Michigan should work with the U.S. Department of Energy to reopen the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, two state lawmakers opined this week in the Detroit Free Press.
“The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant used to produce enough electricity to power over half a million homes in Michigan, yet it currently sits idle,” the two lawmakers, one Democrat and one Republican, wrote. “The state should work with the Department of Energy to determine investment opportunities to get Palisades back online.”
Pacific Gas and Electric and the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Panel, a utility-chartered citizens’ advisory group, announced they added four new members to the panel.
Ernest ‘Gerry’ Finn, Jessica Kendrick, Patrick Lemieux, and Frances Romero are the new members and will begin their terms on May 1, 2023. The panel has a total of 15-members, the panel wrote Wednesday in a press release. PG&E plans to extend the operations of Diablo Canyon’s two reactors until about 2030.
The Department of Energy recently said it will provide $6.3 million worth of financial help to students pursuing nuclear energy-related degrees at 39 colleges and universities.
The funding supports 124 scholarships and fellowships through DOE’s University Nuclear Leadership Program, the agency said April 6 in a news release. DOE called the move important to the next generation of nuclear workers as the administration of President Joe Biden pursues a “net-zero economy by 2050,” according to the release.
Continuing the saga of citizen rage against irradiated wastewater discharges during nuclear plant decommissioning, an environmental group in Massachusetts told Governor Maura Healey (D) to block a planned wastewater discharge into Cape Cod Bay from the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the local Mid-Cape Minute reported this week.
The group, the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, said Healey should invoke her authority under the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act to block the discharge, the Minute reported.
