Holtec International on Monday announced it plans to file construction permits in 2026 to build a pair of small modular reactors at the site of the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which the company hopes to restart in 2025.
Notionally to be commissioned as soon as 2030, the two SMR-300 reactors are “likely to be the nuclear industry’s first” small modular reactors, Holtec wrote in a press release.
Holtec in October filed paperwork with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart Palisades, which shut down in 2022. The company needs regulatory approval from the NRC, and a billion-dollar loan from the Department of Energy, before it can restart the plant. Holtec has said it expects word from DOE on the loan by the end of the year.
Holtec’s projections for the DOE loan approval have slipped this year to December from July. Even so, the company has taken incremental steps toward restarting the plant, including forming an operating company for the venture and finding a buyer for the electricity a rebooted Palisades would produce.
Meanwhile, Holtec is also considering installing a small modular reactor at the former site of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating station near Barnegat Bay by the state’s eastern coast, the company wrote in Monday’s press release. The reactor would produce hydrogen rather than electricity, the company wrote in the release.
