“Nuclear war” has broken out in Illinois – one that could result in the devastation of our economy and sabotaging of the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) goals of 100% renewable energy by 2050.
Driven largely by billions of federal dollars from the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act and Department of Energy grant money, legislators and academic institutions are stampeding to promote “small modular nuclear reactors” – SMNRs – to gain access to this taxpayer-funded largesse. The problem is – SMNRs do not even exist yet. They exist only as slick sales brochures, Powerpoint presentations, tech-specs and unverified promises. Consequently, “SMNR” actually stands for “small mythical nuclear reactors.”
Using used-car sales practices of embellishing the positives while ignoring the negatives, nuclear industry promoters have sold many of the less-informed on the alleged benefits of SMNRs, absent any meaningful discussion of the downsides. While legislators myopically focus on “jobs, business and tax revenue,” these serious downsides go unexamined. This willful ignorance will have huge negative impacts on Illinois’ energy future.
So far, pro-SMNR legislators seem to be applying the same keen, discerning analysis to SMNRs that adolescents give to a first car purchase – “If it’s fast, red and convertible, that’s the one! Don’t worry about cost, insurance, maintenance, safety, warranty. What could go wrong?” This level of thoroughness results in crashed space shuttles and 737MAXs.
Here are some of these unexplored downsides:
• Assuming their designs even work, which is not yet demonstrated, they would not be available in sufficient numbers commercially much before the mid-2030s. So much for hyped jobs and tax revenues.
• That fact firmly disqualifies SMNRs from being a meaningful climate solution, since we must complete our nation’s energy overhaul by 2030, according to warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Two former chairs of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a host of energy analysts, economists, academics and national and international energy agency heads concur with this assessment.
• Current calculations indicate that SMNRs will cost more and produce vastly more radioactive wastes per unit of energy than even the current generation of uneconomic reactors – which required $3.05 billion worth of ratepayer-funded bailout guarantees to survive.
• SMNRs will compete for market share and transmission access with the renewables mandated in CEJA, thus delaying further a renewable energy future.
• SMNR vendors are so smugly confident that their designs are “inherently safe” (read: “nothing will go wrong!”) that designs are being promoted without protective containment structures, with reduced plant personnel, reduction or elimination of the emergency planning zones, without onsite guards and security personnel, and other “cost-cutting” proposals.
These and other serious issues received no thorough vetting in the four Illinois legislative hearings held since 2021 where SMNRs were discussed.
Only one barrier remains to slow this juggernaut. A seemingly common-sense 1987 Illinois law prevents the construction of new nuclear power reactors until the federal government establishes a permanent disposal facility for the dangerous, long-lived radioactive wastes. SMNR advocates want to repeal this law – a move akin to allowing all Chicago skyscrapers post-Sears Tower to be built without bathrooms.
Two bills – HR1079 and SB0076 – have been introduced to repeal this protective moratorium. They sailed through their respective committees, whose membership largely consisted of cosponsors of the bills, and will come to votes in the General Assembly soon. The hearings themselves largely ignored the radioactive waste issue that the moratorium was designed to deal with, and instead turned the hearings into de facto trade shows for the SMNR industry. Constellation Energy’s Illinois reactor sites currently store 11,000-plus tons of high-level radioactive waste. The SMNR crowd wants to add to this inventory – with no place for disposal. Utterly irresponsible.
Absurdly obtuse rationales like “we need to repeal the moratorium so we can kickstart a discussion about SMNRs” ignore the rather pregnant irony that while the moratorium is still in effect, four committee subject-matter hearings and discussions on SMNRs had already been conducted over the past two years. Our organization’s recommendation that a dedicated subject-matter hearing on SMNRs be held, inviting equal representation between expert and professional advocates and critics was given no response.
We should not allow inadequate examination of a potentially damaging and dangerous technology and undemonstrated promises from an industry that seems incapable of keeping its word on costs or deadlines be the final word on the energy future of Illinois. Those who worked hard for the passage of CEJA in 2021 should be most alarmed that these moratorium repeal bills are nothing more than Trojan Horses for SMNRs, designed to sabotage the renewables goals of CEJA.
The Boeing 737MAX crashes and the recent East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment shows what happens when protective regulation is ignored or not implemented in exchange for illusory short-term profits. Proposed repeal of the Illinois nuclear power construction moratorium is yet one more example of this myopic and cynical practice. It is terrible energy policy.
David A. Kraft is director of Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), a 42-year-old nuclear power watchdog and safe-energy advocacy organization based in Chicago. Contact at
neis@neis.org; www.neis.org or 773-342-7650.
This article appears in Capital competition.
Mr Kraft & his NEIS cohorts are Green New Dealers, they would like to get their hands on millions in taxpayer largess, promise you some windmills & solar arrays.