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LEGISLATURE CONFRONTS THE NUCLEAR PANDORA’S BOX (Original title)
13 October 2025
According to the legend, an overly curious but ill-informed Pandora opened a container she was warned not to, in the process unleashing all the ills of the world upon mankind. In fairness and her defense, one has to admit she was not informed about the contents of the container.
That seems to be the principal difference between Pandora and the Governor and Illinois Legislature today. In the Fall Session it is expected that the Legislature will be voting on the potential repeal of the 1987 nuclear power moratorium, which if it occurs, would take the lid off of construction of more nuclear reactors.
Unlike Pandora, Illinois officials are well aware of the ills of nuclear power, which are many and well known: huge construction costs and overruns; lengthy and often delayed construction times; attraction for official corruption (think Illinois, Ohio and South Carolina); continued generation of high-level radioactive wastes (HLRW) with no place for permanent disposal; difficulty operating in a market system without some form of eventual bailout; and “black-swan” but always present potential for severe nuclear accident. It only takes one bad day at the nuclear office to turn Illinois into the Belarus of the United States.
As bad as these nuclear attributes are, the ones that the Legislature has consistently refused to address, coupled with newer issues created by the Trump Administration are equally concerning, and argue forcefully to keep Illinois’ nuclear moratorium in place:
- Adding even more HLRW to the 11,000+ metric tons current reactors have already created (and which add ~250 tons/year), all with no place for permanent disposal;
- Providing inadequate to non-existent “just-transitions” safeguards for reactor communities and workers to protect local tax bases, economies, and jobs from the negative economic hit that eventual reactor closure will create (as already occurred in Zion, IL);
- Inadequately advancing preparations to operate reactors safely in an increasingly climate disrupted world, where future required water availability may be uncertain and volatile, facility-threatening weather events more severe, and conditions for power interruptions increasing in new and unexpected ways;
- Ignoring the environmental justice implications of expanding nuclear power, from uranium mining on Indigenous lands, to siting an environmentally responsible and legally required HLRW permanent disposal facility.
While this list of neglected, unsolved nuclear problems is daunting enough, the last thing to leave today’s nuclear-Pandora’s Box is not “hope.” It is a series of Trump Administration executive orders, issued in May, that deprioritize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s mission to protect the public; reduce NRC staff; call for weakening radiation standards; and require a DOGE sign-off on new reactor designs – all while quadrupling the number of U.S. reactors by 2050. Former NRC Chairman Dr. Gregory Jaczko remarked, “President Trump’s executive order shows he is committed to further lawlessness, more nuclear accidents, and less nuclear safety.”
The 1987 Moratorium was initially enacted to protect Illinois from radioactive waste abuse. Its presence has at least helped minimize the numerous other problems with nuclear power. Moratorium repeal only guarantees their continuation and worsening.
Just as in the original Pandora legend, once these nuclear ills are legislatively loosed upon the world, there will be no means to put them back in the box.
Now is clearly NOT the time to be considering new reactors.
The Nuclear Moratorium repeal should be rejected.
TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION TO SB1527
The Proposed Repeal of Illinois Nuclear Construction Moratorium
May 1, 2025
By David A. Kraft, Director
Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) is a 44-year old nuclear watchdog, safe-energy advocacy organization based in Chicago. On behalf of our over 800 members, we wish to register our opposition to SB1527, a bill that advocates the repeal of the 1987 Illinois nuclear power construction moratorium, and the development and construction of future nuclear reactors in Illinois.
This moratorium was enacted to protect Illinois from becoming a de facto high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) dump. It simply says – no more reactors will be built in Illinois until the Federal Government honors its legal obligation to build and operate a permanent disposal ** facility for the dangerous spent-fuel radioactive waste reactors create. This facility was supposed to open by 1997, but didn’t. Current government estimates claim we won’t have one before 2048. To date Illinois’ 14 reactors (11 still operating) have created over 11,000 tons of spent-reactor fuel with no disposal** facility in operation. The waste is presently stored** at reactor sites. Legislators in 1987 wanted to make sure that Illinois would have to manage as little of this waste as possible, prior to permanent disposal**.
The good news is – it worked. The Moratorium did and continues to do what it was designed to do: protect Illinois.
Regarding the moratorium repeal, SB1527 not only violates the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” maxim; it goes out and actively BREAKS something that protects Illinois for goals that are illusory at best, nefarious at worst. Regarding future nuclear advocacy, it suggests an inadequately investigated and discussed option for Illinois’ energy future that is strongly contested by competent energy officials and professionals nationwide, without meaningful participation by the public and thorough investigation of the downsides and negative effects, particularly on Illinois’ clean energy goals enacted in CEJA.
