voted on Measure 1: “Shall state officials continue challenges to federal selection process for high-level nuclear waste repositories and seek greater role for

Oregon?”243 The greater role for Oregon was requested due to the state’s “close geographic and geologic proximity to the proposed Hanford site.”244 This measure also passed by a wide margin, with almost 75% of Oregon’s voters in favor of it.245

Both measures were backed by significant support from the respective states’ legislatures. Only six of Washington’s 147 senators and representatives had voted against the state’s referendum (along with six absences or abstentions).246 Oregon’s legislature supported that state’s measure unanimously.247

The two ballot measures show a shared concern among the people of

Washington and Oregon at the prospect of becoming the nation’s nuclear dumping

242Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Nuclear_Waste_Disposal,_Referendum_40_(1986), accessed May 22, 2021. 243Voters’ Pamphlet, State of Oregon General Election, May 19, 1987, 3. 244Ibid., 3. 245Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Challenge_Federal_Selection_of_Nuclear_Waste_ Repositories,_Measure_1_(May_1987), accessed May 22, 2021. 246Washington 1986 Voters & Candidates Pamphlet, 5. 247Oregon Voter’s Pamphlet 1987, 3.

ground. At the time, the Hanford site was one of the sites under consideration for the federal spent fuel repository that the Department of Energy was trying to establish. A voter’s pamphlet statement prepared by several legislators from Washington stated,

“we are not willing to become the nation’s nuclear waste site for the sake of political convenience.”248 The citizens and elected officials of the two northwestern states had reservations about the possibility of becoming the dumping ground for the country’s high-level nuclear waste, much of which would come from nuclear power reactors on the opposite side of the country. As previously discussed, the federal government eventually settled on Yucca Mountain in Nevada as its best option for a spent fuel repository, then put that project on hold without deciding on an alternate location.

Still, while Oregon and Washington have avoided the burden of storing the entire country’s spent fuel, both states possess their own spent fuel in what is essentially indefinite temporary storage. The AGN-201 reactor core remains at the

OSU Radiation Center. The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant’s spent fuel rods are stored at the former reactor site. The N Reactor and several of Hanford’s other former plutonium production reactors have been sealed at their original locations, or

“cocooned,” giving the nuclear material several decades to decay before permanent disposal. Instead of hosting a permanent repository for the country’s waste, Oregon and Washington join the rest of the country in finding alternate means of storing their own nuclear waste.

248Washington 1986 Voters & Candidates Pamphlet, 4.

Nuclear scientists saw deep connections between research reactors and nuclear technology as a whole, even though these small reactors did not produce electrical power or nuclear weapons material. In the case of the AGN-201 reactor at

Oregon State University, the connections were made clear by the complications that arose when the university tried to give the reactor away to another institution. The

Atomic Energy Commission promoted peaceful uses of atomic energy, including education of the public, but the regulatory, logistical, and financial burdens of reactor ownership were too great for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry to bear.

Mexico’s Instituto Politécnico Nacional had access to funding and expert staff, but a disagreement between the two countries’ governments prevented the transfer of the reactor. The United States Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act treated research reactors as inherently linked to the possibility of atomic weapons development and forbade any international transfer of nuclear fuel unless the receiving country proved it was for peaceful purposes. Mexico had been a leader in the movement against nuclear weapons regionally and globally, and the Mexican government was unwilling to satisfy these requirements from a country that had an enormous nuclear arsenal. A final effort to transfer the AGN-201, this time to Northwestern University, fell apart after the reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island. With public opinion turning against nuclear power, many universities, including Northwestern, decided to scale back their nuclear engineering programs instead of expanding them, and no American university wanted to go through the effort of acquiring the AGN-201. The small research reactor was decommissioned, some spare parts were given away to other schools that already owned similar reactors, and the fuel remained in indefinite storage at the OSU

Radiation Center. OSU’s nuclear engineering program had its roots in the AEC’s early motivations: promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear technology, support for nuclear weapons development, and training a workforce for the nuclear power industry. Thus, the desirability of the small, low-power AGN-201 reactor changed based on the prevailing attitudes toward other forms of nuclear technology.

The N Reactor at the Hanford site, with its dual purpose as an electrical generating plant and a plutonium production facility, was supposed to be a part of eastern Washington’s economic transition from military to civilian industry. The site was heavily contaminated from decades of radiological releases that the Atomic

Energy Commission believed were justified by the military’s demand for plutonium during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. The declassification of documents explaining this contamination drew the attention of the public to the Hanford site as a whole. Soon after that declassification, the explosion at the Chernobyl reactor raised questions about the safety of the N reactor, which had some characteristics in common with the Soviet power plant. The legislators who had control of Hanford’s budget felt that the United States did not have a great enough need for plutonium to continue operating the reactor. Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon chaired the committee that decided to shut down the N Reactor. His own experiences in Japan at the end of World War II had made him critical of nuclear weapons, and he approved of the closure as a step in the direction of disarmament. The N Reactor’s closure came about because the U.S. government no longer felt that their demand for plutonium justified the risks that it had posed all along.

Activists who opposed the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant saw that reactor as representative of the greater threat of nuclear technology as a whole. The Trojan

Decommissioning Alliance tried to force the plant to shut down through protests.

While they did not succeed in that goal, they used their demonstrations and the resulting publicity as opportunities to draw the public’s attention to the risks of not just the Trojan plant, but also nuclear weapons and nuclear power in general. A series of ballot measures challenged the Trojan plant and other nuclear activities in the state.

While Portland General Electric prevailed in each of the elections that targeted their plant, activists succeeded in stopping any other power reactors from being built in the state and placed new limits on radioactive waste disposal. The Trojan plant closed more than twenty years before its expected end date, largely due to construction and maintenance issues that repeatedly led to costly repairs. The antinuclear activists who had argued for the plant’s closure celebrated this outcome, but they regretted the large amounts of radioactive materials that were transported elsewhere or left behind at the former Trojan site. The activists’ strategies focused on the Trojan plant, but their interests and concerned extended to nuclear technology as a whole.

At each of these nuclear sites, the people with an interest in these reactors felt that there were inherent connections between different aspects of nuclear technology.

Institutions and governments typically tried to acquire research reactors to support their goals of developing nuclear weapons, nuclear power, or both. Thus, the feasibility and desirability of acquiring one of these reactors depended on the regulatory, political, and societal standing of nuclear weapons and power in a given time and place. Although the Hanford site released massive amounts of radioactive

contamination, the full extent of which might never be known, this history of contamination was not the immediate cause of the N Reactor’s closure. Instead, it was comparisons to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that swayed public opinion and congressional decisions against the N Reactor. The activists who opposed the Trojan

Nuclear Power Plant had dreams of a completely non-nuclear future. When the

Trojan plant eventually closed, their celebrations were limited by the knowledge of the radioactive material that the plant left behind. The demolition of the plant’s cooling tower, which was the most visible structure at the site but which contained no radioactive contamination, marked the apparent end of the Trojan era. The reactor’s highly radioactive spent fuel rods remained at the site, under heavy supervision but easily overlooked by the general public. On one level, the nuclearity of each of these three sites is obvious. After all, each one was a reactor, capable of sustaining a chain reaction of fissioning uranium nuclear for one purpose or another. However, the people who made decisions about the closure and disposal of each site were influenced by the connections that they saw as inherent between various forms of nuclear technology.

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