ROCKVILLE, MD – With the Palisades Nuclear Plant nearing its restart, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is looking to fast track the review of the former Three Mile Island Unit 1 to resume operations by March 2027, an NRC panel said Thursday.
During the NRC Regulatory Information Conference’s final day, a panel made of NRC staffers and an official from Constellation Energy discussed the lessons learned from the Palisades restart process and where the former Three Mile Island Unit 1, now known as Crane Clean Energy Center, is in its process.
Though Palisades has not officially resumed operations yet, the plant has returned to operational status after NRC approved a slew of licensing actions.
According to Constellation’s Senior Manager of Licensing Dennis Moore’s RIC presentation, the Crane unit has all fuel removed from the fuel pool and placed in a dry storage cask, most major plant systems have been drained and de-energized and no major plant components have been removed.
Many of the licensing records and conditions of the power plant were retained and upkept, spurring the Constellation to consider the restart of the plant, Moore said.
When the Crane restart first started, around 150 employees were hired or rehired and now 600 employees are involved with Constellation’s efforts, Moore said. For license operators at the plant, he said around 25% of them returned.
During the question and answer portion of the session, Moore told the audience that the utility has no plans of backtracking on its restart plans.
Moore clarified that it would depend on cost-benefit analyses and where the plant is in its decommissioning process. For Crane in particular, he said that the steam generators’ conditions were “favorable,” so made it easier for the decision to restart, compared with if they had to be replaced.
However, if the unit’s condition was in a less favorable condition, Moore said conversations would have been had weighing the cost of replacements and ultimately the restart.
Crane’s steam generators were replaced in 2009 and last inspected by NRC in 2024, according to the presentation.
When Constellation announced plans to restart the unit, Moore said the utility notified NRC and later that same afternoon got its project managers together. The utility announced the restart of the unit in September 2024.
Since then, Constellation has submitted a number of licensing actions and regulatory materials to NRC. Moore said Constellation is out of the gates of decommissioning and is currently in the transitional phase of the restart process.
The Crane reactor is adjacent to Three Mile Island Unit 2, which suffered a partial meltdown in March 1979, shut down in September 2019.
Backing Constellation’s restart efforts, the Department of Energy announced a $1 billion loan for the Londonderry Township, Penn. nuclear power plant in November 2025. Constellation said restarting the Crane unit is a major part of bringing 1,200 new megawatts onto Pennsylvania’s power grid.