This piece originally appeared at Nuclear Barbarians.
Chicago is the most nuclear city in America, Illinois the most nuclear state. The northern and southern parts of the state sit in two different power markets–PJM and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. The state’s nuclear fleet lives up north, while its robust fossil fleet punctuates the quiltwork of soy and corn farms in the south. In a perfect world, my home state would serve as an ideal locale for datacenters. You’ve likely never heard of Morris, Illinois, but it boasts enough nuclear nearby to power OpenAI’s 5 gigawatt datacenter behemoth, Stargate.
But we don’t live in a perfect world. In this case, we don’t even live in a practical world. Illinois has made serious missteps in its energy policy that jeopardize its ability to power new industries. The state plans to shut down all of its investor-owned coal plants by the end of the decade, and then all municipally-owned coal plants by 2045. That’s 6.7 gigawatts, or several Hoover Dams-worth, of firm, dispatchable power.
And it could be replaced by nuclear, except that Illinois has only partially repealed its state moratorium on new plants. Currently, only small modular reactors can be built as a result of Governor Pritzker’s infamous 2023 veto of a full repeal. However, America has yet to build a single SMR.
