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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 are a decade or more from viability.
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 ...