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E&E News
15-07-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Mothballed nuclear plant on brink of revival
The sleepy 2,500-person Covert Township in Michigan is on the cusp of setting a new milestone amid what many are calling a U.S. nuclear renaissance. In October, Palisades nuclear generating station is expected to become the country's first commercial reactor to reopen after fully shutting down. The milestone comes amid a resurgence in public support for nuclear power and state and federal leaders' readiness to financially back the projects. The Biden administration committed a $1.5 billion loan guarantee to the Palisades restart, and the Trump administration has since continued those disbursements even as it moves to freeze other green energy dollars. Advertisement 'We've got two administrations with very different philosophies on energy, both saying this makes sense to move ahead with bringing Palisades back,' said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), who represents Covert's congressional district. 'All the infrastructure is there. There's no long, drawn-out permitting process. It's not like it's a new greenfield development. It's been there for decades,' he continued. But to Kevin Kamps, a staffer at the Maryland-based watchdog group Beyond Nuclear and a Michigan native, the planned reopening of Palisades is an impending 'nuclear nightmare.' Beyond Nuclear contested the plan at virtually every step of the vetting process and now 'fully intend[s] to appeal to the federal courts,' Kamps said. Reopening Palisades, Kamps said, means 'risking a Chernobyl on the Michigan shoreline.' Other advocates are concerned about the future environmental health of the Great Lakes, which account for over 20 percent of the world's surface freshwater. 'You're out of your mind' Opened in 1971, Palisades ran for over 50 years on the shores of Lake Michigan with no serious accidents. The single-reactor plant can produce 800 megawatts, enough to supply roughly 6 percent of Michigan's electricity needs. From the moment then-owner Entergy announced its intention to decommission the plant in 2018, people moved to save it, said Adam Stein, director of nuclear energy and innovation at the Breakthrough Institute. 'Entergy wanted to move out of the generation space and back into being a regulated utility, at least in the north, and was selling [Palisades] to Holtec International to move into the decommissioning space,' Stein said. 'It had a long-term purchasing power agreement at the time, it was making a profit, [and had] a license that extended several more years.' Despite efforts from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) to save the plant, it officially closed in June 2022. 'If you had asked either one of us before we were shutting this plant down, 'Would this restart?' we probably would have both said, 'You're out of your mind,'' said Pat O'Brien, Holtec's government affairs director, on a call with POLITICO's E&E News. Nick Culp, Holtec's senior manager of government affairs, added: 'That is a big undertaking by a single state to say, 'We're gonna be the first to do this.' I would say that's where the leadership really made a difference.' After an inquiry from Whitmer, Holtec followed a slow decommissioning process. Meanwhile, the prospect of a restart also caught the eye of Biden's Energy Department secretary, Jennifer Granholm. 'Where it made sense for us is when we got in discussions with DOE and the Loan Programs Office about what it would look like if we were to try to work with them for potential funding,' O'Brien said. In September 2023, Holtec announced a new agreement for the plant to sell power to Wolverine Power Cooperative, officially kicking off the restart process that's expected to generate 600 permanent jobs. Eventually, the state and federal governments together pledged $1.8 billion to restart the plant. Last May, Holtec cleared a major hurdle when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's environmental assessment concluded there were no significant environmental impacts associated with resuming the plant's operations. Locals are ready to welcome the plant back. 'The vast majority and overwhelming response that we've seen has been positive on this,' Huizenga said in an interview, adding that his constituents 'are very, very enthusiastic about everything from the jobs that get created to tax base to the need for an energy base load.' The opposition Not everyone is happy to see Palisades returning. One of Kamps' main safety concerns with the reopening of Palisades has been the potential degradation of tubes in the steam generator. Steam generators use thousands of tubes for heat exchange, which can become damaged over time, reducing power output. To restore efficiency, damaged tubes at Palisades are sleeved — a process of inserting a smaller pipe to seal off damage while maintaining water flow. Some activists are concerned about those sleeves swelling or shifting under extreme heat and blocking the flow. 'They are not real concerns,' Stein said. 'If you are at the temperature at which that would happen, there are already larger concerns in the reactor anyway.' Stein adds that if a sleeve does move and block flow, it's not an immediate danger so much as a loss of efficiency. The NRC's assessment reached the same conclusion as Stein, with staff concurring that finding a solution to prevent sleeve movement under high temperatures is not important enough to delay the restart timeline. From Detroit, activist Jesse Deer in Water, a member of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, advocates for tribal rights and belongs to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Radioactive waste is the crux of his worries about the plant reopening. 