Groups opposed to restarting the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant may still get a hearing over alleged misappropriation of decommissioning funds at the plant, according to a notice published Tuesday.
According to Tuesday’s Federal Register notice, an NRC petition review board on July 2 ruled against the environmentalists and denied them a hearing but also said that the board would review new evidence the groups presented this spring, several months after their initial complaint to NRC.
In an April meeting with NRC staff, the groups Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan and Michigan State Energy Future said Holtec’s 2023 expenditure report for Palisades shows that the company had illegally withdrawn $120 million from the Palisades decommissioning trust fund.
That is “new information that has not yet been fully considered by the NRC,” the commission wrote in Tuesday’s Federal Register filing. However, any ruling on the new evidence will be delayed “until the NRC’s review of the 2023 expenditure report for Palisades is complete, as it is relevant to the decision,” the commission wrote in Tuesday’s notice.
The notice did not say how long the NRC would take to review Holtec’s 2023 report. The company wants to restart Palisades by August 2025. The plant shut down in 2022.
The environmental groups petitioned NRC to terminate Holtec’s license at Palisades under Title 10, Section 2.206 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which allows any member of the public to ask for the revocation or termination of an NRC license.
Such petitions have miniscule success rates.
Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan and Michigan State Energy Future filed their petition in December, a few months after Holtec asked NRC to exempt the company from a commission rule that requires Palisades to remain in a decommissioning state.
NRC has said it will need until January 2025 to review the exemption request. If granted, the exception would set a new precedent for the agency, which has never presided over the restart of a shuttered plant.
Holtec in March got a conditional $1.5-billion loan from DOE to pay for restarting Palisades, which among other things needs a new steam generator.