Just one week after the bill was signed to keep open two nuclear power plants in Illinois, it's already responsible for new jobs and economic benefits at both. Wednesday Exelon announced plans to go ahead with various capital projects that had been put on hold while the Future Energy Jobs Bill was in doubt.
Exelon says it will hire more than 400 permanent employees to help with the capital projects at Clinton and Cordova, in addition to the 3,000 or so workers hired each year for re-fueling outages.
At Cordova, the company plans to install a new venting system, upgrade the computers, and update the control room simulator that's used to train reactor operators.
Without the bill, Exelon planned to close the two plants, saying they are un-profitable, and that would have cost a total of 800 jobs at Cordova and 700 more in Clinton, Illinois, not to mention thousands of indirect jobs linked to the plants.