BRACEVILLE, Ill. — Vietnam frontline U.S. Army veteran Jack Leininger isn’t afraid of nuclear electrical generating stations, even though a 33-year-old plant is a mere four miles from his front door.

“Not after all the things I’ve gone through in my life, including Vietnam,” said Brookfield Township resident Leininger, who piloted a military medical evacuation helicopter in the war, of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency’s (IEMA) distribution of free potassium iodide pills to residents within the 10-mile emergency planning zone (EPZ) of a nuclear station.

Potassium iodide, or KI, is a non-prescription drug that helps protect the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine released in a nuclear power plant incident. The two-day supply of KI tablets is available from participating Walgreen’s drugstores to all residents within the 10-mile EPZ at Exelon-owned La Salle, Dresden and Braidwood generating stations.

Also in the KI program are Exelon’s Byron, Clinton and Quad-Cities nuclear stations in the Byron, Clinton and Moline-Rock Island areas.

Nuclear stations are sited in rural areas for safety and cooling purposes. The twin reactors at the $1 billion La Salle Generating Station – which began operating in Brookfield Township south-southwest of Marseilles and Seneca in the early 1980s – are 40 feet below the surface of what once was a cornfield.

La Salle, Dresden and Braidwood stations, the latter two east and southeast of Morris and Braceville, are all within 40 miles of each other in rural northeastern Illinois. The number is the greatest in a single Congressional district nationwide.

“I have no fear of a nuclear power plant whatsoever,” Leininger, also a retired career Illinois National Guardsman, said. “I’d be more apt to get killed driving out of my driveway by somebody trying to get north of the river. I just don’t have any fear of it. The safety guards are there, and I trust that part.”

He believes the Kl program has merit, and also is perhaps a neighborly “feel good” move on the part of the stations’ owner, Exelon Nuclear.

“It could be they’re being encouraged by the federal government to make these pills available,” he said, noting the program probably is not expensive. “When (Exelon) is dealing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission all the time, I can imagine someone from the federal government or some politician saying they ought to be doing it.”

Should radiation leak in an incident at La Salle Station, Leininger laughed about the idea of remembering to find his Kl pills. “I might think to grab them, but I’d have no idea of where to look for them, I’m sure,” he said. “My wife has to even show me where to find the milk in the refrigerator. I’d be more liable to grab one of my rifles or pistols that I have with me.”

Each KI tablet is 65 mg; one package will supply a family of up to eight people. Larger families receive two packages. To obtain their pills, residents within the EPZ must have received a coupon by mail or clipped one from their newspaper, or by going online to www.illinois.gov/ ready/Press/Pages/01152013.aspx

The IEMA can also be contacted at 217-785-9901.

Longtime Marseilles pharmacist Gene Carlson of Schott’s Pharmacy said his local independent drugstore is giving KI pills to those with coupons. He is surprised at the many people who have come in for Kl tablets. The number of those with qualifying coupons is about equal to those without, he said.

“The pills protect your thyroid from radiation uptake if there should be a radiation leak,” he explained. “The pills do all the good in the world, because that radiation can destroy a thyroid gland. The thyroid regulates the activity of every cell in your body – how fast your body is burning energy.”

A person cannot function properly without a good thyroid, Carlson said. “You’re lethargic, you’re tired, you sleep all the time. If you should have your thyroid destroyed by this radiation, you could (contract) thyroid cancer, and that’s a grave consequence.

“By having iodine in your body that’s going to your thyroid gland, your body won’t pick up that radiation because the iodine is there already.”

Twenty-seven participating Walgreen’s pharmacies are listed by name, address and city on IEMA’s postal coupon. Carlson called the listing “a political ploy.”

“I don’t know exactly how this happened, but Walgreen’s kind of pulled a fast one. I don’t know what exactly transpired that they were able to get their name on every coupon. It’s available from every pharmacy,” he said of the pills.

Ron Laatz lives and farms 1.75 miles west of the La Salle Generating Station, and shares the same county highway. He still has the Kl tablets IEMA put out in a similar giveaway in 2002. He does not believe the pills will make a difference in case of a radiation leak, and if a warning is sounded, he probably wouldn’t think to grab them.

“I’d just be thinking of how to get out of here,” Laatz said. “The only thing I know about this iodide service is from what I read in the newspaper, where most people haven’t picked (the pills) up. I don’t even know where you can get them. I hope there’s a wind blowing out of the west if something happens.”

As to whether there was merit to the IEMA program or just a neighborly gesture by Exelon, Laatz believes it to be “as much psychological as physical.” Even if he learns where to obtain the Kl tablets, he said he would not get them.

A voice message at the IEMA contact number noted the person to answer questions on the program would not be available by press time. To obtain coupons, callers were instructed to leave their names and phone numbers. Also, calls to the media contact at Walgreen’s corporate headquarters in Deerfield, Ill., went unanswered.

The IEMA coupon notes Kl tablets will be distributed only when there is no emergency declared at an area power station. It states the tablets are not a substitute for evacuation or sheltering-in-place if this is recommended by local authorities.