The historic effort to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in southwest Michigan took another step forward on Thursday night when the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spent three hours listening to impassioned pleas from both sides of the issue.
The event, one of many in the long process of vetting a proposal once considered unfathomable, was what’s known as an environmental scoping meeting.
In layman’s terms, that’s a chance for the public to interject thoughts as the nuclear regulator assesses the viability of such a never-attempted reboot from an environmental standpoint.
The comment deadline for this phase of the restart review, the draft environmental assessment, is July 29. A decision on the overall project isn’t expected until late 2025.
Palisades ceased operations on May 20, 2022, after its former owner, New Orleans-based Entergy, found it too expensive to keep running.
Its operating license was eventually transferred to Jupiter, Fla.-based Holtec International. A subsidiary, Holtec Decommissioning International of Camden, N.J., was already on site and in the early stages of dismantling the plant.
It’s the first time in history anyone has put together a formal proposal to restart a mothballed plant that’s already entered the decommissioning phase.
The NRC hasn’t even determined yet if that’s possible from an engineering standpoint. Plants to date have been considered to be shut down for good once they’ve entered decommissioning.
Holtec specializes in decommissioning and has never operated a plant.
The potential restart of Palisades has been promoted by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the U.S. Department of Energy as a way of reducing climate-altering greenhouse gases. It has the potential of changing the way the nuclear industry looks at mothballed plants.
Michigan’s 2024 fiscal year budget has dedicated $150 million toward the plant’s restart, and the Energy Department last March pledged $1.52 billion.
The NRC meeting was held inside Lake Michigan College’s Mendel Center in Benton Harbor, Mich., and drew a large number of online participants from across the country, too.
It was held two days after President Biden signed into law the ADVANCE Act on July 9.
ADVANCE is an acronym for Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy. The legislation calls upon the NRC to further streamline the process of reviewing nuclear projects, especially advanced reactors, and take other measures to help promote more nuclear power.
“At this point, we do not expect the provisions will affect the review of the Palisades project,” Scott Burnell, a spokesman in the NRC’s headquarters in suburban Washington, told one of the event attendees who asked if passage of that act might shortcut the agency’s Palisades review.
Several elected officials spoke in favor of the potential restart, as did some people in the business community.
They cited economic benefits, including high-paying jobs and a stronger tax base, as well as a crucial role Palisades could play in helping the state meet Governor Whitmer’s MI Healthy Climate Plan, which aspires to have the state carbon-free by 2050. It was approved by the Michigan Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Whitmer in 2023.
Many other people — including anti-nuclear activists and residents of an area in Covert, Mich. known as Palisades Park — opposed the plan. Several of the residents in Palisades Park, established in 1905, believe the nuclear plant may be the cause of or at least a contributing factor to a high incidence of thyroid problems. They asked for health assessments before a decision is made about the project.
U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.), whose congressional district includes Palisades, did not attend the meeting but had an aide read his support for the project into the record. His letter noted that the site also is viewed as one with potential for hosting small modular reactors in the future.
Holtec also did not have any of its representatives speak at the meeting.
Michigan Rep. Joey Andrews, a Democrat whose 38th House District includes Palisades and much of the southwest Michigan shoreline along Lake Michigan, said the MI Climate Plan “cannot be met without nuclear power, cannot be met without resources like Palisades back on the [regional electric] grid.
“I believe we have no chance of meeting our climate goals as a planet without Palisades, without nuclear energy being brought back online,” Mr. Andrews said.
Jobs generated by Palisades provide “family-sustaining careers for people here,” he said.
“I cannot overstate how critical this is, both to meet our climate goals and to meet the sustainability of our communities here in southwest Michigan,” Mr. Andrews said.
Jacqueline Holst was one of many attendees who questioned the proposal.
“I’m just curious how we’re going to look at a restart that’s never been done before and consider that impact to the environment when it’s something that’s never happened before,” she told the NRC. “I also have some concerns that we’re doing a lot of new things at one time. Holtec, for example, has never operated a nuclear power plant.”
She said it’s “unfortunate” that project supporters were talking more about economic benefits than potential human health impacts, the purpose of the meeting.
Wally Taylor, an Iowa-based attorney representing two anti-nuclear activist groups, Takoma Park, Md.-based Beyond Nuclear and Monroe-based Don’t Waste Michigan, said Holtec should be required to apply for a new license instead of getting Entergy’s former license via a transfer, a process that would delay the project. He contends there is no procedure in the NRC rules for transferring the license of a mothballed plant.
The NRC said that Palisades was operating safety when it was shut down.
“That was a business decision,” said Laura Willingham, an NRC environmental project manager.
Kevin Kamps, a Kalamazoo native who has been a Beyond Nuclear radioactive waste specialist for years, told the NRC he believes the project has “very high risk” and is “extremely expensive for the public.”
He said the agency’s 30-day comment period should be extended out to six months.
“Thirty days is not sufficient,” Mr. Kamps said. “This [project] is unprecedented.”
Mr. Kamps referred to Palisades and other mothballed nuclear plants as “zombie reactors” while drawing out a number of worst-case scenarios for Lake Michigan’s vast freshwater supplies, local agriculture, and the tourism industry in the event of a catastrophe.
If Palisades gets the go-ahead, then America will “wait to hear who else will join this parade of zombie reactors,” he said.
Palisades began operating March 24, 1971, and continued for more than 50 years.
The plant is in Van Buren County's Covert Township, a 432-acre site in southwest Michigan five miles south of one of Lake Michigan’s best-known vacation paradises, South Haven. It’s about a three-hour drive from downtown Toledo and an hour-drive due west of downtown Kalamazoo.
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