After the Department of Energy snubbed a shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant for a federal bailout, the company in charge of the facility may not throw its hat in the ring for the agency’s second round of awards.
A spokesperson for Holtec International, which in June took ownership of Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, told RadWaste Monitor via email Monday that the company is “focusing on the decommissioning of the plant as the primary focus.”
Holtec said earlier this month that DOE had rejected its bid for a bailout under the department’s roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program. If it had been selected, the company had said it would use the federal cash to find an interested buyer to restart the Covert, Mich., Palisades, which went offline May 20.
By law, DOE must allocate awards to nuclear plants over a five-year period, annualized at around $1.2 billion. The agency Nov. 21 announced it would grant up to $1.1 billion to California’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
DOE announced in October that it would soon begin accepting applications for another round of funding.
Although Holtec’s spokesperson did not slam the door shut Monday on the possibility of applying for another bailout, he said that the company’s priority is decommissioning Palisades.
“We’ll continue to discuss possible future uses of the site, including potentially locating our SMR-160 on the property,” the spokesperson said, “but decommissioning the plant safely is our #1 focus.”
Holtec has already floated the Palisades site as an ideal future host for one of its SMR-160 advanced reactors. The company acquired the plant from Entergy Corp. in June.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) told RadWaste Monitor Nov. 21 that the governor was pleased with the effort to restart Palisades. Whitmer, who backed Holtec’s plan, “brought together a coalition to develop a plan that would have reopened a non-operational nuclear plant for the first time in American history,” the spokesperson said.
