Gov. J.B. Pritzker has taken some heat for vetoing legislation to eliminate the state’s decades-old moratorium on constructing new nuclear power reactors.
Pritzker was asked about the topic again last week and he said he would sign a version of the bill if it limited new construction to only what are called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
“Small Modular Reactors are very beneficial,” Pritzker told reporters, noting that the technology wasn’t yet ready to deploy. “They do seem to work very well, and they do seem to be safe, but they’re going to be several years of testing yet ahead,” he said.
Asked how he could be confident of stopping a veto override, he said many legislators didn’t know that the bill had been changed. “In the last week, things go very quickly,” Pritzker said about the end of spring legislative sessions. “It isn’t known to every legislator that an amendment actually made a major change, not just a minor change.”
But legislators who shepherded the bill through the General Assembly have taken umbrage with the governor’s claim, noting that nine days passed between the final amendment’s introduction and the House’s floor vote. They also claimed they worked the final bill hard, and members were fully aware of what was going on.
Senate Bill 76 as originally introduced by Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) would’ve opened the door specifically to SMRs. Pritzker indicated last week he would’ve signed something similar to that bill into law had it not been so significantly changed. “I believe strongly that we should bring Small Modular Reactors to Illinois,” he claimed.
But Rezin then amended her bill to delete her previous SMR regulatory language and limited it to merely deleting the state’s longstanding nuclear moratorium language. Rezin’s bill was further amended in the House by Rep. Lance Yednock (D-Ottawa) to add in language requiring that all new nuke plants be an “advanced nuclear reactor” as defined in federal law. The governor claims drafting it that way would open the door to large-scale nuclear power plants, which he opposes. Others hotly dispute this notion, including Rezin.
The problem for Pritzker is that the bill passed the House with a strong, bipartisan majority of 84 votes, which is far more than the 71 needed to override his veto. The Senate, on the other hand, voted 36-14 to concur on Yednock’s amendment, the bare minimum needed for an override.
Rezin told a local radio station last week that House Speaker Chris Welch “has indicated he will not be calling the bill.” Pritzker’s veto message declared he vetoed the bill “at the request of the leadership team of the Speaker of the House and advocates.”
But the House speaker himself has made no such public comments on the legislation, and a Welch spokesperson told me, “We’re going to put this to the caucus before any decision is made for an override.”
“The amendment in the House was in direct response to concerns expressed by the governor, so this really came out of left field for everyone,” Senate Republican Leader John Curran told a reporter last week. Others have claimed the same thing.
But a review of email messages between the bill’s sponsors and others show only one from the governor’s office, and that email was a simple thanks for giving the office a heads up about Yednock’s House amendment.
“Senator Rezin and I spoke with the governor in the spring,” said Yednock. “He said he was supportive of nuclear. I can’t say there was more than that.”
Rezin said she and Yednock met with the governor for half an hour in the spring and the governor said he agreed with the concept of lifting the moratorium to make way for Small Modular Reactors.
Some of the nuclear energy proponents I’ve spoken with do seem to realize that if the governor successfully stops a veto override, their issue may stall out and even disappear.
The governor does appear to be playing both sides on this topic. The House speaker’s staff, after all, was involved with the amendment’s drafting, so proponents believe the governor was looped in all along. Some environmentalists don’t want anything to do with any nuclear restart, small or large. So the governor can appease them with the veto, but still publicly claim to be on the side of a zero-carbon energy source.
If he is bluffing, nuke proponents should call it, run a new bill that makes their intentions clear and put it on his desk.
- Donnie Elgin - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 9:24 am:
Pritzker’s position makes no sense – he’s for SMR but against large-scale facilities. SMR are unproven and due to design approvals and EPA/NRC regulations will be decades away from actual production - their profitability is unproven as the cost related to getting one sited and approved will be similar to a large-scale nuclear. Add to that IL has a fleet of aging Nuclear power stations that will need to be replaced as most have had one life extension – they also have decades-long ramps to completion.
- H-W - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 9:25 am:
=== In the last week, things go very quickly, Pritzker said about the end of spring legislative sessions. It isn’t known to every legislator that an amendment actually made a major change, not just a minor change. ===
Okay. We have been discussing this for the past few weeks. Clean bills, three readings, etc. are established parliamentary procedures intended to make sure those who have the power to vote, know what they are voting for or against.
Claiming that “procedures” (amendments) are behind his veto of the nuclear reactor bill makes Pritzker look hypocritical on the broader issue of cleaning up the legislative process.
I am not a fan of nuclear, nor am I willing to be an opponent. But beyond that, if Pritzker now seems willing to acknowledges Justice Holder-White’s opinion has merit, then by all means, fix the problem (with Pritzker’s implicit blessing).
- Don Howard - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 9:25 am:
“Small Modular Reactors are very beneficial,” Pritzker told reporters, noting that the technology wasn’t yet ready to deploy. “They do seem to work very well, and they do seem to be safe, but they’re going to be several years of testing yet ahead,” he said.
The first part of that statement is fantasy while the second part is fact.
SMRs arent’ a single technology. Literally dozens of designs with various configurations, chemical processes, waste signatures, etc. are being proposed, but none have yet to produce a single kilowatt of commercial power. They won’t for years, because not only is the technology not yet developed, but unless there is one design agreed upon by a critical mass of manufacturers, all of the efficiencies they claim arising from the modular design of the units evaporates. Given the nuclear industry’s abysmal record of achieving predicted goals, it’s just wishful thinking to believe that SMRs will solve anything.
Why not solve the nuclear waste issue first?
