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Lawmakers and Exelon say there is still time to save Cordova plant

CORDOVA, Illinois — Exelon announced today it is making the decision to shut down the Cordova, Illinois and Clinton, Illinois nuclear power plants because state...

CORDOVA, Illinois — Exelon announced today it is making the decision to shut down the Cordova, Illinois and Clinton, Illinois nuclear power plants because state lawmakers failed to pass the Next Generation Energy Plan. Exelon has begun taking steps to shut down the two nuclear plants including making permanent shutdown notifications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within 30 days.

Bill Stoermer is the Communications Manager at the Cordova nuclear power plant.  Despite Exelon's announcement, he says there is still time to save the plant.

"There is time to reverse that decision but the legislature in Illinois needs to move quickly. Once we make the regulatory notifications we're on a short window of time where we can reverse those," said Stoermer.

Governor Bruce Rauner visited East Moline on the same day as the announcement. The republican governor said it would be terrible if Exelon shut down its Cordova and Clinton plants.

"We need to protect good paying jobs, Exelon has good paying jobs, I want to protect those jobs," said Rauner.

Rauner said super majority democrats have said both publicly and privately they don't want to make any changes on legislation until after the election. He met with Exelon officials on Thursday following the announcement.

"I want to keep those plants open, but we also have to balance that with protecting our rate payers and our tax payers, this is a large corporation that is asking for a bailout to keep some operations going," said Rauner.

Exelon of the Quad Cities and Clinton have lost a combined $800 million in the past seven years. But the company says that's because the energy playing field isn't level.

"It doesn't make any money because the markets are unfair in Illinois and we can't compete when federal subsidies and state subsidies pay other generators that are less reliable," said Stoermer.

Mike Smiddy, Illinois Representative is a democrat from district 71. He blames the inability for legislation to move through Springfield on lawmakers and companies not wanting to budge.

"You have a  lot of folks that are in the room that are trying to negotiate the best deal for their particular form of energy and I think that's what holding the process up," said Smiddy.

The possibility that the Cordova plant could still stay open contradicts the announcement that it will close, but Stoermer says it is not just a threat.

"You go talk to anyone of the 800 employees that are here today, they'll tell you it's not a threat," said Stoermer.

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