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Nuclear Safety Meeting Set
(IRN)-The safety of Illinois' nuclear power plants will be examined Friday.

Illinois' two U.S. senators have convened a hearing for Friday afternoon to gather testimony from scientific experts on whether there are lessons to be learned from Japan's nuclear disaster.

"I think that nuclear power is going to be a near-permanent part of the Illinois economy," says U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) "I think that Senator [Dick] Durbin and I will lay out some of the lessons learned that we should take in planning for the future of this industry in Illinois."

Kirk says a key to safety is not storing spent nuclear fuel on-site. He wants it stored in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a spot which itself is safer, but there is some concern about the safety of transporting spent fuel to that location. Depositing the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain has been nixed by Nevada's two senators, one of whom is majority leader.

Illinois has 11 nuclear reactors, six of which are boiling water reactors similar to the ones damaged by the tsunami in Japan. All of them, at seven facilities, are owned by Exelon Corp.

(Source: Illinois Radio Network)
03 25 11 by Newsroom
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