DENVER — Denver International Airport’s plan to explore nuclear energy as a future power source drew sharp concern from residents in District 11, who pressed airport officials for answers during a public meeting Tuesday night.

DIA CEO Phil Washington met with community members who live near the airport after the city announced it is evaluating alternative energy options to support the airport’s continued expansion. DIA handled a record-breaking 82.3 million passengers last year, and officials say long-term growth will require new, reliable, low-emission sources of power. One option under consideration is nuclear energy — a possibility that has stirred unease among nearby residents.

“People are scared,” Denver City Councilor Stacie Gilmore said. “People are really concerned about something being done out here without fully understanding the implications of it.” 

She said the August announcement by Washington and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston that the city would investigate nuclear energy came before the council was briefed on the feasibility study. Gilmore, who represents District 11, said she wants nuclear energy removed from the list of potential options.

“They want to release this request for information (RFI) in January of next year and include nuclear reactors on it without any conversation with people who have lived in this community for 30, 40, 50 years,” she added. “Asking them to take the nuclear option off would do a world of good.”

Gilmore said she hopes to have other agencies and organizations brought into ongoing discussions, including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Denver Water.

When asked why community consultation followed the August announcement, DIA senior vice president of communications Stacey Stegman told 9NEWS, “We apologize for doing that in that order.” 

Stegman added, “I think at the time, the thought was ‘Let’s just be very transparent that this is something that we want to study. We know that many people got very worried about that.”

DIA said it plans on continuing to engage with the community and seek out input for its RFI. While small modular reactors are one option, they are also examining the merits of wind, solar and geothermal energy. 

Thomas Albrecht is the director of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Center at Colorado School of Mines. He doesn’t believe people should be fearful of nuclear power, particularly the type of reactor being examined for use in Denver. 

“The heart of science is skepticism,” he offered. “And you need to have experts talk to the stakeholders and the local community in general.”

According to Albrecht, modern nuclear reactors differ significantly from older, large-scale plants that have largely shaped public perception. 

“The reactors that people think of are very large gigawatt-sized reactors that sometimes take decades to build and occupy small town kind of footprints,” he said. “That’s not the type of reactor that the Denver airport is looking at.”

According to Albrecht, today’s advanced designs are engineered with features that address a number of historical safety concerns. 

“Chernobyl was a very bad reactor design; it was Soviet-era construction and that combination is what led to that disaster,” he said. “Today, a modern reactor is passively cooled…and some of the types of reactors that are being considered for the airport don’t even use water as a coolant. They use things like molten salts and molten metals.”

While DIA’s request for proposal is expected early next year, Stacey Stegman said it could potentially be years before a final decision is made on how to move forward. 

“We can determine what the trade-offs are, what’s the benefits, what’s not so good about something and then we can pass that along as a blueprint to go back to the community and say, ‘Here’s what we’re thinking,'” she said.