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.
