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Power

Illinois Senate Approves Plan To Allow New Nuclear Reactors (apnews.com) 46

Posted by BeauHD from the energy-of-the-future dept.
The Illinois Senate has approved a plan to allow small modular reactors in the state, lifting a 36-year-old moratorium on new nuclear power installments. Proponents say the plan will ensure the state can meet its carbon-free power production promise by 2045. The Associated Press reports: Environmentalists have criticized the plan, noting that small modular reactors are a decade or more from viability. Sponsoring Sen. Sue Rezin, a Republican from Morris, said that's the reason, coupled with a federal permitting process of as much as eight years, her legislation is timely. "If we want to take advantage of the amazing advancements in new nuclear technology that have occurred over the past couple of decades and not fall behind the rest of the states, we need to act now," Rezin said.

The House has through Thursday -- the scheduled adjournment of the General Assembly's fall session -- to OK the proposal and send it to Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Under the legislation, Illinois would allow development of small modular reactors in January 2026. That's when a report on necessary safety measures and updated guidelines would be due. The plan also tasks the Illinois Emergency Management Agency with oversight of newly installed reactors. Rezin added that layer of inspection, despite her contention that strict federal control is sufficient, to appease a concerned Pritzker. The Democrat cited the issue as one that caused him to side with environmentalists and veto initial legislation Rezin saw approved overwhelmingly last spring.
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Illinois Senate Approves Plan To Allow New Nuclear Reactors More

Illinois Senate Approves Plan To Allow New Nuclear Reactors

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  • the US isn't capable of building anything like this anymore. In 10 years if Slashdot is still here, we'll be commenting on how this plant is 50 billion dollars over budget, embroiled in red tape and about to be cancelled.

    Meanwhile China has no problems whatsoever building complex projects like this.

    • Last I heard from a Chinese nuclear power company representative, most of their projects under construction are also over budget and late.

      • Re: Let's face it (Score:4, Informative)

        by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Friday November 10, 2023 @08:40AM (#63995383)

        They plan their project on an 18 month timescale with a budget in the 10s of million. Being a few months late and a few million over is not like the West where we are literally taking decades to get through the red tape costing close to a 100M just in project planning cost just to spend the first 10M on a plant. We should be outperforming a third world country at this point on energy, but so-called progressives would rather have us burning dung and coal.

    • From the outset, nuclear power plants ran over budget & turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. You'd think they'd have learnt their lesson by now.

      Anyway, Macmann will be cumming in his already dirty underwear right now.

    • Tell that to the US Navy. The US does have the experience in having nuclear power done right. However, there is a big difference between a reactor used on a ship that uses a lot of top-secret sauce to run well, versus a power reactor which is designed to handle gigawatts of power generation.

      Nuclear research can't hurt. Breeder reactors would solve a lot of problems we have, especially with dealing with spent fuel. However, nuclear still has risks, and the biggest shortcoming has been human error and sho

    • The USA has the worlds largest nuclear fleet, powered by small nuclear reactors - and mobile ones at that. They've had the technology in active service since the mid 50's. I think they can handle it.

  • Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:04PM (#63994605)

    Illinois will "allow" small modular reactors but who's going to build them?

    Nuscale is the only real candidate, and their attempt to build a few on federal land in Idaho just went bust.
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]

    The project "collapsed Wednesday night amid mounting financial troubles."

    "as costs began swelling with inflation, NuScale told investors in March it would need more contracts on the books to sell at least 80% of the electricity it planned to generate by next February. That number had fallen to just 25% after a number of utilities canceled contracts to buy power from NuScale via UAMPS."

    • Illinois politicians must be bummed out, I assume they were looking forward to banking coin via graft and corruption with new nuke plants.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Perhaps they will follow up with taxpayer funded subsidies to get nuclear built.

      In the UK, nobody wanted to build it. They spent years trying to convince various companies to, and in the end had to go with Chinese investment funding and paying EDF vast sums of money in perpetuity to get the project off the ground. EDF subsequently ran out of money and had to be nationalized by the French government, so our new nuclear plants are joint owned by the Chinese and the French. The subsidies go to them.

      And those s

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      The biggest problem with SMR is not that they can't be built they already are and in are in use for the Military which means a lot of the tech is "Top Secret" any country that gets to build something similar can make their own nuclear subs etc the trick is to get the release the tech in a way that it can't be made small enough for Military use or at least very difficult, by maybe skipping some of the things that allow it to be very small It is no surprise which countries are most active on the development

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:43PM (#63994665)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Bugler412 ( 2610815 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @10:52PM (#63994833)
          former Navy nuc here, you're mostly on the mark. Not confirming numbers. But the highest level of classification wasn't as high as top secret, only one specific section of the plant manual was "secret", the rest was "confidential", the lowest classification level. This was true both on my training "prototype" plant reactor in upstate New York, and my deployed surface ship one.

        • Well, not in the west. But the better soviet reactors (VVER) have been designed along the lines of their submarine reactors, mostly because the same team was responsible.

      • If you've run out of periods, I'd be happy to lend you some.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Military SMRs need highly enriched fuel, which civilian reactors don't have access to due to proliferation issues.

        Even if the technology was made available, the fuel wouldn't be.

        Also consider that we need solutions that will work world-wide, because we have lots of big countries industrializing. Even conventional civilian nuclear is a problem for proliferation, and highly enriched fuels are a complete non-starter.

        • Military SMRs need highly enriched fuel, which civilian reactors don't have access to due to proliferation issues.

          While certainly true current US carriers and subs use HEU and while it has obvious advantages in requiring much less fuel to be loaded into the reactors this is not something that is necessary. There are also nuclear powered ships (e.g. French Navy) that burn LEU.

          https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod... [fas.org]

          Also consider that we need solutions that will work world-wide, because we have lots of big countries industrializing. Even conventional civilian nuclear is a problem for proliferation, and highly enriched fuels are a complete non-starter.

          Nobody is talking about burning HEU.

      • The biggest problem with SMR is not that they can't be built they already are and in are in use for the Military which means a lot of the tech is "Top Secret"

        Nope. US and UK naval reactors, while small and "technically" modular as they are usually cut out of the ship and (for the US Navy) sent to the same Idaho National Labratory site TFA is talking about for disposal and replaced with a whole new fully-fueled reactor vessel, run on highly-enriched uranium. Not the low-enriched fuel that commercial reactors use, but >90% U235, which is practically weapons grade material. And it's not so much "top secret" as "non-nuclear-proliferation" that holds back highl

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Environmentalists have criticized the plan, noting that small modular reactors are a decade or more from viability

      I would love to ask this crowd what their actual solution is for climate change. Every single thing suggested except "solar panels" and "wind" is shot down by them for $reasons. I love solar, wind is alright, but neither can even under the most optimistic scenario replace all existing generation.

      My current first draft of a solution involves anti-nuclear protesters and a giant hamster wheel attached to a generator. :-D

    • I would love to ask this crowd what their actual solution is for climate change. Every single thing suggested except "solar panels" and "wind" is shot down by them for $reasons. I love solar, wind is alright, but neither can even under the most optimistic scenario replace all existing generation.

      What do you mean by "actual" besides what you are willing to accept, and why are you never going to be willing to do enough?

      Those dams have been here for generations, the damage to the salmon is done, a sunk cost at this point.

      It might well be too late to save some of these salmon that the dams are now threatening and haven't already made extinct, but it is not too late for all of them unless it's too late for all of us.

  • Installations. Nuclear reactors are not much like Charles Dickens' publishing career in nineteenth century periodicals.
  • Spent nuclear fuel is a tax burden for infinity. Nope nope nope to nuclear.

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