The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned Thursday evening to hold a public meeting in Benton Harbor, Mich., to discuss its pending environmental review of Holtec International’s plan to restart the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant.
The hybrid meeting will be webcast from Lake Michigan College’s Mendel Center beginning at 6:00 p.m. Eastern time, according to NRC’s website. The commission is gathering comments about a planned draft environmental assessment.
NRC in June announced it would not exempt the planned Palisades restart from further environmental review, as plant owner Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., had requested.
Holtec, which does business primarily out of Camden, N.J., wants to restart Palisades by August 2025. In June, DOE conditionally approved a $1.5 billion loan for Holtec to help foot the steep bill for powering the plant back up.
NRC’s environmental review is one of several regulatory gates that the planned Palisades restart must pass at the commission, and not the most challenging, according to Holtec.
The big hurdle, the company has said, is getting an exemption to the NRC rule that requires Palisades to remain in a decommissioning mode, with no fuel in its reactor. The company filed for an exemption in September and antinuclear activists have challenged the plan.
