Last year, the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert became the first nuclear plant in US history to return to operations status after beginning the decommissioning process. It’s a big deal in the nuclear industry, and in Southwest Michigan.
WMUK reached out to listeners to ask what about Palisades they were curious about, and we got a lot of responses. A good chunk of those were from Priscilla Massie. She’s a Michigan historian and lives in Allegan.
She grew up going to South Haven and still owns property there. Massie is deeply opposed to the Palisades restart, and has concerns that go beyond just one question.
“Why are you doing this experimentally? It’s never been done before,” Massie said on a phone call earlier in the year.
We decided on a central question to focus on: Is Palisades too old to safely restart?
A long history
When Palisades closed, it had a long, over 50-year operating history. Consumers Energy began construction on the plant in 1966. It was different from other plants at the time because the reactor was built on-site rather than being completed elsewhere and delivered to the plant.
Palisades came online for the first time in December 1971. Consumers owned and operated the plant until 2007, when it was sold to Entergy Corporation.
In December 2016, Entergy announced the plant would close eventually, and later set a timeline for a 2022 closure. The plant was officially closed on May 20, 2022 and sold to Holtec International later that year. Holtec is in the business of decommissioning power plants.
At the time of its closure, Palisades was one of the oldest operating nuclear plants in the US. It came online just two years after the current oldest operating nuclear reactor in the country, Nine Mile Point in New York. News reports referred to Palisades infrastructure as “aging” or “ailing” in its last decade.
Priscilla said she felt safer after the plant stopped operating.
“I was so happy when it finally closed and everybody had a sigh of relief,” Massie said.
But not long after Palisades closed down, chatter began about potentially starting the plant back up again. It had never been done before in the US. And later in 2022, the same year Holtec took ownership of the plant, the company announced they would pursue a return to operations.
Michigan lawmakers, including Governor Gretchen Whitmer, applauded the decision.
“Restarting this Palisades nuclear power plant here in Covert Township is just a phenomenal undertaking. It was a long, winding road to get here but I’m so happy to be here,” Whitmer said at a 2024 press conference at the plant.
Palisades was granted operational status by the NRC in 2025, but still hasn’t been given the go-ahead to fully restart.
A look inside
Inside the plant, lots of things are being worked on. As Palisades draws nearer to going online, security protocols are heightened. In the turbine deck area, where repairs are underway on the plant’s generator and piping near the steam condenser area, makeshift tents are set up for welding and refurbishing materials.
The turbine deck houses the plant’s steam turbine generator. The Palisades reactor is a pressurized water reactor, which means it generates power using steam. Atoms are split in the reactor, and the nuclear fission process heats water that turns into steam. The steam flows through tubes and turns a steam turbine that then generates power.
Holtec spokesperson Nick Culp said extensive repairs have been made to Palisades’ steam generator system.
“We did a lot of major system inspections early in the process. We found areas that were needed for repair in our steam generators,” Culp said. “And so we brought in an industry-leading vendor to work with us on doing those repairs. And now that equipment is ready to go back online and will operate for much longer than it would have had we not done any of the repair work.”
That steam generator system has been a topic of conversation for many years at the plant. Those conversations started very shortly after the plant came online in December 1971.
In January of 1973, the plant shut down for the first time due to pinhole leaks in the steam generator tubes. That shutdown lasted about a month — but in August of that same year, the plant shut down again due to a leak in the steam generating system.
That closure would last over a year. Shortly after, Consumers filed a lawsuit against several of the companies that helped build the plant, alleging they used defective equipment and did faulty design work.
A 1974 article published in the Ann Arbor Sun about the lawsuit described the plant as “ill-fated”.
In the 70’s, Consumers replaced tens of thousands of tubes in the steam generator. But by the late 80s, steam generator leaks were happening again. Both steam generators were replaced in 1990, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later fined Consumers $100,000 for design violations during the replacement project.
There were other high-profile structural issues over the years at Palisades — like in 2007, when a radioactive isotope called tritium was found in the groundwater of a test well at Palisades and attributed to corroded underground piping.
Or in 2013, when approximately 80 gallons of what the NRC called “slightly radioactive” water leaked into lake Michigan from a damaged water tank.
