NRC wants $42M for Palisades restart

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday requested about $2.5 million in fiscal year 2025 to review Holtec International’s requests to restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan.

In its latest budget request, NRC also said it needs the equivalent of more than nine full-time staffers to review Holtec’s requests, which consist of multiple filings for regulatory relief including the unprecedented request that NRC reverse a license modification that prohibits Holtec from putting any fuel into Palisades single reactor.

Palisades shut down in 2022. Holtec bought the plant from Entergy that year to decommission it, but local and state governments eventually pressed for the plant’s restart. Holtec has said it can restart Palisades by August 2025, provided it receives a loan in excess of $1 billion from the Department of Energy, which as of Tuesday had not publicly committed to lending the Jupiter, Fla., company any money.

Media reported in February that DOE’s Loan Programs Office planned to enter into a conditional loan commitment with Holtec in March. In January, a company spokesperson said Holtec hoped it would have a conditional commitment by late February. 

The biggest bill the company has to pay at Palisades, according to a grant application obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by anti-nuclear activists Beyond Nuclear, is $510 million for a new steam generator.

The NRC in January said it would take until January 2025 for the commission to give Holtec the regulatory relief it needs.

Meanwhile, the NRC requested a little more than $975 million overall for fiscal year 2025, according to the detailed budget request the agency released on Monday. That would be about $47 million less than the 2024 appropriation that was signed into law late last week.

The commission pays for most of its budget with the with fees it collects from entities, mostly power plants, that it regulates. For 2025, the agency predicts it will collect more than $824 million in fees, leaving a net appropriation of about $151 million from the treasury, according to the latest budget request.