By Kelly House
Bridge Michigan
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Visit the newsroom online: bridgemi.com.
A coalition of anti-nuclear power groups has filed a lawsuit in hopes of stopping a planned restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in southwest Michigan.
In a complaint filed Monday in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, the groups Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, and Michigan Safe Energy Future argue the plant should never have received regulatory approval to restart once it was already slated for permanent shutdown.
They’ve asked the court to issue a permanent injunction against the plant’s reopening.
The groups have accused Holtec Energy, the plant’s owners, of doing a “bait-and-switch” back in 2022, when the company bought the facility with the stated intention of dismantling it and later shifted focus to reopening it.
Officials with Holtec contend the reopening can be done safely. Once the existing plant is back in service, they hope to build two additional small modular reactors on the property.
“The NRC’s approval to reauthorize power operations at Palisades followed a rigorous, independent review within the agency’s existing regulatory framework,” company spokesperson Nick Culp said. “As we move toward the plant’s historic restart, our top priority is ensuring the plant is prepared to return to long-term safe and reliable generation.”
Citing the fact that the plant was in decommissioning mode, Holtec claimed exemptions from some regulations applying to nuclear power plants while simultaneously claiming the plant still had an active license to ease its regulatory pathway to restart.
“Holtec is claiming that Palisades was both dead and alive at the same time,” said Arnie Gunderson, an expert witness for the plaintiffs and a former nuclear industry engineer.
Plaintiff groups fear those regulatory shortcuts could have serious safety consequences, including a meltdown resulting from degradation of the 54-year-old nuclear plant’s steam generator tubes.
Palisades closed in 2022, a fate that had been planned for years because the plant’s expensive nuclear power could not compete on the open market against cheaper forms of energy. But Michigan officials soon began lobbying for a restart, citing fears of energy insecurity and an opportunity to tap into a multi-billion-dollar nuclear bailout fund that the Biden administration created.
The facility has since won billions of dollars in subsidies, with more requests pending to support what would be the nation’s first reopening of a closed nuclear power plant.
Earlier this year, federal nuclear power regulators issued a so-called “finding of no significant impact” indicating no major environmental concerns with the reopening plan. A series of additional regulatory approvals have followed, enabling Holtec to receive new nuclear fuel last month.
A spokesperson with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said at the time that there are still “several licensing actions under NRC review and additional requirements that need to be met” before the plant can begin generating electricity.
Michigan lawmakers are now pondering a bill package that aims to further boost the industry with tax breaks, grants and other incentives. The package passed the state House last month and is now awaiting deliberation in the state Senate.
The nuclear renaissance comes amid surging energy demand across the nation tied to the rapid expansion of energy-hungry data centers owned by the likes of Microsoft, Google and OpenAI. Michigan’s first announced data center, a proposed Stargate facility in Saline Township, would demand as much energy as more than a million homes, singlehandedly increase DTE Energy’s peak load by 25%.
Bridge Michigan
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Visit the newsroom online: bridgemi.com.
A coalition of anti-nuclear power groups has filed a lawsuit in hopes of stopping a planned restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in southwest Michigan.
In a complaint filed Monday in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, the groups Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, and Michigan Safe Energy Future argue the plant should never have received regulatory approval to restart once it was already slated for permanent shutdown.
They’ve asked the court to issue a permanent injunction against the plant’s reopening.
The groups have accused Holtec Energy, the plant’s owners, of doing a “bait-and-switch” back in 2022, when the company bought the facility with the stated intention of dismantling it and later shifted focus to reopening it.
Officials with Holtec contend the reopening can be done safely. Once the existing plant is back in service, they hope to build two additional small modular reactors on the property.
“The NRC’s approval to reauthorize power operations at Palisades followed a rigorous, independent review within the agency’s existing regulatory framework,” company spokesperson Nick Culp said. “As we move toward the plant’s historic restart, our top priority is ensuring the plant is prepared to return to long-term safe and reliable generation.”
Citing the fact that the plant was in decommissioning mode, Holtec claimed exemptions from some regulations applying to nuclear power plants while simultaneously claiming the plant still had an active license to ease its regulatory pathway to restart.
“Holtec is claiming that Palisades was both dead and alive at the same time,” said Arnie Gunderson, an expert witness for the plaintiffs and a former nuclear industry engineer.
Plaintiff groups fear those regulatory shortcuts could have serious safety consequences, including a meltdown resulting from degradation of the 54-year-old nuclear plant’s steam generator tubes.
Palisades closed in 2022, a fate that had been planned for years because the plant’s expensive nuclear power could not compete on the open market against cheaper forms of energy. But Michigan officials soon began lobbying for a restart, citing fears of energy insecurity and an opportunity to tap into a multi-billion-dollar nuclear bailout fund that the Biden administration created.
The facility has since won billions of dollars in subsidies, with more requests pending to support what would be the nation’s first reopening of a closed nuclear power plant.
Earlier this year, federal nuclear power regulators issued a so-called “finding of no significant impact” indicating no major environmental concerns with the reopening plan. A series of additional regulatory approvals have followed, enabling Holtec to receive new nuclear fuel last month.
A spokesperson with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said at the time that there are still “several licensing actions under NRC review and additional requirements that need to be met” before the plant can begin generating electricity.
Michigan lawmakers are now pondering a bill package that aims to further boost the industry with tax breaks, grants and other incentives. The package passed the state House last month and is now awaiting deliberation in the state Senate.
The nuclear renaissance comes amid surging energy demand across the nation tied to the rapid expansion of energy-hungry data centers owned by the likes of Microsoft, Google and OpenAI. Michigan’s first announced data center, a proposed Stargate facility in Saline Township, would demand as much energy as more than a million homes, singlehandedly increase DTE Energy’s peak load by 25%.
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