Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, please

Posted in:

Illinois

Illinois could see more nuclear reactors by 2026

* From the story…

With bipartisan support, Illinois lawmakers [last] week eliminated the state’s nearly 36-year-long ban on construction of new nuclear reactors, opening the door for the development of emission-free nuclear power that proponents say will accelerate the state’s transition to clean energy.

* Last graf…

The law would take effect in 2026, and according to Rezin, could take anywhere from six years to a decade to obtain the permits necessary to build a new reactor in the state.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 12:10 pm

Comments

UI is planning to have regulatory approval by 2025 and operation by 2028. They will have it approved as a research reactor, which has a somewhat abbreviated approval process under the 104c approval pathway.

https://grainger.illinois.edu/news/webinars/microreactor?ref=usnc.com

Comment by Jibba Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 12:31 pm
SMR’s aren’t ready for prime time yet, as was shown recently with the shuttering of the SMR project in Utah.

https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-power-nuscale-clean-energy-wind-biden-7f3a7fe754b77d8d6cbad8662b87a9c3

This bill does open the door to moving forward if and when the technology and costs aren’t so prohibitive. That could be a long way off but the option is still there.

Comment by Frida's boss Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 12:31 pm
The US should have been building nukes for the last 40 years instead of relying on fossil fuels.

Comment by JS Mill Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 12:36 pm
I’m upbeat about this, the Utah deal had a lot of moving parts, a setup in southern or central Illinois might have fewer cats to herd, and will benefit from the work already done and lessons learned from the Utah venture. I’m especially excited about the U of I proposal; it could give the university quite a PR boost.

Comment by Give Us Barabbas Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 12:39 pm
I just don’t get why people are so eager for a nuclear reactor to be located in the middle of a city, especially a new design. There are residences within about 50 yards of the planned reactor itself, and thousands live within 1/4 mile. Locate it at Clinton NPS where there is a large safety perimeter and environmental monitoring, especially until these units prove themselves reliable and safe over decades.

Comment by Jibba Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 12:46 pm
I could be wrong but I believe the point of the post was to show that the headline and the story are in conflict.
Illinois will not be getting more reactors by 2026 because the law doesn’t take effect until 2026.
It’s always great (this is sarcasm) to be able to prove a headline wrong by reading the story under it.

Comment by Michelle Flaherty Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 12:57 pm
I laughed when I saw that headline. This whole thing is a joke. Nobody is building nuclear reactors in Illinois anytime in the near future. We are a deregulated state which means a company would have to risk private capital and private debt rather than building with the ratepayers absorbing all the risk. Nobody is going to take that risk on an experimental technology so zero chance they try to build here first. As Rich noted in another post, the furthest along small modular reactor just pulled the plug because costs ballooned too high. So this fantasy ain’t happening.

Comment by New Day Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 1:21 pm
=I could be wrong but I believe the point of the post was to show that the headline and the story are in conflict.=

I agree. The reality is that nuclear is our best, ultimately cleanest, and safest source for energy. They should have never stopped building plants, and I mean the big traditional plants. The safety record for US plants is excellent.

Is there a reason they cannot build new reactors at some of the closed sites? It seems like much of the infrastructure already exists. I admit that I do not know enough about the construction process, but as we move to more and more electric nuclear seems like the smartest and most reliable solution.

Comment by JS Mill Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 1:36 pm
That’s a helluvan “Oops” from WBEZ.

Comment by Northsider Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 1:39 pm
This was always a nothing-much-to-see-here kind of bill. The governor really elevated it with a veto that wasn’t really necessary. (The neede clean-up could’ve been taken care of with a trailer bill.) But was a good way for the governor to help his in Vairo friends, throw their shrinking, no nuke when I win.

Comment by Telly Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 1:53 pm
Sorry, hit send early on accident. That last sentence should read “help his enviro friends throw their shrinking no-nukes wing a win.”

Comment by Telly Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 1:55 pm
New Day…perhaps you should have a look at the link I sent. UI and the feds are moving with private partners to build a reactor, and soon. You’re right that there may not be all that many coming in the near future built entirely by private money, but it will be built when you combine federal dollars, a university getting a much-needed heating plant for free, and a private company with a desperate need to get a demonstration plant up and running.

Comment by Jibba Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 2:50 pm
” ==There are residences within about 50 yards of the planned reactor itself, and thousands live within 1/4 mile.== ”

Jibba, with respect, why is this any different than living in the shadow of a coal-fired power plant, like the one in Springfield, that actually *did* have a toxic release accident last year, during Session? And has toxic heavy metal waste piled up in the open air, threatening to leach toxins into our ground water?

Or for that matter, what about the dozens of industrial plants located in or very near to towns, big quiet buildings with unremarkable exteriors that also have a lot of those colored diamond hazmat signs on their walls describing the things that can go boom or just poison you to death in your sleep if they get loose… like tanks of anhydrous ammonia passing thru downtown on railcars daily or parked in lots just on the edges of town? Do any of these keep you up at night, and if not, why not? Statistically they are all way more likely to hav something go bad. Or is is it just that some thirty-plus years of “ooga-booga, all nukes bad” propaganda in the media has colored how you look at it? In France, they insist the nuke plant management has to live near the plants they operate, on the theory that the guys in charge wouldn’t put their own families at risk with bad decisions.

