•October 21, 2015•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

The Economist magazine reported recently that Illinois is home to more radioactive, spent nuclear fuel than any state in the nation.

Should that concern us? Why else would this highly respected magazine have carried a story about it?

The problem is that the 9,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste stored, supposedly temporarily, at reactor sites across our state has no place to go.

The nuclear industry and its ardent opponents agree on this much, if nothing else—all that waste should be moved to a permanent site. Ultimately this site will likely be somewhere in a sparsely populated location in the West, where some of the waste will continue to be lethally radioactive for at least 10,000 years!

I asked representatives of Exelon, our state’s nuclear energy generator, as well as skeptics and opponents of nuclear power what level of concern Prairie State residents should have for their safety on this matter: none, little, some, a great deal?.

I could have written the scripts in advance.

Pam Cowan, director of spent nuclear fuel at Exelon, said there is absolutely nothing to worry about. David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists said we should have “little to some” concern, and David Kraft of Chicago, a longtime nuclear power opponent, weighed in that we should have “a great deal of concern.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.