The Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs less than a year to finish regulatory approvals for restarting Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, the head of the agency said Tuesday.
Plant owner Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., “has submitted all of the regulatory filings that we need to do [and] we expect to reach a decision on those filings in about May of next year,” NRC Chair Christopher Hanson told the House Energy and Commerce energy, climate and grid security subcommittee.
Hanson and the three other NRC commissioners testified Tuesday about NRC’s 2025 budget request, and about the agency’s plans to comply with the ADVANCE Act, which became law in early July and requires broad changes at the commission.
Holtec is trying to restart Palisades with a $1.5 billion Department of Energy loan. The company thinks it can finish the restart by September 2025. Among other things, the company needs an exemption from an NRC regulation that forbids refueling a reactor that is being decommissioned. Palisades shut down in 2022.
Commission staff previously said it would take until March 2025 to review the request for the exemption, which is not the only regulatory relief Holec needs to fire the plant up again.
NRC staff are also reviewing the environmental effects of a Palisades restart. Staff had not as of Tuesday said how long the review would take. However, staff did say they would publish a draft environmental assessment about the restart “as soon as practicable” after July 29, when a public comment period about the scope of the assessment ends.
“[M]y understanding so far is that those reviews are going well,” Hanson said at Tuesday’s hearing. “The staff has shown some flexibility with that and that Holtec is currently satisfied with the progress we’re collectively making there.”
Hanson called NRC’s approach with Palisades “right in line with the ADVANCE Act,” which among other things requires the commission not to “unnecessarily limit” either “the civilian use of radioactive materials” or “the benefits of civilian use of radioactive materials and nuclear energy technology to society.”
As Hanson and the three other NRC commissioners testified before the subcommittee, the entire House was debating a budget bill, passed weeks ago by the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, that would fund NRC at roughly the requested level of $955 million, more than $25 higher than the 2024 budget.