Page 11 - Patrick Joyce News Today

SPRINGFIELD — With one scheduled day left in the General Assembly’s fall veto session, lawmakers advanced measures that would allow new nuclear power construction in Illinois and usher in the

The two-week veto session has seen heated debate over these and other subjects, including regulating the yet-to-be-formed elected Chicago School Board and the controversial Invest in Kids tax credit program

Illinois Senate approves plan to allow new nuclear reactors

SPRINGFIELD — With one scheduled day left in the General Assembly’s fall veto session, lawmakers advanced measures that would allow new nuclear power construction in Illinois and usher in the

Illinois Senate approves plan to allow new nuclear reactors

UPDATED 11:58 A.M. Since this story was first filed, the Illinois House Thursday morning passed the nuclear power construction legislation. More detai...

The Illinois Senate approved lifting a 36-year-old moratorium on new nuclear power installments on Wednesday in a plan proponents say will ensure the state can meet its carbon-free power production promise by 2045. The Senate's 44-7 endorsement opens the door for cutting-edge nuclear technology in so-called small modular reactors, designed to sit on sites for which they produce power, such as large factories. Environmentalists have criticized the plan, noting that small modular reactors a...

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.

Among the issues facing lawmakers as they return to Springfield this week: whether to extend a measure that increases minimum prison sentences for repeat gun possession offenders.

After more than 770 homicides were recorded in Chicago in 2016, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration pressed Illinois lawmakers to pass a measure that would increase minimum prison sentences for repeat gun possession offenders. The law that legislators ultimately approved took effect in 2018, and was a rare bit of policy common ground for Emanuel and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. But in ...