By Addison Wright
As Illinois closes in on its deadline of being carbon-free by midcentury, even as demands for energy rise, legislators are looking to satisfy both needs through a strategy many so far have tried to avoid: allowing new, large-scale nuclear reactors to be built in the state.
The initiative wending through the General Assembly comes even though Gov. JB Pritzker vetoed and narrowed a similar plan two years ago when he set limits on the size of new nuclear power plants in Illinois. But the governor appeared open to taking a different tack when he said recently he’s willing to work with the bipartisan group of lawmakers backing the latest proposal that would permit the construction of nuclear reactors of any size.
“We’re looking forward to having a bill that comes to my desk that will allow us to expand the options for nuclear in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said last week. “But it has to be done in the right way, and I think the legislature and my team are working together to make sure that that happens.”
Illinois has more nuclear reactors than any other state. But supporters of allowing new, large reactors to be constructed in Illinois, including labor and manufacturing advocates, argue that building more nuclear power plants is needed to help answer rising energy demands and the state’s ambitious clean energy goals, which call for retiring major traditional sources of power such as natural gas-fired energy plants by 2045.
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“My sense is that Illinois is not currently in a bind as far as power needs are concerned,” said Robert Rosner, a theoretical physicist and founding co-director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, adding that data center firms will likely want to build their own power sources.