Oregon Public Broadcasting

An Idaho company says it’s at least one year away from submitting the paperwork to build a nuclear power plant about an hour’s drive south of Boise. 

Alternative Energy Holdings says it has the land and local buy-in to construct what it’s calling the “Idaho Energy Complex” outside the town of Bruneau.

In Washington State, the utility consortium Energy Northwest says it will probably enter the race to build a new nuclear power plant too, though it’s not saying where, or when.

Energy Northwest spokesman Brad Peck says the region has said ‘no’ to conventional coal plants.  Peck says hydro-power expansion is off the table too.

Brad Peck: "There are some new technologies like the integrated gasification combined cycle project that Energy Northwest has proposed for the Port of Kalama which we do think would be a viable option. But if we rule that out, then the list becomes very short and nuclear starts moving up that list very rapidly."

Energy Northwest owns and runs the region’s only nuclear power plant outside Richland, Washington.

Tuesday, a New Jersey company became the first to seek a federal permit to build a next generation nuclear power plant in south Texas.