Current issues with the steam generator system
Transcripts from an August 2024 conference call between Holtec and the NRC showed reports of extensive corrosive cracking of the steam generator tubes. Instead of replacing the whole system, Holtec got approval to repair the tubes through a process called sleeving.
Culp said the steam generator repairs are safe. He says Holtec is going through the necessary approvals process with the NRC and that any repairs are closely regulated for safety.
Dr. John Lee, a Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan, mostly agrees with Culp when it comes to the matter of the plant’s safety.
“I support the restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant,” Lee said. “It will be safe and useful for the Michigan economy. And unless the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission decides that the plant can operate safely it will not get restarted. I’m pretty sure.”
Lee said he doesn’t think the plant is too old. He and his team have conducted tests to study the aging of nuclear reactors and said he believes Palisades is safe.
“The only potential issue is the steam generator tubes,” Lee said.
Lee feels good about the processes Holtec is taking to repair them and said it’s been done at other nuclear plants. He said a new steam generator can cost around half a billion dollars nowadays.
“So Holtec decided not to replace the steam generator. It takes time also to order a new steam generator, get it delivered and so on. So they decided to refurbish the steam generator tubes. That is my understanding. And most of the repair is done. But they have to show to the satisfaction of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors that these steam generator tubes will survive,” Lee said.
Nuclear scientist Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has a different perspective than Dr. Lee.
“The safest thing for Palisades to do would be to swap out the steam generators again with new ones,” Lyman said.
He said Holtec originally budgeted to replace those steam generators but decided against it.
In July 2022, Holtec submitted a restart grant request to the US Department of Energy’s Civil Nuclear Credit Program laying out a strategic plan for a potential restart. Those documents were obtained by anti-nuclear energy group Beyond Nuclear through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The documents showed that Holtec did consider and budget for complete replacement of the steam generators, which they referred to as “old, worn-out hardware”. But by 2024, Holtec was submitting requests to the NRC to move forward with the sleeving method of refurbishment instead.
“So it's not clear why they're trying again to cut corners here and do these other repairs which may not provide the lasting integrity that they're looking for,” Lyman said.
As for Palisades’ age, Culp at Holtec said the plant isn’t too old. He said Holtec is spending the necessary time and money to make sure the plant runs safely for many years to come.
“Over the course of the plant's life we have had a lot of replacements and upgrades and that would be typical of any nuclear power plant. So you don't judge a plant in terms of necessarily how old it is. You see, many plants are now looking at operating for 80 years and some are contemplating whether they can run for 100 years,” Culp said.
Dr. Lyman agrees that a plant’s age doesn’t give the full picture about its safety. But he said older plants need more investment — and Lyman believes Holtec isn’t investing enough.
“You know, the industry often likes to say that if you just tune up a nuclear plant as long as you keep maintaining it'll run forever. But that really depends on the ability to spend the money to do the inspections and do repairs when necessary,” Lyman said.
Lyman said there are other areas of the plant that he believes need full replacements, like the reactor vessel head that acts as a sort of “cap” for the reactor core.
“Instead of replacing the entire reactor vessel head, which is probably what they should be doing, they're trying to patch up these defective materials in ways which are not approved,” Lyman said.
Is Palisades too old?
So, is Palisades too old to safely restart? The answer seems to be that it depends on what Holtec does to fix up the plant. Holtec’s Nick Culp is certain the company will make all necessary updates. And U of M’s John Lee is confident in safety of the restart. But Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists is skeptical.
Priscilla Massie’s house in Allegan is a restored one-room schoolhouse in the woods, surrounded by nature and filled with books. She grew up going to South Haven and still owns property there. She said she doesn’t have any confidence that the plant will be safe.
“This is a danger to our great lakes, to our farmland, to tourism, to the people that walk the beaches, to the children that collect the rocks. It's our whole way of life in Southwest Michigan. And it's our whole way of life with the Great Lakes and it's reckless and it's a gamble to have a company like Holtec who is a huge industrial company and with a huge PR team and lots of lobbyists,” Massie said.
Priscilla keeps a bottle of potassium iodide in her cabinet. According to the World Health Organization, potassium iodide can help protect the thyroid from some harmful radiation after a nuclear incident. Priscilla said she's going to hang onto the pills.
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