Nuclear waste nearby

To The Eagle,

Trojan Park stores 450 tons of highly-radioactive nuclear waste inside 34 dry casks just 196.94 feet from the Columbia River. Inside each of the 34 dry casks, stored out in the open, are 781 highly-radioactive, spent fuel rods that once powered Trojan’s nuclear reactor. Inside these spent fuel rods are pellets with ionizing radiation a.k.a. radioactive isotopes: uranium-238 (half-life 4.5 billion years) and plutonium-23, (half-life 24,100 years).

Medical reports – from over the decades and abroad – state any exposure to the nuclear industry’s ionizing radiation will damage your DNA and result in: cancers, neurological diseases, and tumors of the brain and central nervous system. Diagnoses present decades later due to the insidious and latent nature of being exposed. Ionizing radiation is invisible, silent, odorless, tasteless, and weightless.

The dry casks will be 20 years old in 2026 and were made by the now-defunct Sierra Nuclear Corporation. They were licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for only 20 years. The internal heat is between 300-400 degrees Fahrenheit due to the highly radioactive spent fuel rods. They are exposed repeatedly to rain, wind, and sun with increasingly-hot, summer temperatures. PGE claims to check for leaks on a “quarterly basis”.

Trojan Park is too close to major metro areas: 42 miles Northwest of Portland and 48 miles Southwest of Vancouver. From 2006 - 2025 Trojan Park hosted “Trojan Relays” a 10-mile running race for student athletes. Trojan Relays should change locations for 2026.

Located within 300 miles of 5 active volcanoes and on the Pacific Ring of Fire an earthquake could trigger a significant tsunami and cause the Columbia River to flood the dry casks. Other natural threats are wildfires, terrorism, and nuclear war.

Google “Trojan Park” and zoom down to the ground level. The 34 white circles are terrorists’ targets. Alternate renewable energy solutions to be implemented instead of nuclear power include: solar, wind, tidal, micro-hydro, geothermal, and kinetic. PGE needs to close their park. We have notified our elected government officials to close Trojan Park.

Jill Murphy Long, Portland, Ore.