No nuclear power plant in the nation has restarted operations after shutting down, and Holtec International is detailing how it expects to accomplish the feat at the mothballed Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in a little more than a year.
Holtec, which provides decommissioning services and equipment for reactors and waste, has completed all submittals necessary for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider authorizing a repower of the dormant Michigan plant. The company has notified the NRC of its intent to file for and submit all necessary documentation to secure a 20-year license extension so Palisades can generate power into 2051. The NRC said it plans to issue a draft report in early 2025 and release a complete report by mid-2025.
In an interview with RTO Insider, Nick Culp, senior manager for government affairs and communications at Holtec, said although Holtec expects NRC staff to be “very thorough in their review and oversight processes, we remain confident in our approach to seek reauthorization of power operations within the NRC’s existing regulatory framework.”
Culp said Holtec is optimistic Palisades will be generating output in October 2025. The NRC has told Holtec it expects to dedicate a full-time inspector to the site by December, Culp added.
A Model for Other Mothballed Plants?
Although it hasn’t restarted the 53-year-old plant yet, Holtec isn’t foreclosing subsequent license renewals beyond the 2051 timeline, and Culp said Palisades could become a model for reopenings at other plants.
“This is something we believe could be replicated at other shuttered nuclear plants, both here in the U.S. and abroad. We’ve seen that when nuclear power goes offline … fossil fuels are often used to backfill the demand for reliable baseload generation,” he said. “And as states like Michigan and the country seek to transition away from fossil generation, there’s been a renewed focus on nuclear being an important part of our future generation mix.”
Culp said Holtec’s original intent when it acquired the plant from Entergy in 2022 was to apply its business model of “safe but accelerated nuclear decommissioning” on Palisades. The company determined at the time the plant’s approximately $570 million decommissioning trust was sufficient for it to tackle the process.
Three years ago, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel argued unsuccessfully before the NRC that Palisades’ trust was about $200 million short of full decommissioning cost needs.
Holtec is decommissioning three nuclear power plants on the East Coast: Oyster Creek Generating Station, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and Indian Point Energy Center.
Culp said Holtec rethought their tactic with Palisades once they heard a “strong desire” from the community and state government to keep it open, particularly from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
“Historically, the support for Palisades in the local community has been strong. Shortly before the plant was to shut down, there were calls from the local, state and federal levels to stay online,” Culp said. “Things changed before the plant closed, as there was a recognition that if we want to be serious about addressing climate change and keeping the lights on, nuclear is an essential part of the equation. When Holtec became owner, there was already talk of the plant reopening.”
Nevertheless, Holtec began doing some early-stage decommissioning work when it came into possession of the plant in 2022.
“Nothing done in the early stages of decommissioning was irreversible,” Culp said, adding that Holtec first focused on cleaning up some spent fuel and recycling old equipment but made sure plant systems and equipment were preserved.
Culp said Holtec stopped drawing from the decommissioning trust as soon as it was inclined toward a reopening.
“As we shifted to a restart, we stopped pulling from that trust fund,” he explained. “The decommissioning trust is very sacred and only used for decommissioning-related activities. It will stay bound with the site and continue to grow over the course of plant operations.”
Culp did not disclose the total cost of restarting the plant and only said Holtec is making a sizable investment. The company’s contribution — paired with a recent $1.5 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy as part of the Inflation Reduction Act and the state of Michigan contributing $300 million in grant funding — means that decommissioning is the cheaper option by a long shot. (See LPO Announces $1.52B Loan to Restart Palisades Nuclear Plant.)
“We’re doing a lot of investment to prepare the plant for future operation. But it’s substantially cheaper to bring this plant back online than build new generation from a value proposition,” Culp said.
Culp said the federal government is doing its due diligence to make sure Palisades is a good choice for the loan, which is essential to restoring operations.
“I would say it’s a critical part of it. If it were not for the federal government, state of Michigan support, our long-term power purchase agreements and our own investment, if it weren’t for those four funding streams, this would not be possible.”
When Palisades comes online, Culp said 100% of its 800 MW output will be spoken for between Wolverine Power and Hoosier Energy Cooperative in power purchase agreements that will span “more than the next 20 years.” Culp declined to outline how many megawatts each utility has signed on for, but confirmed Wolverine is the primary offtaker.
Condition, Workforce, Fuel Contract
Todd Allen, chair of the University of Michigan’s nuclear engineering program, said the most crucial aspects of restarting the plant include the material condition of the plant, recruiting a trained workforce and a fuel contract. He said the “right number of trained staff to operate this plant” is imperative.
“They’re going to have to make a convincing argument to regulators that nothing has changed,” Allen said in an interview with RTO Insider. “If you stopped running your car for three years … you would want to know, ‘do I want to put in new lube oil?’ Those are the kinds of questions that they will have to answer.”
Allen said if all those pieces are in place and NRC Chairman Chris Hanson can deliver a review within the year as promised, Holtec “might” be able to pull off a restart in 2025.
Allen said when previous owner Entergy put the plant on a pathway to decommissioning, the company likely deferred some maintenance, stopped buying fuel and thinned or scattered staff to other worksites. He said in order to convince the NRC to reinstate a license, Holtec will have to prove the plant has recovered fully from inactivity.