While this provides an explanation for the primary issue of origin of this common-sense moratorium – high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) disposal** — passage of SB1527 would make it clear that the Legislature has learned nothing from the 2023 partial Moratorium repeal to accommodate the development of “small modular nuclear reactors” (SMNRs), and continues to ignore unresolved issues regarding nuclear power that will only worsen with its further expansion.
ISSUE #1 – HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL:
Simply put, more reactors of any kind mean more high-level radioactive waste creation, with no disposal option in operation or even in sight. The 11 operating and 3 closed reactors in Illinois have to date produced more than 11,000 tons of HLRW, with an additional ~720 tons stored at the GE Morris Operation site. Each currently operating reactor produces an additional 20-25 tons of HLRW per year of operation.
Storage is not the same as disposal, neither legally nor technically. At a 2019 Congressional briefing on reactor decommissioning, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gregory Jaczko had this to say about the storage of HLRW:
Former NRC Chair Greg Jaczko
“If you think about this there are a lot of challenges behind this idea of centralized “interim” storage. The first one is that this is essentially permanent storage.
“As much as you may hear from people that this is centralized “interim” storage, it is de facto permanent storage because once you move fuel somewhere it’s going to be very hard to move it somewhere else…”
“The only place in principle you could move it to would be a permanent repository. But right now, there are NO prospects, certainly not in the next several decades for any type of permanent repository for spent fuel.” (emphasis ours)
[SOURCE: Decommissioning: A New Era for Nuclear Power; a Need for Congressional Oversight, May 13, 2019, https://www.eesi.org/briefings/view/051319nuclear ]
Opening Illinois to becoming a de facto HLRW storage depot is simply irresponsible governance.
ISSUE(S) #2 – UNRESOLVED NUCLEAR ISSUES:
Rather than enacting legislation that only makes a bad situation worse, NEIS encourages the Legislature to work on the many unresolved nuclear-related issues that we have called to your attention since 2014. Among them:
• “It’s the Waste, Stupid!”: As illustrated above, everyone makes token nods to the continuously growing HLRW disposal problem, and then moves on to their own narrow priorities, while irresponsibly promoting adding more HLRW.
• Just Transitions for Reactor Communities and Workers: Like it or not, reactors will eventually close, hopefully by choice and not by other unpleasant means. Since 2014 in testimony before the legislature and in letters to the Governor’s office, NEIS has advocated establishing escrowed “just transitions” funds for nuclear communities that would protect local tax bases, and provide worker re-training programs to soften the inevitable blows that “company towns” experience when their largest employer leaves. This concept has been routinely ignored.
• Ratepayers and Taxpayers — Watch Your Wallets!: Recall that the Illinois legislature previously approved $3+ billion in subsidies from 2016 to 2026 for several of Constellation’s reactors that were not economically competitive. These subsidies will expire next year, in 2026. Adding more reactors, especially large-scale one, into the mix of already uncompetitive reactors will most certainly create an energy glut that will further deflate prices – resulting in more ratepayer pain and the very real probability of future bailouts. The applies to both “small modular nuclear reactors” (SMNRs) and proposed full-scale nukes.
• Anti-Corruption Citizen Oversight: the recent nuclear-related scandals, indictments and guilty pleas in Illinois, Ohio and South Carolina, and the outrageous cost and delay of Georgia’s Vogtle 3&4 reactors argue mightily for a different kind of nuclear oversight. NEIS’ unsuccessful 2024 proposal to create an Illinois Citizen Oversight Commission attempted to address this problem, and ensure that the voices of 12+ million Illinoisans — not just those of the politically well-connected and paternalistic nuclear elites — would be reflected in crafting and deciding Illinois’ energy future. Our proposal is available for review and reconsideration.
• Regulatory erosion: The annual budget struggle to adequately fund the Illinois Dept. of Nuclear Safety (and other State agencies), and the Trump Administration’s intention to depopulate and eviscerate independent regulatory agencies like the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a serious safety concern for the most nuclear-reliant state in the U.S. Many in Washington have long viewed the NRC as a “lapdog” regulator. These actions to further weaken even the lapdog leaves Illinois with no credible oversight of nuclear power. Adding more reactors to this situation has serious negative environmental, safety, health and security implications.
• Transmission woes: For the past four years NEIS has been calling attention to the need to improve the transmission grid. One can have a million reactors or a million wind turbines, but if you cannot provide reliable electrical service by connecting these to the customer, they are all worthless.
Additionally, competition for grid access – already an identified problem for renewables producers — will worsen with the addition of new reactors. If any state money should be allocated anywhere, it should be to enhance and improve grid access and reliability, in tandem with energy storage. Transmission should become the new state priority, not more nuclear.
Concerted action of political as well as engineering/technological interventions are needed, and quickly.