Another poster asked if SMR’s could be retrofitted on the footprint of existing retired nuclear power plants. In some cases, yes, this could be possible. For retrofitting coal plants, maybe easier. For it to make sense you’d install more than one modular reactor, if you’re aiming to put out the same power levels as before. But one of the design features of the SMR is that it won’t require quite the same massive dome-type containment system as the old pressurized water type reactors like Clinton, Byron, etc. There are more modest containments possible today, that still meet the same original safety criteria. Kind of like a modern car today has way better crash resistance than a bigger, heavier car of the 50’s. It’s all in the design specifics.

Comment by Give Us Barabbas Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 2:56 pm
===The US should have been building nukes for the last 40 years instead of relying on fossil fuels. ===

You volunteering your back yard, then? Can we keep the spent fuel there?

Besides the environmental concerns, the size and scope of the project, and the safety concerns, there’s also whether or not people want to leave near one and whether or not they can be economically viable.

ComEd certainly doesn’t think they are.

=== The safety record for US plants is excellent.===

This is just reactors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States

There’s some cross over but here’s some more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

I mean, I get that you have your opinion, but excellent is an opinion. It isn’t a fact and just blindly saying that the safety record is excellent isn’t really addressing that it is pretty far from perfect.

If someone screws up at a coal plant, at a wind turbine, or at a solar farm, we don’t have to isolate an area and not allow people to live there for hundreds of years.

===I just don’t get why people are so eager for a nuclear reactor to be located in the middle of a city===

They don’t know about it. Regardless, if there’s a new reactor in the state before 2036 I’ll be impressed. These projects are complicated and difficult to achieve, especially by private companies due to the timelines involved.

Governments maintain capital assets for decades. Private companies are looking for profits and throwing billions of dollars at something which won’t have any return for a decade is a tough project to finance.

Comment by Candy Dogood Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 3:12 pm
Who believes we’ll be checking?…in a thousand years?…me neither.

Comment by Dotnonymous x Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 4:01 pm
Barabbas…Siting facilities should be done with the adjacent neighborhood in mind, relative to the potential impacts. They no longer site nuclear plants (or coal fired ones) in towns because of the hazard of potential releases that may not have been appreciated at the beginning of the nuclear age. And the better question is WHY should it be located there? It solves the UI steam problem, but that problem has other solutions. Why risk a potential disaster when there are multiple other locations currently screened and zoned for this type of facility? It is pure engineering hubris, plus the almighty dollar. Until, of course, something inevitably happens that “no one could have foreseen.”

Comment by Jibba Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 4:05 pm
- Jibba - Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 4:05 pm:

===the almighty dollar. Until, of course, something inevitably happens that “no one could have foreseen.”===

Jibba, you are absolutely correct.
The Fukushima plant was designed to have the fuel tanks for the emergency generators underground, similar to gasoline tanks at a gas station. Somebody cut a corner and saved money by putting them above ground. The blueprints called for these tanks to be underground, and no exceptions or change orders were found. “No one could have foreseen” the tsunami, but if the fuel tanks were installed properly underground, the meltdown disaster would not have happened. Aboveground, the wall of water tore them off their stands and washed them away. When the emergency generators were needed to run the cooling pumps, they had no fuel. Something so simple resulted in such a disaster. The rest is history.

Comment by DuPage Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 5:15 pm
The Fukushima plants were in the process of being retired when the tsunami hit. Their old design relied on circulating actively pumped cooling water. SMR’s do not, and turning off cooling stops the reaction by a natural process of physics.

You keep quoting things that happened from the past to make your points but they only serve to point out that technology has actually moved forward to today. We’re not building the old seventies designs now. We’re not building Chernobyl RMBK’s. We’re not building Three Mile island PWR’s. Your references are obsolete.

Sir, this is an Arby’s.

Comment by Give Us Barabbas Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 6:07 pm
Barabbas…the design changes but the hubris remains. There will be problems in this design as there have been problems and failures in all previous designs of all devices mankind has ever made. We’re just wanting the basic safety measure of not installing it in the immediate vicinity of thousands of residences. That seems so little to ask for. And should they prove to be perfect in design, manufacturing, and operation, then perhaps a larger rollout might be warranted, with less of a safety factor. Right now, with no track record, a larger safety factor is just a reasonable precaution. Engineers should have learned this by now.

Comment by Jibba Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 6:20 pm
See you guys at your next barn raising, then.

Comment by Give Us Barabbas Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 7:37 pm
A healthy skepticism is does not a Luddite make. I wish all nuclear reactors had included some of these type of failure preventing technologies from the beginning, but of course, it took a few meltdowns for the engineers to figure out that it sure was possible to happen, despite their statistics. I’m just taking for them not to be sited in the middle of a population center, since the containment is not the last safety measure…distance from people is.

Comment by Jibba Tuesday, Nov 14, 23 @ 9:04 pm