Illinois General Assembly - Illinois Compiled Statutes

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420 ILCS 20/3

    (420 ILCS 20/3) (from Ch. 111 1/2, par. 241-3)
    Sec. 3. Definitions.

"Agency" or "IEMA-OHS" means the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and Office of Homeland Security, or its successor agency.

    "Broker" means any person who takes possession of low-level waste for purposes of consolidation and shipment.
    "Compact" means the Central Midwest Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact.

"Decommissioning" means the measures taken at the end of a facility's operating life to assure the continued protection of the public from any residual radioactivity or other potential hazards present at a facility.

    "Director" means the Director of the Agency.
    "Disposal" means the isolation of waste from the biosphere in a permanent facility designed for that purpose.

"Facility" means a parcel of land or site, together with structures, equipment and improvements on or appurtenant to the land or site, which is used or is being developed for the treatment, storage or disposal of low-level radioactive waste. "Facility" does not include lands, sites, structures or equipment used by a generator in the generation of low-level radioactive wastes.

"Generator" means any person who produces or possesses low-level radioactive waste in the course of or incident to manufacturing, power generation, processing, medical diagnosis and treatment, research, education or other activity.

"Hazardous waste" means a waste, or combination of wastes, which because of its quantity, concentration, or physical, chemical, or infectious characteristics may cause or significantly contribute to an increase in mortality or an increase in serious, irreversible, or incapacitating reversible, illness; or pose a substantial present or potential hazard to human health or the environment when improperly treated, stored, transported, or disposed of, or otherwise managed, and which has been identified, by characteristics or listing, as hazardous under Section 3001 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, P.L. 94-580 or under regulations of the Pollution Control Board.

"High-level radioactive waste" means:
(1) the highly radioactive material resulting from

the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel including liquid waste produced directly in reprocessing and any solid material derived from the liquid waste that contains fission products in sufficient concentrations; and

(2) the highly radioactive material that the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission has determined, on the effective date of this Amendatory Act of 1988, to be high-level radioactive waste requiring permanent isolation.

"Low-level radioactive waste" or "waste" means radioactive waste not classified as (1) high-level radioactive waste, (2) transuranic waste, (3) spent nuclear fuel, or (4) byproduct material as defined in Sections 11e(2), 11e(3), and 11e(4) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2014). This definition shall apply notwithstanding any declaration by the federal government, a state, or any regulatory agency that any radioactive material is exempt from any regulatory control.

"Mixed waste" means waste that is both "hazardous waste" and "low-level radioactive waste" as defined in this Act.

"Nuclear facilities" means nuclear power plants, facilities housing nuclear test and research reactors, facilities for the chemical conversion of uranium, and facilities for the storage of spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste.

"Nuclear power plant" or "nuclear steam-generating facility" means a thermal power plant in which the energy (heat) released by the fissioning of nuclear fuel is used to boil water to produce steam.

"Nuclear power reactor" means an apparatus, other than an atomic weapon, designed or used to sustain nuclear fission in a self-supporting chain reaction.

"Person" means an individual, corporation, business enterprise or other legal entity either public or private and any legal successor, representative, agent or agency of that individual, corporation, business enterprise, or legal entity.

"Post-closure care" means the continued monitoring of the regional disposal facility after closure for the purposes of detecting a need for maintenance, ensuring environmental safety, and determining compliance with applicable licensure and regulatory requirements, and includes undertaking any remedial actions necessary to protect public health and the environment from radioactive releases from the facility.

"Regional disposal facility" or "disposal facility" means the facility established by the State of Illinois under this Act for disposal away from the point of generation of waste generated in the region of the Compact.

"Release" means any spilling, leaking, pumping, pouring, emitting, emptying, discharging, injecting, escaping, leaching, dumping or disposing into the environment of low-level radioactive waste.

"Remedial action" means those actions taken in the event of a release or threatened release of low-level radioactive waste into the environment, to prevent or minimize the release of the waste so that it does not migrate to cause substantial danger to present or future public health or welfare or the environment. The term includes, but is not limited to, actions at the location of the release such as storage, confinement, perimeter protection using dikes, trenches or ditches, clay cover, neutralization, cleanup of released low-level radioactive wastes, recycling or reuse, dredging or excavations, repair or replacement of leaking containers, collection of leachate and runoff, onsite treatment or incineration, provision of alternative water supplies and any monitoring reasonably required to assure that these actions protect human health and the environment.

"Scientific Surveys" means, collectively, the Illinois State Geological Survey and the Illinois State Water Survey of the University of Illinois.

"Shallow land burial" means a land disposal facility in which radioactive waste is disposed of in or within the upper 30 meters of the earth's surface. However, this definition shall not include an enclosed, engineered, structurally re-enforced and solidified bunker that extends below the earth's surface.

"Small modular reactor" or "SMR" means an advanced nuclear reactor: (1) with a rated nameplate capacity of 300 electrical megawatts or less; and (2) that may be constructed and operated in combination with similar reactors at a single site.

"Storage" means the temporary holding of waste for treatment or disposal for a period determined by Agency regulations.

"Treatment" means any method, technique or process, including storage for radioactive decay, designed to change the physical, chemical or biological characteristics or composition of any waste in order to render the waste safer for transport, storage or disposal, amenable to recovery, convertible to another usable material or reduced in volume.

"Waste management" means the storage, transportation, treatment or disposal of waste.
(Source: P.A. 103-306, eff. 7-28-23; 103-569, eff. 6-1-24.)