Almost a month after it shut down a Michigan nuclear power plant for good, Entergy has finalized the facility’s sale to the decommissioning company that will dismantle it, according to a press release this week.
Completing the sale of Palisades Nuclear Generating Station to Holtec International “completes Entergy’s planned exit from the nuclear merchant power business,” the utility said in a press release dated Tuesday. The announcement comes just over a month after the Palisades plant went offline on May 20 — 11 days sooner than its scheduled shutdown date of May 31.
The transaction also hands Holtec the keys to Entergy’s former Charlevoix, Mich., Big Rock Point Nuclear Generating Station and its independent spent fuel storage installation, the press release said. A spokesperson for Entergy declined to disclose the financial terms of the sale, but said the sale price was “nominal.”
Tuesday’s announcement could prove another roadblock for Michigan’s ongoing attempt to restart the Covert, Mich., Palisades plant. A spokesperson for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) declined to comment Tuesday on the transaction. The spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor June 17 that Lansing was “working with potential buyers, operators, and stakeholders” to keep the plant online.
Whitmer has said that she would try to get Entergy to submit a bid for the first cycle of the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program, applications for which are due July 5.
The utility, however, played down that possibility, telling RadWaste Monitor in April that it had been contacted by the state about bidding on a federal bailout but that “no formal proposal to acquire Palisades has been made that provides an opportunity for continued operations and that eliminates the substantial financial and operational risks associated with unwinding the existing contract with Holtec.”
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the Palisades’s sale to Camden, N.J.-based Holtec in December. Entergy first announced its plans to shutter the plant in 2016.
Holtec has said that it could finish decommissioning Palisades around 2041.