'Not only is it making the people sick, it's making the land sick too,' he said about the effects of Palisades and its locally stored radioactive waste. A 2013 non-peer-reviewed report by Joseph Mangano, who heads a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to studying how radioactivity affects public health, found that the 'death rate for all cancers combined' in Van Buren County, where Palisades is located, 'was 10.5% below the Michigan rate in the 1970s, but is now 12.0% above the state.' But the NRC's environmental assessment found that thyroid cancer rates in Van Buren County were consistently below the state average from 2001 to 2020. 'There are no studies to date that definitively demonstrate a correlation between radiation dose from nuclear power facilities and cancer incidence in the general public,' the assessment said. Environmental activists are also fearful of the new small modular reactors (SMRs) Holtec plans to build and test at the Palisades plant. Deer in Water is frustrated about local residents having to serve as 'guinea pigs.' SMRs are small reactors designed to be factory-assembled. Supporters argue SMRs are inherently safer due to their size and recent advancements in passive nuclear safety features, but none have been built commercially in North America. 'They needed to do more to engage the Indigenous communities,' Deer in Water said. According to Deer in Water, there are burial sites and sacred sites on the Palisades land. He considers the possible consequences of restarting the plant's operations to be 'tragic,' claiming the Indigenous community has deep cultural ties to the land. An archaeological survey conducted last year and commissioned by Holtec found no burial places, but three archaeological sites were unearthed: a 20th century building and a temporary tool-making camp and an isolated tool fragment from pre-Columbian American Indians. Can other shuttered plants return? With Palisades remaining on schedule for a restart this fall and nuclear power enjoying a moment of popular approval and high investment, many in the private and public sectors are eyeing other potential nuclear restarts — but opportunities for short turnarounds are scarce. 'It really comes down to the state of the mothballing that's done in the decommissioning work,' said Brian Wirth, head of the University of Tennessee's Department of Nuclear Engineering. 'The moment you make any significant penetrations in the pressure vessel, you're done, because that's the one component that you can't replace easily.' Once the pressure vessel is penetrated, operators have little to no financial savings from a restart over constructing a new reactor. Stein said that leaves Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island and Iowa's Duane Arnold as the two near-term restart contenders. 'Indian Point [Energy Center in New York], within a year of shutting down, they cut a gigantic hole in the side of the container. That would be very expensive to repair. Whereas Three-Mile Island was a safe store. It was kept essentially packed and monitored for issues for a long period of time,' Stein said. Adding to the prospects for Three Mile Island, which was recently rebranded as the Crane Clean Energy Center, is the financial backing of Microsoft. In September, the tech giant signed a 20-year power supply agreement with operator Constellation Energy. Soon, Three Mile Island, Duane Arnold, and other closed plants will have a model to follow. '[Palisades] will set the precedent across the globe for restarting old-aged, shut-down reactors,' said Deer in Water.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Anti-nuclear activists call for broader environmental review on Palisades restart
The Palisades Nuclear Plant sits on the shore of Lake Michigan, in Covert Township. (Courtesy: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) As New Jersey-Based Holtec International works its way toward restarting the Palisades Nuclear Plant in West Michigan, a host of organizations are challenging regulator's findings that reviving the reactor would not bring significant harm to the environment. The Palisades restart marks the first effort of its kind in the United States, with the federal government awarding the effort a $1.5 billion loan alongside $150 million in state funding to bring the facility back online. However the effort is not without its detractors, as some environmental organizations have argued against providing state funding for the effort, while other organizations have opposed the plant over safety and environmental concerns. In a virtual hearing Thursday morning, attorneys representing Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan, Michigan Safe Energy Future, Three Mile Island Alert, and Nuclear Energy Information Services asked a panel Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel to accept a motion allowing them to file new and updated contentions. Those contentions argue the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission erred when it issued a finding of no significant impact for the project, allowing it to forgo a full review of environmental impacts. 