Right nuclear decision

Proponents of state legislation to allow construction of new nuclear plants have written a number of opinion pieces in the last few months urging the removal of the Illinois moratorium on new nukes. The latest opinions have been in response to Gov. Pritzker's veto of SB 76, a proposal to lift that moratorium.

I agree with the governor. One of the major reasons that the moratorium was enacted was the lack of any progress on the long-term disposal of nuclear waste.

The Zion plant, for example, was decommissioned and has now been completely demolished. The site is clean, except that all the waste generated by the plant in its roughly 30-year operations is still sitting on the site.

There have been suggestions that it would make sense to reprocess this waste (about 90% of the fissile material remains in spent fuel). Doing so, however, would require that the fuel be enriched to a level that qualifies it as weapons-grade, and the United States is prohibited from doing so by international agreements.

The government spent decades and millions (billions?) of dollars preparing a long-term storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. That solution fell victim to potential geologic problems and fatal political opposition.

Personally, I'd be open to consideration of new nuclear generation facilities in Illinois if the state, at least, designated a single storage facility for all nuclear waste from Illinois nuclear plants until a federal solution became available. I reluctantly agree that nuclear power is a necessary part of the mix to a carbon-neutral economy, at least in the next 20-30 years. But until proponents demonstrated the will to make some real progress on the problem of the waste that's been created over the past 50+ years of commercial nuclear power, I'm opposed to lifting the Illinois moratorium.

Frank Ress

Arlington Heights