Two anti-nuclear groups said this week that they would try to use a federal public records law to get the original version of Holtec International’s heavily-redacted plan to restart a shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Tuesday by lawyers for Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan, is aimed at securing unredacted versions of a Feb. 1 letter to the agency from Holtec detailing what the company called a “regulatory path” to restarting Palisades Nuclear Generating Station.
The public version of Holtec’s letter divulged few details about such a pathway. A spokesperson for the company told RadWaste Monitor last week that large portions of the plan had been redacted because the letter contained “business proprietary information.”
Now, Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan are challenging that claim.
“Holtec’s proposed regulatory pathway is simply not proprietary,” the groups said Tuesday in their public records request. “Even if Holtec’s information is closely-held, the NRC gave Holtec no express or implied assurance of confidentiality when it was submitted.”
Publishing an unredacted version of Holtec’s restart plan “will significantly add to public understanding of the NRC’s role in this unprecedented attempt to restore Palisades to operability,” the request said.
A spokesperson for NRC told RadWaste Monitor via email Tuesday that the agency’s FOIA staff would respond to the request “in their usual process.” The spokesperson declined to provide a specific timeline.
Holtec, which acquired the shuttered Covert, Mich., Palisades plant from Entergy Corp. in June, has on more than one occasion said that it would try to bring the facility back online. The company is seeking a federal bailout for Palisades under the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program — which it has said it would use to solicit a buyer willing to restart the plant.
DOE in November rejected Holtec’s bid on the first round of its roughly $6 billion nuclear credits program. The company has said it would try again in the second funding round, which the agency has yet to open.
Meanwhile, one of NRC’s top regulators cast doubt last week on whether Holtec could actually restart Palisades.
“When you have a reactor that has ceased operations, and you’ve offloaded the fuel, that’s a major milestone,” NRC Commissioner Bradley Crowell told RadWaste Monitor in a Feb. 7 interview. “To reverse course would trigger almost the entire licensing process again.”
