The Illinois General Assembly has given the nod to S.B. 0076, a bill that would repeal the state’s decades-old moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction.

After passing the Senate in a 39–13 vote on March 30, the legislation proceeded to the House, where it was amended and approved 84–22 on May 18, then sent back to the Senate for concurrence. Late on May 19, the Senate agreed, 36–14 (with 3 voting “present”), to the proposed amendment. The bill now moves to Gov. J. B. Pritzker’s desk for consideration.

Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD), owner and operator of the Cornhusker State’s only operating nuclear power facility—the single-unit Cooper plant—is beginning the process of studying locations that could potentially host small modular nuclear reactors, the utility announced last Friday.

The effort will be financed through L.B. 1014—a state measure approved in April 2022 that appropriates the $1.04 billion allocated to Nebraska from federal pandemic relief funds.

Schönfeldt

In a recent episode of Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View, Troels Schönfeldt, chief executive officer of Seaborg Technologies, discussed his company’s reactor technology and other nuclear-related issues. Seaborg Technologies, which was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2014, is developing a compact molten salt reactor (CMSR) that it says is safe, significantly smaller, better for the environment, and inexpensive, even compared to fossil fuels, and can be manufactured quickly and deployed on barges to any location worldwide. The Exponential View is a podcast presented by the Harvard Business Review and hosted by Azhar, an entrepreneur and investor.

Different type of reactor: “We’re designing a fundamentally different type of nuclear reactor,” Schönfeldt said. “The powerful bullet points [are] that it cannot melt down or explode, it cannot release gases, it cannot be used for nuclear weapons. It could even burn nuclear waste, so we can get rid of some of the old waste stockpiles.”