'The position of the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] staff seems to be that, since the plant was operable in May 2022 that simply a return to operability means that there are no significant environmental impacts,' said Wallace Taylor, an attorney representing the anti-nuclear groups, arguing that the environmental analysis should have come from a perspective of retooling, recalibrating and restarting a dormant facility. The Commission issued a draft of its findings in January, where it outlined the purpose and need reviving the facility would serve, the level of environmental review needed and provided a description of the plant, any potential alternatives, and the various ways it could impact the environment. The environmental assessment cites Michigan's standard for 100% clean energy by 2040, which includes provisions for nuclear energy and natural gas with 90% effective carbon capture technology in justifying the need for the project. It also argues the facility will enhance electrical reliability in the state by generating consistent, carbon-free energy and reducing the state's reliance on imported energy sources. Although the commission reviewed alternatives like replacing the current reactor with a new reactor; replacing the reactor with other alternatives like natural gas, solar and wind; and using alternative system designs with the current reactor, it only provided further analysis for a no-action alternative, where it would deny the authorizations needed to bring Palisades back online. After reviewing a number of potential concerns, commission staff ultimately concluded the project would have no significant environmental impacts, and that choosing not to grant the authorizations Holtec needs to operate the plant would violate the purpose and need of the project: meeting clean energy demand. Terry Lodge, also representing the groups challenging the review, contended that the purpose of need statement was flawed, arguing it presents a restart of the plant as the only viable option without offering any justification or explanation of the demand for power. Lodge and Taylor also argued the limited consideration of alternatives to the plant was similarly problematic. 'I think that it's pretty obvious that renewable energy would have a lessened environmental impact than a nuclear plant, which would require uranium mining, which would require something to be done with the radioactive waste. There's radioactive material, like tritium, for example, that comes from nuclear plants, and all of that would have to be considered to have a really appropriate discussion in the [environmental analysis], and that wasn't done,' Taylor said. Lodge further contended that the impact of the project remains unclear, as Holtec is still working to identify whether it needs to replace key components of the reactor, like steam generators, arguing the environmental effects of the restart are not yet known and quantified. While justifying their findings, commission staff explained that the purpose and needs statement is used to determine the range of alternatives considered within the assessment. Anita Naber, representing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, explained that the alternatives analysis is intended to determine whether there are other options available or environmentally preferable alternatives. She later explained that while developing a purpose and need statement for their environmental analysis, staff members give substantial weight to the goals and needs of an applicant, in line with both the commission's policy and case law. 'The staff will look at the applicant's purpose and need and the factual background and information that's submitted by the applicant in support of that purpose and need and evaluate that. And that's what the staff did for the Palisades restart environmental assessment,' Naber said. In offering their closing arguments to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, the plant's opponents emphasized that an environmental impact should have been required for the project since the beginning, and would have required a much more in-depth analysis of alternatives. However, members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec argued that the contentions filed by the opposing groups should be denied, as they were not responding to new information as required by the commission's rules. Naber also noted that the commission expects petitioners to file contentions on the basis of an applicant's environmental report rather than delaying them until after the staff issues its environmental analysis. 'To have their contentions admitted for hearing, petitioners must demonstrate some sort of genuine factual or legal dispute with the staff draft [environmental analysis], which they have not done. They also need to provide actual fact or expert support for their assertion, but they have not done this either,' Naber said. On rebuttal, Lodge argued that the Commission's rules allow petitioners to file new or amended contentions based on a draft or final environmental impact statement, environmental assessment or any supplements to those documents. 'We timely and we believe properly under this section amended our contentions,' Lodge said, arguing their updated contentions should not be excluded as a result. The panel will take the matter under consideration and will determine whether to accept the opposition's updated contentions. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
