Holtec International’s plan to resurrect the shuttered Pilgrim nuclear plant in Michigan is generating optimism. If successful, could nuclear grave robbing could come to life, decommissioning morphing into recommissioning?
Speaking at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last week (July 23), Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Christopher Hanson told U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich) that the 800-MW pressurized water reactor could restart in the summer of 2025. “I would hope from our side, at least on the regulatory issues we’ve got, that we’re going to be done in less than a year,” he said.
On Thursday, NRC officials are traveling to Benton Harbor, Mich., the Palisades site on the Lake Michigan shore, for a public meeting on Holtec’s restart project. The attempt to restart Palisades would be the first time in U.S. nuclear power history that a plant that had begun decommissioning was attempting a resurrection.
Construction of the Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor began in 1967 and the plant went into service for CMS Energy in 1973, at a cost of $630 million in 2007 dollars. CMS sold the plant to Entergy in 2007 for $380 million. Entergy announced in May, 2022 that it was closing the plant and in June sold it to Holtec for decommissioning for an undisclosed amount . Florida-based Holtec is managing three other decommissioning projects: Pilgrim on Cape Cod, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, and Indian Point on the Hudson River in New York.
Many analysts who have followed the Palisades story believe that Holtec never intended to decommission the plant but really wanted to restart and operate it. The company has diverse nuclear experience but has never operated a nuclear power plant.
Michigan’s government wanted to keep the plant running but was unable to accomplish that task. In September 2022, with support from Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Holtec applied to the U.S. Department of Energy for funds to reopen the plant. When DOE, headed by former Michigan Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granhom, turned down the request.
Holtec reapplied a month later, and this March got a $1.5 billion DOE loan guarantee for restart activities. The state has pitched in two $150 million grants, the most recent this month, for the restart.
As Power Engineering has reported, Holtec also hopes to build to smaller, as yet undeveloped, 300-MW, reactors on the Palisades site sometime in the future.
In Massachusetts, state environmental regulators have rejected Holtec’s plan to dump some 1.1 million gallons of wastewater from the Pilgrim decommissioning project into Cape Cod Bay. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection said, “Cape Cod Bay is a protected ocean sanctuary as defined under the Massachusetts Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which prohibits the dumping or discharge of industrial wastes into protected state waters.”
Holtec had asked MassDEP to approve a modification of its Surface Water Discharge Permit for the plant. The agency said it held a public hearing on the request and received some 1,000 comments.
Holtec told the Boston Globe, “Treated water has been discharged within safe limits since the plant began operations in 1972 and today’s denial will continue to delay the decommissioning and economic reuse of the Pilgrim lands. We will continue to evaluate all disposal options for the treated wastewater and the effect this decision has on our timeline to fully decommission the facility.”
Looking for a place to build its proposed 300-MW “small” modular reactors, Holtec officials this month traveled to England’s West Midlands. The Business Desk online site reported, Holtec is sizing up options in the West Midlands, alongside South Yorkshire Combined Authority, Tees Valley Combined Authority and Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership (CLEP), after the four regions were shortlisted as potential locations for the SMR in May.”
Holtec, the site said, is looking to build some 16 SMRs in England, “as well as more across Europe and the Middle East.”
–Kennedy Maize