November 14, 2023
Illinois has wisely taken steps to legalize new nuclear power, but vague definitions and arbitrary limits could stifle its options for the clean energy transition.
After weeks of deliberation in the annual veto session, Illinois’ General Assembly passed SB 2473, which lifts the state’s decades-old ban on new nuclear power plants, a promising step towards securing the state’s clean energy future. Nuclear energy provides over 50% of Illinois’ electricity, with 11 reactors across 6 sites that form the crown jewels of its ultra-clean power system. However, the bill signed into law disappointingly restricts new construction to only small modular reactors (SMRs) under 300 megawatts, a move that could stifle meaningful climate and clean energy progress in the state.
In June, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 76–which would have lifted the moratorium on all new nuclear power— with a supermajority. This achievement recognized the invaluable role that nuclear power, both existing large reactors and potential new builds, plays in achieving deep decarbonization. However, Governor Pritzker vetoed the bill, citing concerns about ambiguous definitions and potential financial burdens on ratepayers. This critique overlooked that the Illinois Commerce Commission rigorously evaluates power plant proposals for economic viability and public interest and that Illinois operates in a merchant electricity market, where private companies, not ratepayers, bear the financial risk of new energy projects. This market structure already safeguards ratepayers, rendering the proposed cap redundant.
Additionally, the recently passed bill’s 300 MW threshold excludes promising projects from being built in the state. Natrium, for instance, is a 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor by TerraPower and GE Hitachi that aims to repower a retiring coal plant in Wyoming by the end of the decade. This transition would maintain employment levels while increasing wages and decreasing localized air and water pollution.
Westinghouse’s 1,110 MW AP1000 has the most supply chain and construction experience on the market, earned through hard lessons in Georgia. Illinois has several large single-unit coal stations that could be elegantly replaced by similar-sized nuclear units. Would it be more economical to build four SMRs or one large reactor to replace them? The option to seriously ask and answer that question is now closed by SB 2473.
NuScale, an early small modular reactor developer with substantial federal backing, recently withdrew plans to build a plant in Idaho after failing to secure enough electricity purchase agreements. Updated cost estimates that came in higher than initial projections drove the decision. This underscores the fact that we don’t have a crystal ball to foresee what will make the most sense financially. As the future unfolds, economic factors may favor large, medium, or small reactors. It behooves policymakers to make energy policy that is flexible, not narrow and restrictive.
Reducing barriers for all nuclear energy projects, regardless of the size, is neither a novel nor untested policy. Our neighbors to the north in Canada see value in building both large and small reactors. They are in the process of building four of GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 units while envisioning an additional 17,800 megawatts of small and large nuclear by 2050.
The new law also empowers the Illinois Emergency Management Agency to oversee nuclear plants, despite the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)’s sole federal regulatory authority. Additional state-level rules risk illegal overreach while burdening new projects with duplication and uncertainty. This overreach into federal jurisdiction sends the wrong signal to companies considering investing in Illinois.
Other states exploring new nuclear should not view Illinois’ selective and restrictive approach as a model. While some compromise was needed, the best outcome would preserve regulatory jurisdiction, let nuclear innovators and utilities determine optimal sizing, and allow the market to select economic winners, rather than politicians.
Overall, Illinois’ recognition of nuclear power’s necessity is welcome. All parties agree nuclear must play a role in Illinois’ clean energy future. Other states should emulate this sentiment while learning from the law’s limitations. With pragmatism and commitment, a clean energy future fueled by abundant nuclear power is within reach.
Eric G. Meyer is the Executive Director of Generation Atomic, a national non-profit organization growing a movement to fight for the atomic energy of today and tomorrow. Since 2017 they’ve reached millions of people over social media and empowered tens of thousands to contact their elected officials in support of nuclear power.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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4-300MW SMRs would produce slightly more power than a single 1100MW unit BUT would the 4-SMRs require more materials to build (Concrete, steel, etc)? Thereby having a letter initial carbon footprint.
letterlargerBut if one of the smaller units went offline, the entire output would not be lost.
How often is that likely to occur?
Much better from a routine maintenance / re-fuel point of view.
You can schedule individual unit shut-downs.
Just like they do with coal fired units.
Unless the cause is economics.
I will keep is simple for all the stupid commentators.
For example, if your roof top PV system that produces $200 worth of electricity per year needs a $2000 component replaced, it will not get fixed.
If your 5 year old BEV needs a new battery it will not get fixed.
My last nuke plant was 1600 MWe with features to reduce the cost of major repairs. The first of that design was built to replace 2 800 MWe which are still running.
