The Department of Energy cannot sign off on a decommissioning company’s gambit to restart a shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups told the Secretary of Energy in a letter Monday.
Holtec International’s proposed bid on DOE’s civil nuclear credits program, aimed at securing federal funding for Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, “goes against the letter and spirit” of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Beyond Nuclear and over 100 other environmental groups told Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in the Monday letter.
“Congress intended the IIJA to support only currently operating commercial nuclear reactors that face termination of operations for economic reasons,” the letter said. Since Palisades is no longer operating, it doesn’t meet those requirements, Beyond Nuclear argued.
Citing the law, the letter said that applicants for the civil nuclear credits program must “compet[e] in a competitive electricity market.” The Palisades plant “is competing nowhere,” Beyond Nuclear argued, “because its fuel is completely unloaded and the operating permission that was part of NRC its [sic] license has formally ended.”
The anti-nukers also raised safety concerns about Palisades’ reactor and other plant components should it be restarted, as well as the security of its spent fuel storage pad.
As of Tuesday, Granholm or DOE had yet to respond to the letter.
The November 2021 IIJA authorized and appropriated DOE’s roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credit program and directed the agency to dole out bailouts over a five-year period, annualized at around $1.2 billion. Holtec has said that it would use federal funding from the program to solicit a buyer willing to bring the Covert, Mich., Palisades plant — which shuttered May 20 — back online.
DOE in November rejected a bid from the company under the agency’s first round of funding.
DOE has said that it could open applications for the bailout program’s second round of funding in January. The first round of credits were restricted to nuclear facilities facing imminent closure — this time, plant operators who have not publicly announced their intent to close are also eligible.
