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It was only three words in an hour-long State of the Union speech last Wednesday, but President Obama’s mention of “nuclear power plants” materialized this week as a request for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy to receive an $844.6 million chunk of the federal energy budget.

About half of that money would go toward research and development. That is good news for universities such as Oregon State University, which is currently constructing a new nuclear reactor test facility to study the effects of cooling reactors with helium instead of water.

But Oregonians may have hard time swallowing the idea of the nation’s use of nuclear energy being expanded, according to Robert Grott, executive director of the Northwest Environmental Business Council. The state hasn’t had an active nuclear reactor since 1992, when operations ceased at the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.

“The move to explore nuclear energy is going to go forward, and fairly strongly so, in the U.S.,” Grott said. “But I don’t think we’ll see it in Oregon. There’s too much popular resistance.”

It is illegal for any new reactors to be built in Oregon. Voters in the 1980s approved a ballot measure to ban construction of any new nuclear power plants in the state without federally approved waste facilities. This followed the discovery of major building construction errors at Trojan, Oregon’s only commercial nuclear power plant. And after documents were leaked from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that said Trojan may be unsafe to operate, the plant was shut down and its 499-foot-tall cooling tower was demolished.

But Brian Woods, professor of nuclear engineering at OSU, said that even though construction of new nuclear reactors in Oregon is unlikely, nuclear energy shouldn’t be ruled out completely.

“Nuclear should have a place at the table as an environmentally friendly alternative energy,” Woods said. “It produces no greenhouse gases. It shouldn’t be all nuclear, because we should have a diverse energy portfolio.”

“On the surface (nuclear energy is) attractive for a lower state carbon footprint,” Grott said. “But what does it look like on a life cycle? Dealing with the implications of mining and disposing uranium could lessen some of the positive estimates.”

Nevertheless, research into potential uses for nuclear power continues in Oregon. OSU’s radiation center is home to a 1.1-megawatt TRIGA Mark II research reactor. Reed College also has a research reactor, which is run mostly by students. But much of the research taking place at university reactors has to do with other uses for nuclear power, not just energy production.

This year, the OSU’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics will construct a new building to house a one-quarter-scale reactor cooled by helium. The reactor won’t use nuclear fuel, but its use of helium could lead to a safer, more efficient reactor in the future, according to Woods.

“The advantage of using helium instead of water is you could run the reactor at higher temperatures and make electricity more efficiently,” Woods said. “Traditionally, reactors are cooled by water.”

Reactors cooled by water can achieve only 33 percent efficiency, while a helium cooled reactor could achieve 45 percent efficiency, Woods said. And the process of using helium has another welcome side effect.

“We may be able to use the higher temperatures from the reactor to make hydrogen relatively cheaply,” Woods said. “Hydrogen production is fairly expensive to do on a large scale, but using hydrogen in lieu of gasoline in vehicles means no greenhouse gases.”

Woods hopes the federal government’s new focus on nuclear energy will mean more money for his program, even if it doesn’t mean more nuclear power in Oregon.

Grott said Oregon will be in dire need of a new energy source in the not-so-distant future. Portland General Electric plans to phase out the use of coal at its Boardman Power Plant by 2020. The plant generates 15 percent of the power PGE delivers to its customers.

“It’s going to be hard for us to turn our backs on any sources of energy, especially if we reject coal,” Grott said. “I don’t think people realize how dependent we are on coal. We can’t get enough renewable energy fast enough to meet our needs. We haven’t had to make any hard choices yet.”