Why would you build a a small output 1100 MWe?
I was working on a life extension project for a single unit 600 MWe nuke plant but it was determined to not be economical.
For the record I have worked at 4 reactors in Illinois. In the navy we needed small realtors that would fit in the Hull of a ship.
Illinois is not a ship and you can put a reactor with large building.
SMR are an invention of politicians so I not surprised that is what they like.
I thought it was because Pritzker is a democrat and therefore only proposes solutions for problems that don’t exist and are not proven economical or effective.
If you mean carbon dioxide, let’s “follow the science” as we’re regularly ordered to, so please start being scientifically precise in our words.
To the point of pedantry, if so.
This –> climate and clean energy progress
is not necessary.
Per the data, there IS no climate problem.
Moreover,
Coal is clean enough. Natural gas is clean enough.
NUCLEAR POWER IS WONDERFUL — per se.
And if new nukes were built so as to not need to be shut down every 2 years to be refueled, it would be even better.
Everything has to be taken off-line for maintenance at regular intervals.
If there isn’t a major problem- how long is that likely to take? And, how often for routine maintenance?
About three weeks every two years. Most of the routine maintenance is done at the same time.
US nuke plants have 95% CF.
My dad was against the construction of the, at the time, Virginia Electric and Power CO Surry NUKE power plant. He complained about the cost of the construction. Him being a Plank Owner of the Enterprise having spent 5 years on that Nuke ship and also working at that time at the Newport News shipyard building Nike subs and aircraft carriers, I didn’t understand his complaints.
Surry’s 2 reactors, brought online in 1971 and 1972 have now been licensed for 80 years of operation.
VEPCO also built a 2 unit Nuke at North Anna that came on line in 1978 and 1980. They have been given the FIRST 20 year extension to a total of 60 years license.
Current customers are really lucky to have those 4 reactors, especially with the forced by the Democrat legislation Requiring Dominion to build the very expensive offshore wind project. Each site was originally built to accommodate 4 reactors.
North Anna has a valid license to build a 1520 MWe GE Hitachi ESBWR reactor at the site issued in 2017 and good for 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Simplified_Boiling_Water_Reactor
What’s a Plank Owner?
Someone who was assigned to a ship or boat when it was commissioned.
“I didn’t understand his complaints.”
That is what sailors do!
I was a plank owner of USS Texas CGN-39 and nuclear trained.
Some trivia about the times. POTUS Carter was not nuclear trained. Selected for the program but left the navy to grow peanuts.
Virginia is a coal mining state but has the largest uranium deposit in North America. It is against the law to mine uranium in Virginia.
Burning coal can be made pretty clean. But what about coal mining? Here at WUWT we talk about “clean” EVs actually have a lot of dirty energy used to make them, especially in mining lithium and other rare earth minerals
So is there a clean, economical way to mine coal? That’s the issue with coal. Coal mining is environmentally messy, to say the least.
Messy, maybe, but hardly “dirty” in the environmental sense!
Open pit coal mines can be restored. Many have not been- but they could be. Of course not restored 100% but so what- we’ve impacted the s**t out of the planet and we simply need to. We can’t do permanent serious damage to Gaia. She’s pretty tough.
There is a lot of empty land just southwest of my house, and to my horror some years ago, a company came on to that land and started strip mining for coal. It was a small operation but as you can imagine, I wasn’t too happy having a strip mine in my back yard.
But everything turned out good. The coal company decided to cease operations (not sure why) and they came in there and restored the land and did an excellent job and you could walk across that land today and never know there had been any strip mining at all.
Restoration of the land properly means retaining the topsoil nearby and quality work by guys with giant machines. If done right, yes, you’ll hardly see the difference. It would be nice if we could have a decent standard of living without messing up the planet, but that’s not possible, so less mess it up, have our nice standard of living, then restore the land as well as possible.
For many years I was anti-coal but not anymore.
I am anti starving and freezing in the dark with cholera. Three days of that before giving Janice Moore food, heat , and antibiotics will redefine messy.
Water is better, food is better, energy is better.
Until there is something build in the real world I call SMRs and green hydrogen a scam.
At least get some real reactors online – but after the cost and time overruns in Europe and the Us with the last ones, guess it’s hard to find investors.
Power generation, dispatchability and distribution is a highly contested industry all around the world.
Maybe the best thing right now would be for all governments, NGOs and other armchair quarter-backs like environment activist groups to be totally excluded from involvement, and clear the field for organisations and financiers who are willing to back their judgement and capabilities to get on with providing whatever solutions / products they have in their bags, and offer electricity supplies to customers on a competitive basis.
