How to gut renewable energy
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banks of the Illinois river network and Lake Michigan.

Moratorium repeal sabotages the 2007 Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard law requiring electric utilities to generate 25 percent of electricity by renewables by 2025. Introducing 1,200 megawatts of new nuclear-generated electricity will saturate local markets, killing any chance for renewables to get cheaper via economies of scale. This gives utilities the opt-out excuse they need to not comply with the RPS.

Current utility lawsuits against the federal government for not meeting their 1997 obligation to open a disposal facility and take wastes will cost U.S. taxpayers – including those living in Illinois – hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties. Building more reactors without an operational waste facility simply adds more wastes, and therefore more fines that Illinois taxpayers will have to pay for.

Instead of gutting renewable energy and chasing mythical, futuristic nuclear power El Dorados, legislators like Jacobs and Osmond need to find realistic solutions to the state budget crisis they have aided and abetted. While it’s natural for desperate legislators to grasp at improbable positives while ignoring likely negatives, doing this with nuclear power can have deadly side effects, both environmental and economic.

David Kraft is director of Nuclear Energy Information Service, a Chicago-based safeenergy nuclear power watchdog organization, which has monitored radioactive waste issues for the past 28 years.