Governor Pritzker changes his tune on energy.

[NNadir]

Let me start here: While disagreeing with his (former) policy on nuclear energy; I greatly admire the Governor, who is on the front lines of fighting the Orange Pedophile in the White House. He is, in my view, despite being filthy rich, a paradigm of virtue. I'd vote for him for anything I was eligible to vote for him. (I live in New Jersey. I don't live in Illinois, but were he a candidate for national office, I'd be pleased to mark his name on my mail in ballot.)

However, Governor Pritzker did veto a bipartisan legislative initiative to reverse Illinois' new nuclear construction ban.

Anyway, his policy on nuclear energy has changed, and if there is one thing I admire, it's a person who can change his or her or their mind when presented with information.

To wit:

Gov. Pritzker looks to possible changes in Illinois nuclear

About two years ago, on August 11, 2023, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker vetoed S.B. 76, a bill that would have lifted the state’s moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction. It was a reversal on his decidedly pronuclear stance; in 2021, he signed S.B. 2408, which supported Braidwood, Byron, and Dresden nuclear power plants with $694 million in state funding.

When Pritzker vetoed S.B. 76, he spoke in support of allowing small modular reactors, explaining that he was specifically against large-scale nuclear. In an official statement, he said that the bill would have opened the door to “the proliferation of large-scale nuclear reactors that are so costly to build that they will cause exorbitant ratepayer-funded bailouts.” At the end of 2023, he signed H.B. 2473, repealing Illinois’s construction moratorium for projects with a rated nameplate capacity of 300 MW or less, beginning January 1, 2026.

Now, it seems that Pritzker has changed tack. On August 13, in response to a question on managing energy costs, he said, “We in Illinois can do something very important; we can get rid of the moratorium on nuclear, which has been in place for decades now. We already got rid of it on small modular nuclear. We can do that on large nuclear. It’s going to be an important part of the transition to renewable energy everywhere and to our 2050 goal of clean energy.”

Potential change: State Sen. Sue Rezin (R., Dist. 38) has been an outspoken advocate for and the face of the new nuclear push in the Illinois legislature, sponsoring and authoring many of the nuclear-related bills in the Senate. In February, she introduced S.B. 1527, which seeks to fully repeal Illinois’s moratorium, allowing for projects over 300 MW via amendment to the Public Utilities Act. However, since June, the bill has sat inactive in the Assignments Committee.

Rezin said about the bill in an opinion piece published in Crain’s Chicago Business, “As other states and nations invest in nuclear power, Illinois cannot afford to be left behind.” She explained, “With fossil fuel plant closures, the need for stable baseload energy like nuclear has never been greater...

”

As for the term "bailout" popular among antinukes, the cost of a nuclear power plant in internal costs, the costs of construction largely, represents what the miserably failed so called "renewable energy" scam does not represent: It is an investment not in ourselves, but in the health and welfare and even wealth of future generations. Modern nuclear plants have a design life of 80 years, whereas wind and solar junk becomes a liability rapidly. Practically every wind turbine on this planet, every solar cell, every fucking battery, and every fucking fluorocarbon laced platinum dependent hydrogen fuel cell will be landfill before newborns finish college - if there is a college to finish.

The Oyster Creek nuclear plant was completed well before I finished high school, and was serving my grid as I approached old age. Without the claim that "natural gas is cheaper" - it's not if one includes the cost of the destruction of the planetary atmosphere - Oyster Creek could have been refurbished and continued to the health and welfare of my family in New Jersey.

I consider the used nuclear fuel at Oyster Creek to be an asset to be employed for the benefit of future generations.

[jfz9580m]

1. ..

My primary concern right now wrt nuclear energy (about which I know very little) is that it is being pushed by a collection of people with zero respect for safety-the tech frat boys, greedy industrialists..
Given the potential for serious accidents , I would feel better if the pro-nuclear crowd wasn’t also in significant enough part the radically libertarian, anti-accountability (at least for for-profit, industrial corporations/the very wealthy) crowd pushing for total deregulation, the decimation of safety standards etc.

[NNadir]

2. I fully credit your parenthetical statement but not much else.

I have no patience, none, with carrying on about "nuclear accidents" which have an established record, including the worst ever, Chernobyl (the result of which converted me from being an antinuke into a pronuclear activist) of not causing even a miniscule fraction of the death toll associated with the normal operation of fossil fuel plants.

The "normal" operation of fossil fuel plants, expressed as air pollution, kills millions of people each year without a single peep of concern from people carrying on about "nuclear accidents." That's does not include the death toll associated with extreme global heating, which in my view, is a subject about which antinukes couldn't care less.

I find it ethically deplorable that people embrace a calculus that involves saying it's perfectly OK for tens of millions of people to die each decade from fossil fuels so long as no one ever dies from exposure to radiation.

Nuclear energy does not need to be risk free to be vastly superior to all other options. It only needs to be vastly superior to all other options, which it is.

This is true no matter what sociological or political baggage people want to attach to the issue of energy and the environment. The issue is technical and has nothing to do with political or economic theory.

[jfz9580m]

3. I am not defending fossil fuels obviously

I am just saying that any pro-nuclear activist should recognize that the same way that this crew managed to make more people Luddites and technophobic/distrustful of everything from social networking technologies/search engines/ai/concepts like the IoT, will unchecked almost certainly do something that reinforces the very prejudices you talk about.

As you must be well aware, anything like an accident combined with widespread dislike and distrust of these guys will seed further distrust and resistance in the public mind.

They (Zuck, Musk, Trump etc.) need brakes wrt any technology..I would certainly want them to stay far away from anything I supported.