Just as the industry was in its origins.
The REAL scam is so-called “renewables, wind and solar.
Short life, environmentally destructive in construction, use and disposal.
Parasitic to electricity supply systems.
Massive costs for implementing intermittent unreliable electricity that pushes the cost of supply up by huge margins, even with only a small infection of renewables.
You need to learn to see a SCAM when its right in front of you.
I am an investor because I worked on those projects. You are welcome.
So tells us about all the major projects you worked that were under budget and on schedule.
As others have said, if there were truly an existential crisis from burning fossil fuels then nuclear is a proven solution. Scratch beneath the surface and becomes clear the real motivation is not protecting the environment or preserving the climate.
Story tip – yet another east coast state has signed the death warrant for new car dealerships in their state:
New Jersey To Ban Sale Of New Gas-Powered Vehicles By 2035https://weather.com/news/climate/news/2023-11-22-new-jersey-new-car-gasoline-ban?cm_ven=hp-slot-2
Sorry my link wasn’t separated –
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/2023-11-22-new-jersey-new-car-gasoline-ban?cm_ven=hp-slot-2
How is the California CARB allowed to make these regulations? If this is a government function, surely it falls under the EPAs mandate. When Arizona tried to enforce immigration laws, the courts struck that down because it was federal jurisdiction. How is this different, other than being what the EPA wants?
“How is the California CARB allowed to make these regulations?”
California is special in the law.
We shouldn’t be held hostage to radical leftists in California.
the disease is metastasizing
Regarding the image at the top: for greens, it’s a symbol of Satan. For me, it’s a symbol of power! Great power! F*****g awesome power! Yuh, I don’t really want one next to my house but the big ones could be seperated by quite a distance, I presume. Lots of places to put them not near homes- and if it put next to some homes- pay those homeowners to make them feel better! That wouldn’t cost much compared to the power plant. Like the few homes that get water problems if fracking is nearby- even if the problem can’t be proven to be from the fracking- just to reasonably compensate them.
Illinois isn’t serious. There are NO existing commercial SMRs. Lots of proposals but no takers. The Navy SMR stuff cannot be used commercially for three reasons.
More green virtue signaling, just like NJ just banned new ICE vehicles as of 2035. Won’t happen.
Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors are the answer….and have been the answer for over 60 years…..decades of development have been lost becuz of “breeder” reactors getting the money and thorium being abandoned. BIG MISTAKE.
It is but one of several potentially viable fourth Gen possibilities. Molten salt reactors can also use the uranium fuel cycle, which has the advantage of consuming most of the spent nuclear fuel that has not been reprocessed. Covered all the then plausible 4G concepts in essay Going Nuclear in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Also covered those that are NOT plausible, like NIF and ITER.
Most intriguing was Skunkworks ‘high beta’ magnetic confinement fusion. There was a very promising TED talk with early experimental results , and then silence. I suspect the feds put a secrecy clamp on that ASAP, for obvious reasons. If it proves out, Navy is out of the fission business with its replacement reactor problems.
US Navy and all US commercial reactors are LWR. The difference is commercial reactors run at full power to maximize power generation. Navy reactors run at low power most of the time so they do not need to be refueled very often.
I am not a reactor engineer, I do not design the fuel assemblies. Every two years commercial reactors gets new fuel assemblies that include new innovations.
I do not know much about paper reactors because no one has paid me to operative them. I like TED talks because who does like a a steaming load of BS? Who does not like a bad zombie movie?
Because of thermal efficiencies related to the size of boilers and piping, small reactors don’t make sense. Nuclear power is an example of bigger being better.
Small reactors can be built in a factory and the units can be “stacked” to provide the needed power. If power is local, large overhead power lines across the country side are not needed. Repair and replacement of reactors the size of a shipping container is fairly easy. An extra reactor can be standby if needed. Thorium power is not bomb material and meltdown is near impossible.
We have our foot in the door, start building them. We are going to need hem when all the wind and solar are in the scrap heap.
Before any government thinks about building nuclear, they need to take a serious look at the
paper-work required and rationalize it. You can likely cut the price in half just doing that.
What about tried-and-true, Canadian Candu nuclear reactors?
They look like a good design to me. What advantages do more modern designs have over Candu reactors?
LWR require enriched fuel and heavy water moderated reactors do not. CANDU works for Canada.
The process of enriching has improved significantly since WWII. The cost of fuel assemblies is not significant for LWR.
wait till 2025, see if the Polaris FRC fusion reactor pans out