On Friday, earlier than expected, a Michigan nuclear power plant shutdown for good, according to the utility in charge of the site.
Although Palisades Nuclear Generating Station was scheduled for shutdown on May 31, plant staff made the “conservative” decision to bring it offline Friday “due to the performance of a control rod drive seal,” operator Entergy said in a press release.
“The final shut down marks the end of more than 50 successful years of safe, secure, and reliable generation of clean, carbon-free electricity at Palisades,” Entergy said.
After the Covert, Mich., plant has been safely defueled, control of the facility should be handed over to Holtec International for decommissioning, Entergy said. Holtec has said that it could finalize the transaction as early as June.
As for Palisades’ workforce, Entergy told the Exchange Monitor in April that more than a third, or around 260, of the plant’s 594 employees would stay on with Holtec for decommissioning. Of the 334 workers not staying on, around 130 are transitioning to other roles with the company. About another 180 employees will leave, Entergy said. Around half of those were eligible for retirement, according to the company.
Palisades’ early shutdown comes after Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said in April that she would try to get Entergy to apply for a federal bailout as part of the Department of Energy’s roughly $6 billion nuclear credits program. The company said at the time that it had been contacted by Lansing about submitting a bid to DOE as part of its first awards cycle, but that no formal plan had been put together and that it would be difficult to alter course from the long-planned shutdown, set in motion about five years ago.
DOE last week extended the deadline for bids on its first round of nuclear credits to July 5 from May 19. The agency said that it had received a request to push the date back, but declined to say who had asked.
