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Christine Lynde says her community feels “powerless” despite being home to a nuclear plant that provides electricity to over 2 million Illinois homes.
Lynde is the president of the Byron School Board. She’s spent the last year signing witness slips and writing advocacy letters to lawmakers stressing urgency to save the plant.
“I m still optimistic, but I probably have never been more anxious about the legislature finishing or making good on a promise,” she said.
Exelon announced plans last summer to shutter that power station, and one in Dresden, this September. The billion-dollar energy giant just filed paperwork to deactivate one of the two cooling towers at the Byron facility.
Credit Illinois Public Radio
With two more days until the scheduled adjournment of the General Assembly’s spring legislative session, negotiations on a high-stakes deal to steer Illinois away from carbon-causing energy sources as well as a host of other goals from ending controversial formula ratemaking and forcing ethics reforms as a utility-involved corruption investigation looms large have reached impasse, according to multiple sources engaged in bargaining.
As of Saturday night, parties remain far apart on the linchpin of the deal: how much the state should provide in subsidies for nuclear giant Exelon to prevent the company from the threatened closures of at least two, if not three, of Exelon’s six nuclear power generating stations that are not profitable. Those six locations serve the northern half of Illinois, which contains the majority of the state’s 12.8 million people.
Hundreds of union workers joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers Friday in front of the Illinois Capitol in support of the state s nuclear power industry
Hundreds of union workers joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers Friday in front of the Illinois Capitol in support of the state’s nuclear power industry.