“If anything could cut my bills in half, it's fine by me.”

by Nate Raymond

GALENA -- At Archie's Yukon Inn, on a quiet overcast afternoon in March, the owner flipping burgers is still reeling from the restaurant's $1,689 monthly electrical bill and $1,080 heating bill.

photo by John Wagner Victor Mashall minds the counter of the Hobo Bar in Galena. Victor is married to owner Marlene Marshall.

Last year the same bills were about $1,099 and $900, respectively.

“The electricity is killing me,” says Marlene Marshall, the owner of Galena's only remaining restaurant. “I can't make ends meet. It's ridiculous.”

At home, the electric bill clocked in at $562, up from $205, says her husband, Victor. Manning the bar a few yards from the grill, he says the prices haven't always been this out of control.

“This just started,” Victor says. “I don't know what's going on.”

Finding other people with gripes about their energy bills isn't hard. At Interior Hunting, one of three grocery stores in town, Randy Esmailka, a customer on his way out the door after an afternoon coffee, says he got hit with three lighting bills in one month that were more than $400.

“A lot of people are falling behind because of that,” Esmailka says.

In a given year, Galena burns around 600,000 to 650,000 gallons of diesel for electricity at a cost of about $1.5 million, says city manager Marvin Yoder. Fluctuations in the fuel price, now averaging $2.50 per gallon, could devastate the local economy, he says.

“I mean, we have no guarantee that it won't be $3 or $4 in a few years,” Yoder says.

Add to those problems the difficulty of transporting diesel to Galena in general. No roads run into the largely Athabascan village, and barge service to Galena is limited to three to four ice-free months.

photo by John Wagner An aerial view of Galena shows snaking patterns of water and marsh. Nuclear plant considerations include variable building foundations and permafrost.

The Nuclear Option

To address these issues, city officials want to literally nuke their energy problems away.

Their hope is that by collaborating with the Japanese company Toshiba, a small-scale nuclear reactor will replace the village's six diesel electrical generators and cut electricity costs from $0.34 to $0.10 per kilowatt. But that depends on finding a safe place to build it, raising an estimated $25 million for construction and addressing opposition concerns.

And as fuel prices increase, villagers could find that switching to electrical home heating would save them bundles with the reactor in town.

At first glance, Galena, population 750, doesn't seem like a city on the forefront of American nuclear energy. This is a village where the city hall and clinic are separated by only a hallway. This is a village where a liquor store fight is the big gossip at Archie's less than an hour later. This is a village where almost every wood house and cabin stands on two-yard-high pilings to avoid thawing the perennially frozen ground below.

Galena had already been trying to find an alternative energy that would reduce energy costs around town when officials with Toshiba Corp. of Japan approached city manager Marvin Yoder in 2003 about installing a nuclear reactor.

“At the time it seemed like a very worthwhile thing to at least look at,” Yoder says.

Terry Demoski, a 46-year-old cook, has $300 in lighting bills. A nuclear reactor would solve a lot of problems, he says. “It'd bring jobs and power up the town,” he says.

At the post office, Charles Green, a lifelong Galena resident and a city council member, says the city needs to make the switch to nuclear if its bills are ever going to drop.

“We just have to do something about it,” he says.

Jennifer Hildebrand, a behavioral health worker who has lived in Galena for a decade, agrees. “You got to look for something for it, some sort of alternative,” she says.

An Underground Nuclear Battery

Toshiba's reactor, the untested 4S, for “super safe, small and simple,” is designed specifically for remote locations like Galena. Toshiba says it can go 30 years without refueling, leading some to compare it to a battery. Uranium or uranium-plutonium alloys would fuel the reactor.

Nuclear reactors exist in 31 states, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, but this would be Alaska's first commercial stride into nuclear power.

Other Alaska villages have expressed interest in the Galena project. Recently, the city of Nome signed up as a member of the Small Power Reactor Association, Galena and Toshiba's lobbying arm in Washington, D.C.

