Two of the newest additions to Holtec International’s inventory of former nuclear power plant sites could be good candidates for a future advanced reactor facility, the company said last week.
Among the viable proposals for repurposing Michigan’s Palisades and Big Rock Point plants is a plan to build SMR-160 small modular reactors (SMRs) at both sites, Holtec said in a press release dated June 28. The Camden, N.J., nuclear services company last week finalized its purchase of both Palisades and Big Rock Point from former operator Entergy.
Holtec has already expressed interest in using some of its other decommissioning sites as construction sites for its light-water SMR design, such as Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey. Company CEO Kris Singh told Exchange Monitor in April that Oyster Creek was Holtec’s “number one” choice for its first SMR-160 site, but that it needed the Department of Energy to help fund such a project.
The SMR-160 is one of 10 advanced reactor projects getting support from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. Holtec has said that the first of its advanced reactor sites could be operational by 2030.
Meanwhile, Holtec is set to begin decommissioning the Covert, Mich., Palisades plant as Lansing fights to bring it back online. A spokesperson for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) told RadWaste Monitor in June that Michigan is “working with potential buyers, operators, and stakeholders” to keep Palisades running.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the Palisades’s sale to Holtec in December. Entergy first announced its plans to shutter the plant in 2016.
