A former employee at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan should not be allowed to block federal regulatory relief needed to restart the plant, Holtec International said this week.
In a Monday regulatory filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Holtec said Alan Blind, the ex-employee of former plant operator Entergy, did not actually contest the regulatory relief Holtec applied for and so should not even be granted a hearing before an Atomic Safety Licensing Board convened to weigh his claims.
As part of a plan to restart Palisades by September 2025, Holtec wants the NRC, among other things, to amend its Palisades operating license to reverse a prohibition against refueling the plant’s reactor. When reactors transition to decommissioning, as Palisades’ did in 2022, NRC prohibits refueling.
Blind’s September request that NRC put the Palisades restart on hold does not challenge the license amendment request “or any findings the NRC must make to issue the requested amendments,” Holtec wrote in response to Blind’s petition. Instead, Blind seeks “a proposed rulemaking-based licensing path that the NRC has previously rejected.”
Blind in September asked the NRC to “suspend Holtec’s ongoing system restoration activities and license amendment reviews until the appropriate regulations are evaluated, approved, and aligned with NRC-approved design and quality assurance standards.”
In July, Blind and journalist Roger Rapoport petitioned the NRC to make a new rule specifically for restarting shuttered plants such as Palisades.
The Atomic Safety Licensing Board had not schedule a hearing at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor or specified a timeline for ruling on Blind’s petition.
Holtec in August received a $1.5 billion DOE loan to help restart Palisades.