If the Legislature feels a burning need to enact legislation on nuclear power issues, this list would be a far more preferable place to begin, to solve very real, growing and inevitable problems for Illinois communities, ratepayers, and the environment, rather than adding more reactors that will only exacerbate these and other problems.
CONCLUSION:
SB1527 is unacceptable public policy. It literally prematurely and unnecessarily dismantles a successfully protective statute of Illinois law. The recent Ohio vinyl chloride train derailment and the two Boeing 737MAX crashes demonstrate what happens when effective, demonstrably protective regulation is subverted, weakened and ignored. No matter how well intended, SB1527 demonstrates a lack of deep thinking, and amounts to poor and detrimental public policy.
For these reasons we urge the Committee to vote against SB1527, and channel public resources into effective and needed energy solutions: increased energy efficiency and renewables, energy storage, and an improved transmission grid.
Thank you for your consideration of these views.
Numerous recent articles regarding nuclear power, and introduction of legislation (SB1527 & HB3604) Read more
NEIS sent the following today to Illinois state and federal legislators, as well as to its entire media list. We share it with you now:
We hope that this latest installment of our energy transformation series finds you well, and as you wind down towards the end of the Spring legislative session, that your work is successful.
Former NRC Chair Greg Jaczko
We share with you a critically important op-ed that appeared today in the Washington Post, written by the former Chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) – Dr. Gregory Jaczko. (before proceeding here, please read his article, “I oversaw the U.S. nuclear power industry. Now I think it should be banned.”).
Currently, there are a number of major pieces of energy legislation before the Legislature: CEJA, the Exelon Bill, the ComEd/Ameren Bill, Path to 100, maybe more. Realistically, no single bill from this group will or should pass before the end of this Spring legislative session; and in all probability, a large, omnibus energy bill in the Fall Veto Session is the most likely outcome. Read more
When he was 11, my stepson taught me one of the most valuable Life-lessons I’ve learned when he said, “You know Dave, man isn’t a “rational” animal. He’s a “rationalizing” one!”
Truer words have never been spoken when examining the nonsense rationalizations being paraded around by execs of unprofitable electric utilities and their governmental handmaidens for bailing out unprofitable nuclear and coal plants that the market-based system utility lobbyists introduced years ago would otherwise see closed.
A “rationalization” is usually a specious excuse or explanation offered to cover up a serious flaw or failure. In some cases – like state-mandated nuclear and coal plant bailouts — a legalized fig-leaf, if you will.
Virtually every bailout rationalization offered to date by the Exelons and Dynegys, Trumps and Perrys of the world fall flat on their face when analyzed in detail by the majority of professional agencies and staffs employed to make the crucial, day-to-day decisions that keep the electric grid functioning. National security, grid resilience, onsite fuel reserves – all such claims have been handily debunked by the experts, historical evidence, or both.
Now Exelon informs the world that its Dresden and Byron reactors are now in “financial distress.” How sad. So are Illinois ratepayers after the last $2.4 billion bailout Governor Rauner and Speaker Michael Madigan awarded them in 2016.
Exelon claims “… the company will not at any point seek subsidies from Illinois ratepayers to keep Dresden and Byron open…”. But that’s what Exelon management said in 2014 about the then five reactors they said were in “financial distress,” too. This time, they instead are relying on the twisted illogic trying to pass as public policy they hope will come from a Trump Administration Soviet-style protectionist mandate; or twisty balloon-dog machinations they hope regional system operator PJM will invent to facilitate the next wealth transfer from ratepayers to shareholders.
In 2014 our organization brought two propositions to the bailout negotiations that went ignored, and are being ignored today: 1.) nowhere in the State Constitution is the Legislature obligated to guarantee the profitability of a private corporation; and 2.) it is the communities whose jobs and economies are threatened by reactor and coal plant closures that need the bailing out, not profitable private corporations.
We recommended institution of a “just transitions” negotiation among affected parties as an alternative to repeated nuclear hostage crises, to create an economic transition plan for closures before they become imminent crises. We provided testimony to this effect to both the Senate and House energy committees; and spoke with over 40 state elected and appointed officials prior to the bailout. We again proposed this concept in a State Journal Register op-ed published in December 2016 after Governor Rauner signed Exelon’s bailout into law.
It is long past time to institute this pro-active approach to protecting affected communities and ratepayers. Economic blackmail is a poor way to conduct energy policy; and legalized extortion no valid substitute for real market-based solutions.
The utility bailout mania triggered by Exelon has swept the nation like some form of energy-HIV. Empty, fig-leaf rationalizations created to provide some pretense of legality makes a mockery of the agencies and regulations already in place which seem to be doing the grid reliability job quite well, thank you.
Harsh economic realities will soon begin to force legislatures and Congress to embrace one obvious conclusion: you cannot create an energy future by bailing out the past.
Sources:
NEIS
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