Outages, 24 hours: (696) 412-0511

Oregon NuclearSixes River Station · Curry County, Oregon

The company

About Oregon Nuclear

Oregon Nuclear Generating Company is a regulated utility that owns and runs Sixes River Nuclear Generating Station and the South Coast Loop, the transmission and distribution grid the station feeds from Bandon to Gold Beach. Its headquarters are at the station. It has done one thing, on one stretch of coast, since the late 1980s.

The 230 kV switchyard: steel structures, breakers and the first towers of the South Coast Loop against the sky
  • 2,270 MWfrom two units
  • 1,140employees, most of them neighbors
  • 4substations on the South Coast Loop
  • 1thing we do

Who we are

A utility with one plant

Oregon Nuclear is a generating company and a distribution utility in one: it makes power at Sixes River and delivers it over its own wires to the towns around the station, selling what the South Coast cannot use to the state's grid at Coos Bay. Its rates are set by state energy officials in public proceedings; its operation is licensed and inspected by the federal regulators whose resident inspectors work inside the plant every day.

The company's whole business is the station and the loop. There is no other plant, no other state and no holding company above it. The 1,140 people who work here are operators, technicians, engineers, line workers, chemists, biologists, security officers, dispatchers and the staff who keep them fed and paid, and the leadership team sits in the same building as the control rooms.

Decisions about the plant are made by people who can see it from their kitchens. That is not a slogan; it is the company's structure, and the reason its community programs are run from the station and not from an office somewhere else.

Leadership

The people in charge

Six people, one building. Each is reachable by name: our email addresses are first initial and last name at oregonnuclear.com, so the Plant Manager is lvasquez@oregonnuclear.com, and the same rule is the login on every system the company runs.

  • Hal Dressler

    Hal Dressler

    Chief Nuclear Officer

    Hal Dressler has spent his working life in control rooms and the offices above them, the last stretch of it here. As Chief Nuclear Officer he is accountable for the safe operation of both units and for the independent oversight group that reports to him alone.

  • Lucia Vasquez

    Lucia Vasquez

    Plant Manager

    Lucia Vasquez runs the station day to day: the two control rooms, maintenance, engineering, radiation protection and the outage organization. She came up through operations and still walks the turbine hall most mornings.

  • Renata Whitlock

    Renata Whitlock

    Shift Supervisor, Unit 1 control room

    Renata Whitlock holds a senior operator's license and leads one of the crews that staff the Unit 1 control room around the clock. On shift, the decisions about the reactor are hers.

  • Desmond Okafor

    Desmond Okafor

    Grid Operations Supervisor

    Desmond Okafor dispatches the South Coast Loop: the substations, the feeders and the line crews from Bandon to Gold Beach. His desk decides what is switched, when, and on whose work order, and restores power after a storm.

  • Tom Brannigan

    Tom Brannigan

    Instrumentation & Controls Superintendent

    Tom Brannigan looks after the instruments, the control systems and the plant computers, from the annunciator panels in the control rooms to the grid operations console and its records.

  • Priya Raman

    Priya Raman

    Director of Communications & Community

    Priya Raman is the station's voice on the South Coast: the visitor center and its tours, the Sixes River Fund, the newsletter, the schools program and the emergency planning guide that reaches every household in the planning zone.

From the Chief Nuclear Officer

A statement

I am asked, at the fire station and at the harbor and once at a wedding, whether the plant is safe. The honest answer is that it is as safe as the people on shift tonight make it, and that everything about how this company is built exists to make their job possible: the three barriers, the inspectors with the keys to every door, the oversight group that reports to me alone and can stop anything, and the rule, which is real, that anyone on the site may stop a job that looks wrong and will be thanked for it.

We have run two reactors on this bluff for more than three decades without an event that affected anyone outside the fence. I do not say that to be admired for it. I say it because a record is a thing you are keeping, not a thing you have, and the people keeping it are your neighbors, and they would like you to know how they do it. That is what this website is for, and it is why the visitor center's door is open and the public meeting on our assessment is held in Port Orford every spring.

Come and look. Ask anything. The answers are not complicated, and we are not hiding any of them.

Hal Dressler
Chief Nuclear Officer

Accountable

What we answer for, and to whom

Safe operation
To the federal regulators who license the station, through their resident inspectors and the annual assessment.
The sea and the river
To state energy officials, who set the limits on the water we return and inspect the environmental program.
The emergency plan
To the county's emergency manager and the state, who drill it with us and grade the exercises.
Rates and service
To state energy officials in public rate proceedings, and to every meter on the loop.
The record
To the South Coast, at the public meeting in Port Orford each spring and on these pages.
Each other
To the rule that anyone may stop a job, and the oversight group that may stop anything.
CareersContactSafety

Main number (696) 412-0500. Media and community questions go to the Communications & Community office through it.