Neither Galena nor Toshiba have made any official submissions yet to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for design or construction, says Scott Burnell, a commission spokesman. Both Toshiba and Galena have spoken with the NRC, Burnell says, but at the moment discussions are in the “informal stages.”

“The ball is in their court,” Burnell says.

Toshiba has completed the preliminary safety information document, the first step in getting NRC approval. The document is undergoing translation from Japanese and should be ready to submit to the NRC around April 2006.

Huge Costs, Small Village

The cost of building the reactor would be $25 million, according to a Department of Energy study. But because the nuclear “battery” would probably require little maintenance, Galena hopes the operation costs would be minimal.

The DOE study, conducted in 2004 by the University of Alaska Anchorage, found the reactor would be the best bet for lowering the town's electric bills when compared to other alternative forms of energy.

Not only would the town save money on its electric bills, the excess energy the reactor would produce could be sold to neighboring communities, Yoder says.

City council members unanimously approved a resolution in December 2004 to look into Toshiba’s proposal. The resolution expires this December, but by then, Yoder expects to have competed a series of white papers that investigate the safety and operational support for a reactor.

Some of those began to hit Yoder’s desk in April. One report concludes the 4S would need two licensed operators and one auxiliary operator in case of an emergency.

But another says security personnel, which would likely be less than at typical reactors, would be “the most significant factor in plant operating costs,” the report says. The 2004 DOE study estimated anywhere from four to 34 guards.

More white papers are forthcoming. The city will look at emergency plans, the containment area and waste disposal. And because the reactor is designed to be buried underground, a seventh paper will delve into what would happen if an earthquake struck.

Reaction Swells

Sidney Huntington, the village elder at age 91, says that although he was concerned about where the reactor would be built, he, like much of the rest of Galena, supports the project.

“The people around here are pretty much for it,” he says. “There's a lot that are tired of waiting and are saying 'I told you so,' but I'm not much for the told-you-so's.”

photo by John Wagner 91-year-old Galena elder Sidney Huntington chuckles as he speaks his mind on the pros and cons of a nuclear battery in the village.

Huntington, who is proud of Galena's achievements in education and development, says he feels the village is on solid ground with the project.

“The whole world is looking at what we're doing,” he says.

While local opposition appears to be minimal, some outside groups have already taken stands against it. The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council has passed two resolutions so far against the transportation and storage of nuclear products on or near the river.

“Any kind of accident could be catastrophic for the people and wildlife and vegetation, and it would be around for millions of years,” says Darcie Warden, head of education and training for the council.

Yoder says he expects to address those concerns soon.

“I understand that all those concerns are legitimate concerns,” Yoder says. “Our job is to answer those questions before we make the final decision to move forward.”

Reality Check

How realistic that plan is remains uncertain. The NRC hasn't licensed a reactor construction permit since 1978. And that was in Sharon Harris, N.C., far different from Galena, a city reachable only by airplane or barge.

Toshiba's designs could also cause problems. Traditionally, nuclear reactors in the United States have used water as a coolant. But Toshiba's reactor involves a molten sodium coolant in order to reach higher reactor temperatures than other reactors.

photo by John Wagner Galena residents Andy Sommer, left, and Dennis Sweetsir laugh it up in the Hobo Bar as they share their opinions of the proposed nuclear battery.

That specific method has never been used in the United States commercially, says Burnell, the NRC spokesman. Approval of a water-cooled reactor can take up to five years, but Burnell says the Toshiba design will mean “getting into areas the NRC has not had experience.”

More recent developments have threatened to kill the project. In August, the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission voted to close the Galena Forward Operational Location.

The base consumes 500,000 gallons of diesel a year just for heating, Yoder says, and in order to ensure the reactor project continues, the city must find other uses for the complex. Yoder says the school and several businesses are exploring taking up residence when the Air Force leaves.

With all those obstacles, the project will likely take over a decade to complete. Back at Archie's, though, the barflies just want it finished.

“Go for it,” says Andy Sommer, a retired electrician. “Get it done. If anything could cut my bills in half, it's fine by me.”

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