We considered the nuclear option for Oahu — but didn’t take it
by Jim Kelly | May 30, 2019
With evidence piling up that current measures aren’t getting the job done on climate change, a growing number of scientists and other credible advocates are making the case that nuclear energy is an intelligent option. The most recent argument for this approach was published in The New York Times on April 7. Read the article.
Though the state of Hawaii tightly restricted the development of nuclear energy as a power source decades ago, questions about Hawaiian Electric’s interest in nuclear still come up fairly often today, especially with Hawaii being the first state to commit to a 100 percent renewable, carbon-free future.
For the record, it’s not something we’re considering.
But there was a time when anything “atomic” was seen as the future and Hawaiian Electric was among the many utilities intrigued by nuclear as they tried to keep up with the growing postwar demand for electricity.
It was the space age, the jet age and the time of statehood, and by talking about nuclear power, Hawaiian Electric signaled it was a modern, progressive, high-technology outfit.
And so nuclear was among the options studied by Hawaiian Electric when it began planning new power plants in the 1950s. The valley site for the Kahe Power Plant was intentionally selected with the thought that the surrounding mountain ridges would help shield the rest of Oahu from radiation in the unlikely event of a release.
The company went with conventional oil-fired units at Kahe but after the first unit came online in 1963, the company said it was still studying “the economic feasibility of a nuclear plant there” and that “atom plants for the islands were seen as possible in about 25 years or 1977.”
Between 1958 and 1969, the company conducted four studies on whether nuclear power could work on Oahu. Each concluded essentially the same thing, which was summarized in the company’s 1970 annual report: “Use of nuclear power cannot be justified at the present time inasmuch as the smallest reactors presently available are too large to be integrated into our system.”
However, the company left the door open, saying “we will build a nuclear plant when the economic and other factors involved will justify our doing so.”
Even with the talk of a “nuclear renaissance” to fight climate change and a new generation of smaller nuclear plants, it’s hard to envision nuclear fitting into Hawaii’s energy picture given the renewable resources we have available.
Laying aside the considerable environmental, political and financial obstacles, flexible-fuel generators that can automatically ramp up and down work better with the ebb and flow of variable renewables like wind and solar; nuclear plants are designed to be on all of the time.
Still, Hawaiian Electric’s brief interest in nuclear energy is a fascinating piece of mid-century ephemera from the time when the only debate was how big an “atom plant” Oahu could handle.
Jim Kelly is the vice president of corporate relations at the Hawaiian Electric Company.
