The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was scheduled this week to host a public meeting to discuss decommissioning plans for a recently-shuttered nuclear power plant in Michigan, according to the agency’s schedule.
The NRC meeting, which will be held in-person Thursday at Lake Michigan College in South Haven, Mich., will allow members of the public to comment on the Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR) for Palisades Nuclear Generating Station — an agency-required action plan for dismantling the facility.
Online access to the meeting is available. The event begins at 6:00 p.m. Eastern time.
Nuclear services company Holtec International, which took ownership of the Covert, Mich., Palisades plant from Entergy Corp. in June, has said that it applied with the Department of Energy to receive a federal bailout as part of the agency’s roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program.
The company said that it would use that funding to secure a buyer who would bring the plant back online — a move supported by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. As of Monday, DOE had not made any decision on whether to offer Holtec a bailout. The agency declined to comment Friday.
NRC, which under the civil nuclear credits program is tasked with ensuring that bailout applicants meet existing licensing and safety standards, declined to comment Thursday on whether Palisades would fit that description. A spokesperson for the commission told RadWaste Monitor that “there remains a license to operate,” but that “the plant is shut down.”
