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May 14, 2023

Discover the Largest Nuclear Power Plant in Illinois (And What Lives Around It)

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It's a common idea from the movies: radiation leaks from a nuclear power plant, creating mutants, zombies, or some other horror that must be dealt with. Or even worse, it explodes in a mushroom cloud. How accurate are these scenarios, really? Let's find out by looking at the largest nuclear power plant in Illinois, one of our most populous states. Where is this plant and what lives around it? If you’re from Illinois, how close is it to your house . . . and is that ok with you?

The world runs on electricity. Regardless of the energy source, electricity is produced in one basic way: getting the blades of a turbine to turn a rotor that generates an electric field. You can turn that rotor with the wind, the tides, water falling through a dam, or steam from hot water. How do you heat the water up? With the Earth's own geothermal energy, by burning fossil fuels, or by the decay of radioactive elements.

That's where nuclear power comes in. It's simple. All you have to do is get yourself some radioactive uranium, process it into ceramic pellets, pour them into fuel rods, bundle hundreds of radioactive fuel rods together in groups, and carefully place them in the core of a reactor. The uranium continually gives off energy and neutrons. Those neutrons collide with the nuclei of neighboring uranium atoms, releasing energy and more neutrons. When enough uranium is compressed in a small enough space, this can create a nuclear chain reaction with the most violently explosive results of any weapon science has ever devised. But, when you intersperse the fuel rods with rods of lead, the lead contains the flying neutrons to their individual rods and slows down the reaction. In this way, the heat of the reaction can be turned up or down depending on the electricity needs.

©Nordroden/Shutterstock.com

This is a controversial question. On the one hand, nuclear power does not pump carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like fossil fuels do. On the other hand, uranium is much rarer than oil and has to be mined and processed, sometimes in remote areas. And building the plants requires a huge amount of materials and energy, all of which must be manufactured to precise specifications.

The biggest environmental problem of nuclear power is the radioactive waste it generates. Spent fuel rods and other radioactive materials have to be stored someplace no one will bother them for thousands of years while they decay into harmless materials. There is the possibility of radioactive materials leaking as they are transported to a storage site, or that the storage facility itself may not survive the centuries it needs to, and may start leaking and creating contamination. There is also the problem of labeling these sites in a way that people of the distant future will be able to understand the danger, even though they may no longer speak our languages. Researchers and linguists are putting effort into designing pictographs they think future people will be able to figure out.

A malfunctioning reactor could release radiation into the environment. In high enough doses, this can cause radiation burns, radiation poisoning, and death to living things. In lower doses, it can increase the risk of cancers, birth defects, and genetic mutations. And note, mostly, mutations produce neutral or negative effects on creatures, not gigantic growth or new superpowers.

Even without an accident, though, the normal operation of a nuclear power plant includes releasing steam into the atmosphere and warm water back into the river or lake it draws its cooling water from. The warmer water alters what kinds of algae and other plants and aquatic life live in the area. This can impact biodiversity in various ways in areas close to the reactor.

The answer to this question is "yes" and "no." A nuclear power plant is a complex facility that takes highly trained personnel and has a lot of electronic and mechanical systems. Any system like this is not 100% foolproof, so accidents can happen. A "meltdown" is a particularly dangerous accident in which a reactor overheats and can explode. Here are three of the most famous nuclear power accidents in history:

©iStock.com/Tijuana2014

So why is the answer to the question "yes" and "no?" Because while an explosion can happen that scatters radioactive material, that's not the same thing as a nuclear explosion that results from a runaway nuclear reaction. To create an actual nuclear bomb, mushroom cloud explosion, you have to have highly enriched uranium compressed into a small space. A conventional explosion forces it to compress still further and reach critical mass, in which a fission chain reaction occurs. The nuclear material in an energy-producing power plant is not enriched to weapons-grade, and it is not compressed to the point of reaching critical mass. The explosion that happens in a meltdown is more equivalent to a "dirty bomb," in which an enemy might use a conventional explosion laced with radioactive materials to contaminate a large area with radioactivity.

Braidwood Generating Station is the largest nuclear power plant in Illinois. It was built on an old strip-mining site at a cost of $5.2 billion and began operation in 1987. Located 60 miles southwest of Chicago in Will County, it generates nearly 2,400 net megawatts, enough to power over 2 million average homes. The site's reactors are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue operation until 2047. The plant employs about 755 people as well as hundreds of temporary contractors when the plant is refueling.

Will County, where the reactor is located, has a population of 677,000 and is the fourth-largest county by population in the state. Joliet is the county seat and the third-largest city in the state, with over 150,000 people living there. But just 60 miles away are the 2.7 million residents of Chicago, making it the third-largest city by population in the United States. Chicago is also vitally important to the U.S. economy. Its gross metropolitan product was $770 billion in 2020, more than Switzerland and the third largest in the United States. Only New York and Los Angeles exceed Chicago in population and productivity.

©Rudy Balasko/Shutterstock.com

Illinois is home to a wide variety of wildlife. Among the most common species are white-tailed deer, chipmunks, squirrels, moles, shrews, rabbits and bats. Coyotes and bobcats are notable predators in the state, and coyotes have even been tracked living in urban Chicago and hunting rats and other prey in the downtown areas at night. Seagulls, eagles, ospreys, and owls are some of the larger bird species. Songbirds like robins, cardinals, sparrows, bluejays, starlings, and mockingbirds are also prevalent. Fish species include bluegill, bass, crappies, warmouth, channel catfish, and perch. Reptiles include lizards, a variety of turtles, garter snakes, ratsnakes, kingsnakes, black snakes, and water snakes. There are four venomous snake species in the state: the copperhead, the cottonmouth, the timber rattlesnake and the massasauga rattlesnake.

©iStock.com/BrianEKushner

It seems like madness to build nuclear power plants in such heavily-populated areas, doesn't it? Why not put them far out in unpopulated areas and transmit the electricity to where it's needed? Here are some reasons nuclear power plants are built where they are:

In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds nuclear reactors to strict standards and conducts regular inspections during the construction process and throughout the life of the reactor. Nuclear plants are built with multiple failsafe systems so that human or mechanical error will not cause a disaster. They are designed to shut down automatically and safely if something goes wrong.

Workers at plants like these have to pass difficult certification exams and have regular additional training and drills throughout their careers to make sure they are up to speed on different possible emergencies and will react correctly under pressure. Hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world have routinely, and safely operated for decades with only a few accidents. Those accidents are not to be minimized, but technicians have learned from each of them and made corrections to design flaws and operating procedures to prevent similar errors in the future.

Now that you know how nuclear plants work and what some of their environmental advantages and dangers are, would you like to live close to the largest nuclear reactor in Illinois? Or maybe you already do. Some countries, like Germany, have made a decision to get rid of all nuclear power, even if that means temporarily increasing their use of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Others, like France, are going all-in on nuclear, trying to build more plants to replace fossil fuels completely with clean energy sources. The ultimate test of your trust in nuclear power plants is if you know you live near one but don't lose any sleep over it.

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