In a notice published online Tuesday, the Department of Energy formalized a $1.5 billion loan needed to restart the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant next year.
DOE announced its guarantee of the loan to plant operator Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., in a Federal Register notice. The agency conditionally approved the loan in March.
Holtec has said it can restart Palisades by September 2025. With the federal loan in hand, the company now also gets access to $300 million in state aid from Michigan, which approved the funding in two tranches: one last year and one in July.
Holtec still needs unprecedented regulatory relief from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart Palisades.
The company has now applied for all the approvals it needs and, according to NRC Chair Christopher Hanson, the civilian nuclear regulator could make a decision by May 2025. NRC requested $42 million in funding for fiscal year 2025, which begins Oct. 1, to review Holtec’s restart proposal.
Among other things, Holtec needs to replace major equipment at Palisades, including the plant’s steam generator. The company in 2023 estimated that would cost $510 million, according to a grant application obtained by antinuclear groups.
To formalize the loan to Palisades, the Department of Energy had to review the environmental effects of the plant’s proposed restart. To do this, the agency relied on a review completed by the NRC in 2006 that looked at the environmental effects of running Palisades until 2031, when the plant’s current federal license expires.
DOE also reviewed what it calls the environmental justice aspects of restarting the plant and concluded that firing Palisades back up “does not disproportionately result in high and adverse human health or environmental impacts on minority or low-income populations,” according to Tuesday’s Federal Register notice.
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a fresh environmental review of the proposed restart because, the agency said, it does not yet know the significance of potential impacts from the proposed actions” at Palisades.
The proposed Palisades restart has broad support in Michigan, though antinuclear groups have opposed it and have, on grounds unrelated to the restart, petitioned the NRC to terminate the plant’s federal license.