Culp acknowledged that near the end of Palisades’ 50-year run, Entergy deferred some maintenance that otherwise would have occurred if the plant was intended to keep operating. He said Holtec is tackling some of the plant’s cobwebs and just finished a deep cleaning of its primary coolant system. He also said some components of the plant have been sent offsite for refurbishment for the first time ever, and modular trailers are parked on site to conduct cleaning and inspection of steam generator tubes.
Culp said before Palisades’ shutdown, it achieved record-breaking production runs and was operating at the highest safety ranking by the NRC, a testament to the “excellent shape Palisades is in.”
Holtec is devoting itself to making sure Palisades has a talented workforce at the ready, Culp said.
“When we shut down, we kept a little more than a third of our workforce,” he said. “Since we’ve started to rehire, we’ve had a number of previous employees return.”
Culp said since the beginning of the year, Holtec has hired about 260 employees, including many former plant employees, bringing Palisades’ workforce from 220 to 480. He said the plant is on track to be fully staffed with more than 600 people by spring.
“We’re also getting industry veterans, we’re getting people fresh from the Navy’s nuclear training program,” he said.
Holtec is approaching local colleges and skilled trade unions for new employees, Culp said, and emphasized that not every job opening at Palisades requires a college degree.
Culp said 26 former licensed operators have completed requalification of their operating licenses, and prospective operators have begun their 18-month training. He said Holtec in late 2023 rebuilt the plant’s training simulator, restaffed its training organization and began using an abandoned, onsite training building again.
Returning the plant to service will be “transformational” for the community in southwestern Michigan, Culp said.
“People understand that this is clean energy, this is reliable energy, these are jobs, this is millions of dollars in annual tax revenue. It’s a huge economic driver,” he said.
Holtec secured fuel early in its restart journey, Culp said. He said the nuclear industry and its vendors, suppliers and trade unions have provided “vital support” for restarting the plant.
Shifting Public Opinion and ‘Zombie’ Moniker
Allen said the move to clean energy has tipped the scales on nuclear power’s public image, citing in particular Michigan’s MI Healthy Climate Plan, which calls for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050.
“I think that the overall context for nuclear both nationally and globally has shifted more in favor over the past five or so years,” Allen said.
A recent survey from the Pew Research Center backs that claim, finding that 56% of American adults favor erecting more nuclear power plants to generate electricity, up from 43% in 2016.
But Palisades’ journey to restore operation faces opposition.
Anti-nuclear nonprofit Beyond Nuclear refers to Palisades as a “zombie reactor,” conjuring images of an unsafe and rickety plant being raised from the dead. (See Beyond Nuclear Leads Protest of Palisades’ Potential Reopening.) The group, along with grassroots organizations Michigan Safe Energy Future and Don’t Waste Michigan, filed a petition and request for hearing this week with the NRC on Holtec’s transfer request for a renewed facility operating license to fire up Palisades. The trio said they also intend to file another petition and hearing request against exemptions needed from the NRC for Holtec to convert its possession-only license into an operating license.
They have called the restart unsafe, expensive and unnecessary, arguing that renewable energy paired with energy storage can fill the need for the plant. They’ve also said Holtec is inexperienced because it’s never operated a nuclear plant before.
Beyond Nuclear argued in an Aug. 28 press release that Holtec has performed a “con job,” and pointed out that eight days after Holtec took possession of Palisades in 2022, it already had submitted an ultimately unsuccessful bid for funding to reopen the plant under the Department of Energy’s Civil Nuclear Credit program. The group has asked the NRC to revoke its original Entergy-to-Holtec license transfer from 2021 in its entirety.
Allen allowed that doubts over a restart of the plant likely come from those always suspicious of nuclear power.
“The same tension was there probably before they shut. I doubt people with very strong opinions have changed their mind since. If you were always skeptical, then you’re probably still skeptical. I don’t think you can avoid that tension; it just exists,” Allen said. “I can come up with a list of why nuclear power is really great and why it’s really limiting. I don’t think any single source of energy is perfect on its own. We end up balancing the benefits and the drawbacks.”
Allen said residents who live in and around Covert, Mich., on the whole probably are more comfortable with the plant’s resumed operations. He also said the plant’s large workforce needs are attractive to the community.
Nationally, Holtec is not the only nuclear operator that aspires to run a plant beyond 75 years, Allen said. He noted that the NRC’s original, 40-year licenses weren’t based on the technical ability of nuclear plants, but modeled after coal plants, which were the closest analog comparison at the time. He said a few other nuclear plants in the country have set their sights on 80 years of operations or more.
“It could still be a good car. You’d just have to do some checks to make sure,” Allen said. “Is Holtec asking to do something unique in the aspiration to go to 75 years? The answer is no.”
Allen said when Entergy made the decision to shut down the plant, there was less awareness that getting to zero carbon emissions would be so challenging. He also said surging demand growth from data centers complicates the clean energy transformation.
“In retrospect, it might be a bad decision. But at the time, Entergy’s decision was really logical. The context is totally different. Today, you have a different economic perspective on your plant,” he said. “If you can extend the life of an existing plant, you’re financially better off than building new. If you can just change the oil of your car, you’re better off than spending $30,000 on a new car.”
