Remember – you’re moving forward when jumping off a cliff, too.
Feb. 18, 2026
The curtain has finally and unequivocally been ripped back: Governor Pritzker is all-in on new nuclear.
Governor Pritzker released Executive Order 2026-01 Executive Order To Accelerate New Safe Nuclear Power Generation In Illinois — the final missing element of a plan for a more nuclear-reliant Illinois dating back to the two-part repeal of Illinois’ nuclear power construction moratorium.
The E/O is well tinseled with the various problems and rationalized solutions to them that a nuclear boom is alleged to address: projected shortfalls in power availability; issues of questionable system reliability; high and growing price of electricity; and the ever-elusive legitimate value for data center power requirements.
Many are seriously legitimate. Some are self-fulfilling prophecies. Most can be resolved through non-nuclear means – if the political will and courage were available to implement them.
The text of the E/O makes one thing abundantly clear – it is a fait accompli, a marching order, not a call for reasoned debate or thorough pro-con investigation. And certainly not a call for any meaningful (if even that) public input.
This E/O is the Pritzker version of HR1146, the 2014 Michael Madigan “study to show, not know,” designed to demonstrate that nuclear will be made to work – any downsides be damned. Certainly not examined or publicly debated. And definitely not voted on by the public. The outcome is already pre-determined – make the nuclear square pegs fit, no matter what.
While the content is alarming, what is absent is of equally grave concern.
Since the language ordering State agencies’ work is frequently framed to “make it so,” there is little to no language directly ordering investigation into any unresolved or anticipated downsides of nuclear, such as:
• Radioactive waste, and its permanent disposal (a legally defined term)
• Environmental justice issues, in and outside of Illinois (more uranium mining, radwaste disposal)
• Pro-active just transitions funds and post closure plans for reactor communities (think: the Zion experience)
• Adverse build-out and market impacts on CEJA/FEJA mandated renewables, efficiency and energy storage coming from a potentially glutted, or nuclear-favored market
The E/O does not explicitly solicit any input or participation from the State environmental community, which played a key role in the development of FEJA, CEJA, and CRJA laws.
No public meetings, hearings or referenda or avenues for direct input are authorized. This is energy policy being done TO ratepayers, not WITH them.
If climate is still an important issue for the state, it is utterly incomprehensible why the Governor and Legislature would promote the most expensive, slowest to deploy, least cost-effective greenhouse gas displacing, most inherently dangerous, and in the case of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs)– non-existent – method to deal with it.
Space prevents a more thorough examination of these or other issues — something that responsible governance on an issue this important would require. As bad as that omission is, there is something perhaps far more threatening to Illinois that always goes unaddressed:
The world in which the Pritzker Administration and Legislature intend to grow more nuclear is neither Eden nor Camelot, and has become far more dangerous than ever before.
In the past year alone, we have seen:
• Concerns about new large reactor costs borne out by the most recent Lazard’s levelized costs analysis (June 2025), indicating new reactors as more expensive than new solar, on- and off-shore wind, and energy storage. Projected costs for mythical (SMNRs) vary wildly, but are following this same trend.
• President Trump’s May 2025 Executive Orders cut staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) while simultaneously calling for a quadrupling of nuclear capacity; shift new reactor licensing emphasis to speed over safety; allow for higher levels of “allowable” radiation exposure for the public and workers; and allow DOGE personnel to overrule some NRC licensing decisions. What could possibly go wrong?
• The NRC has totally lost all independence as a regulatory licensing body for new reactors. A Feb. 17 E&E News article reports:
“Three current officials, granted anonymity to speak openly, told POLITICO’s E&E News that the NRC is no longer independent and only makes major decisions with the consent — and sometimes at the direction — of DOE or the White House.
‘When other agencies, or the White House, are telling the NRC how to do its business, it’s not an independent agency,’ said former NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane….. ‘That’s politicians and the industry influencing the regulator, which affects the safety of the public.’”
Thus the expected Federal safety responsibilities and Agency protecting Illinois deferred to in E/O Clause 14 have become non-existent.
• On Jan. 21, President Trump offered Silicon Valley an extraordinary deal to build their own nuclear power plants to run AI, and his administration will approve designs in just three weeks.
• In late January, DOE announced it seeks states interested in housing regional hubs supporting nuclear fuel cycle activities including fuel fabrication, enrichment, reprocessing used nuclear fuel, and nuclear waste storage. Note: non-reactor site radioactive waste storage without a permanent disposal facility is illegal. Reprocessing has enormous nuclear weapons proliferation and environmental contamination issues.
• DOE in early February issued a “categorical exclusion” rule exempting advanced nuclear reactors under its jurisdiction from National Environmental Policy Act reviews. NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environment when undertaking new projects and programs.
• Internationally, the threats to reactors in war zones like at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, and in an increasingly climate disrupted world where catastrophic climate events are stronger, more frequent and increasingly difficult to predict call for an entirely new way to evaluate nuclear power.
Issuing ill-conceived executive orders resembling those of the current President should not be an action worth emulating.
The Governor should instead heed the advice of Albert Einstein: “Clever people solve problems. Geniuses AVOID them.”
