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The moratorium has been in place for decades and was implemented
until a permanent waste storage option was made available.
Gov. J.B, Pritzker vetoed a bill that would have lifted the
moratorium on nuclear power construction. He has said he is in
favor of Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs, but says the
legislation was changed at the last minute.
“It was focused in part on allowing large scale nuclear plants
to be built in Illinois and that’s not what the bill was
originally intended to be about,” Pritzker said at a recent
event.
State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, introduced the bill because she
said other states, including Illinois neighbor Indiana, have
recognized just how “arbitrary and archaic these types of bans
are and moved to remove them.”
“The bill initially passed with super majorities in the Senate
and in the House, which should have sent a message to the
governor that the majority of senators and state reps supported
the bill,” Rezin said following the governor's veto.
To override a veto, it takes a three-fifths vote in both
chambers.
Rezin has since filed a new piece of legislation that she said
addresses the concerns of the governor and will allow Illinois
to fully embrace new nuclear energy technologies, like SMRs.
The idea of Small Modular Reactors was born following the 1986
Chernobyl disaster and the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan. SMRs
are smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, and can be
constructed at one location and then shipped and operated at a
separate site.
Illinois currently has six full-scale nuclear power stations, in
Braidwood, Byron, Clinton, Dresden, LaSalle and the Quad Cities.
The fall veto session begins in Springfield Tuesday.
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