- Southern Belle - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 9:53 am:
To your point Rich, Rezin filed a new bill. Now lets see if the Governor really supports SMR’s. The fact is the MISO grid is in real trouble caused primarily by policies of the Biden admin. And
governors like JB Pritzker. This governor is beholding to the enviros who got nothing out of the vetoed bill and want to squeeze for more, crazy. Keep an eye on the final bill- Dem sponsor and enviro squeeze.
- Chicagonk - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 9:56 am:
Pritzker needs to avoid being captured by the no-alternative, degrowth environmentalist. Look at the current battle over carbon capture. Illinois has some of the most geologically stable substrata in the US in the St. Peter Sandstone formation. Ethanol is a huge industry in downstate Illinois from the farmers to the grain warehouses to the plants and everyone in between. It would be morally wrong to let perfect be the enemy of good, especially if perfect would cause significant economic depression for a wide swath of the state.
- Dotnonymous x - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 10:02 am:
Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.
- Telly - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 12:06 pm:
Arguing that the right-of-first-refusal bill might increase costs because it’s anti-competitive is a totally legitimate point. But the implication that there are ComEd-style ethical concerns related to the bill’s passage is a red herring from the Gov and the companies that want to bid on the project. The unions did the heavy lifting on that bill to ensure their members get the work. Ameren was along for the ride.
- Jibba - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 12:28 pm:
SMRs are untested at the commercial level. Changing laws to allow them at this point is not sensible. Allowing them to be installed within city limits for “research” as planned in Champaign is unimaginable.
- Rerwit - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 1:04 pm:
I saw this quote this morning from Team Pritzker. It seems very Blago like in its disdain for the GA. I wonder if the “backroom deals” are going to draw even more fed scrutiny.
“This is about Springfield having learned absolutely nothing from the trials that were taking place as they passed it,” Jordan Abudayyeh, the governor’s deputy chief of staff for communications told Playbook. “When the governor said the days of backroom deals for utility companies are over, he meant it.”
- TNR - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 1:32 pm:
== It seems very Blago like in its disdain for the GA. ==
I would not go quite that far, but it was an ill-conceived quote. I’m curious if the governor’s comms and leg staff coordinated on that response. I would hope the leg team objected. Not wise to imply your fellow Dems are on the take, particularly when those Dem legislators viewed the bill as an “ask” from the unions, not the utility.
- ha - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 1:53 pm:
There’s that talking point again.. “unions wanted it, not utility.” I’m sure Ameren was “along for the ride.” You know, the company that would stand to control and profit from billions in coming transmission investment. I’m sure Ameren had no idea what was going on.
- Telly - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 3:09 pm:
@ha
Nobody is arguing that Ameren doesn’t stand to make profits off the transmission lines. So too would the transmission companies who would like to bid on the work, but would be prohibited by the ROFR. No one’s looking to build and own the lines for charitable purposes. As mentioned above, cost is absolutely a legitimate argument for the governor and transmission companies to make. What is not legitimate is the notion that the bill passed because Ameren put together some sort of corrupt, Mike McClain-like lobbying scheme. That did not happen. The unions pushed the bill through, not Ameren.
- DuPage - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 4:16 pm:
I have to agree with Governor Pritzker that questions about safety of employees and the public need to be studied before allowing the small nukes into Illinois. Illinois has suffered a long history of irresponsible companies knowingly exposing workers to radioactive materials and telling workers they were safe. One company hired young women (AKA The Radium Girls), to paint glow in the dark paint on watch dials. Some were still in high school. These women were told the paint was harmless and to wipe the brushes to a fine point on their tongues. All of them contracted cancer and died. The owners of the company knew it was dangerous but did not tell the lower-level bosses about it.
Other companies caused radiation contamination by giving away millions of tons of dirt for free to anyone who wanted it. They did not tell people the dirt was radioactive. Large areas of West Chicago and unknown other areas in surrounding towns and unincorporated areas of DuPage County were contaminated. No one kept records of where this dirt went. They dumped some of their liquid waste into the sewer system, turning the entire sewage treatment plant into a EPA superfund decades-long cleanup project. Also, miles of drainage ditch, creeks and riverbanks had to be dug up and hauled away and restored with clean materials at billions of dollars of EPA expense. Meanwhile, former employees of the company are dying from cancers likely caused by radiation. Don’t let these sorts of things happen again.
https://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1592&context=essai
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-21-mn-13479-story.html
- Give Us Barabbas - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 6:42 pm:
DuPage, your citation about the radium girls is about an event from the 1920’s and the contaminated dirt story was something that happened in 1958, and neither of these incidents were power company or reactor-related. As far as reactors in Illinois we have been pretty safe, there was a tritiated water leak but tritium decays fast. And that’s old technology. SMR reactor designs use a different layout that doesn’t require water cooling and is meltdown-proof; any run-away reaction naturally poisons itself and comes to a halt just from internal heat. SMR’s are what can power the baseload and replace the aging Illinois nuclear reactor fleet safely. Coal and petro lobby is hiding behind fake “green” lobbies to try and hold back nuclear because they know it will drive them out of business some day.
- Jibba - Tuesday, Sep 5, 23 @ 8:49 pm:
===SMR reactor designs use a different layout that doesn’t require water cooling and is meltdown-proof; any run-away reaction naturally poisons itself and comes to a halt===
Haven’t we heard these types of promises umpteen times in the past, and they are usually untrue? The failure will occur, it is simply not currently conceivable. Testing the designs and using appropriate siting criteria are critical for their use in Illinois. For example, not requiring people to live literally yards away from proposed sites.