Beyond Nuclear on Tuesday filed a petition to intervene in a license transfer needed to reopen the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station near Covert, Mich.
The group filed its petition on the last day to do so. Beyond Nuclear seeks to stop the transfer of Palisades’ operating license to Palisades Energy LLC from Holtec Decommissioning International. The former is a company Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., formed to operate the plant after it restarts. Holtec is trying to fire the plant back up by September 2025.
In its petition, Beyond Nuclear engaged citizens of Covert, Mich., and others in the state who have previously agreed to let the Washington-area antinuclear group represent them. Among these are Carolyn Ferry and W. Dillon Reed, who has also gone by William D. Reed in some correspondence with the NRC.
The Michiganders, according to the petition, know “that the Palisades reactor vessel is severely embrittled,” and that there are problems with the reactor’s control rod drive mechanism, which has leaky seals, according to the petition.
The citizens represented by Beyond Nuclear also said that a dry storage cask “to be loaded with spent nuclear fuel at palisades” has “weld defects and possible damage to its spent fuel contents,” according to the petition.
The NRC had announced by Wednesday whether it would grant the petitioners a hearing.
Meanwhile, Holtec still needs some regulatory relief from the NRC to restart Palisades, including the unprecedented removal of a prohibition on refueling a reactor that had legally transitioned into decommissioning. Members of the public have until Oct. 7 to request a hearing about that.
In July, the head of the NRC said the agency could finish its review about lifting the refueling prohibition by next summer.
Holtec in March got a $1.5-billion loan from the Department of Energy to restart Palisades. The company bought the plant in 2022 from Entergy with the intent of decommissioning it, but local and state supporters eventually convinced the Joe Biden (D) administration to back a restart.
The single most expensive piece of equipment needed for the Palisades restart is a new steam generator that will cost about $500 million, according to a Holtec grant application obtained by Beyond Nuclear in 2023 through the Freedom of Information Act.