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Gene Stilp, a longtime Dauphin County activist opposed to the restart of the Crane Clean Energy Center nuclear reactor, raised concerns to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during a hearing on July 31, 2025, in Middletown about the evacuation radius if there were an accident at the facility.
MIDDLETOWN — Five officials charged with ensuring the restart of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island meets federal safety and environmental standards faced harsh criticism from residents opposed to the project on Thursday night.
During a more than hour-long public meeting on Penn State Harrisburg’s campus, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials emphasized their commitment to ensuring the security and safety of residents near the Crane Clean Energy Center — formerly Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor, which was renamed by owner Constellation Energy Corporation earlier this year.
“If challenges arise, we are the folks that bring the resources to bear, that bring the right technical experts to the table,” said Jamie Pelton, co-chair of the NRC Crane Restart Panel, “to make sure that as we’re conducting the reviews, conducting inspections, that we’ve got the right experts in place to ensure safety is the number one priority.”
But for some of the more than 120 people in attendance, the officials’ assurances weren’t enough to soothe their deep-rooted unease and skepticism of the project.
Many expressed fears over potential radiation leaks, lack of faith in government agencies’ emergency preparedness, and concerns over long-term nuclear waste management.
Middletown native Matt Krajsa told the panel he felt like the plant’s restart “is a done deal” and that residents cannot meaningfully sway the commission’s choice to provide the required government licenses to restart the reactor.
“It’s energy, it’s Microsoft, it’s profits — like always — and it certainly feels like a charade,” Krajsa said, referencing Microsoft’s 20-year agreement to purchase the 835 megawatts expected to be produced annually by the reactor.
Krajsa was born in 1980, one year after the infamous partial meltdown of Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor. He said his mother, a two-time cancer survivor, was part of a federal government study evaluating the accident’s impact on local cancer rates.
Ray McKinley, one of three co-chairs of the NRC’s Crane Restart Panel, noted the government-led studies did not find significant evidence that the accident increased cancer rates in the region.
Still, memories and personal anecdotes surrounding the incident, considered the country’s worst commercial nuclear power accident in history, stole much of the spotlight during the meeting.
The officials said they are working to coordinate Constellation’s revitalization of the Crane Clean Energy Center with the ongoing decommissioning of Unit 2, owned by a separate company, Energy Solutions.
Gene Stilp, a longtime Dauphin County activist opposed to the restart, raised concerns to the panel about the evacuation radius if there were an accident at the restarted facility.
“Evacuation here is impossible,” Stilp, wearing a blazer that read “NO T.M.I. RESTART” across his back, said. “How do you evacuate the Children’s Cancer Center at Hershey?… How do you evacuate the 600 beds at Hershey Medical Center? It is impossible.”
Panelists responded by saying the NRC does not oversee evacuation plans put in place by the local and state officials. That responsibility falls onto the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The involvement of FEMA worried Elizabethtown resident Dave Allard, who said he retired from the Bureau of Radiation Protection just three years ago. Allard pointed to President Donald Trump’s recent layoff of FEMA staffers to tell the panel that the agency may be ill-prepared to address an issue on Three Mile Island.
Thursday night was the first of two NRC public meetings to hear public comment on the project. The second is a digital webinar scheduled from 4 to 6 p.m. on August 6.
STEP-BY-STEP
After purchasing Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 in 1999, Constellation closed it in 2019 for what its officials say were purely financial reasons.
The rapid growth of artificial intelligence has placed extra demand on electrical grids, and companies have turned to nuclear energy as a way to power the data centers needed to house the physical components of the technology.
That fact that the power generated by the Crane Clean Energy Center is slated to power data centers — not the neighboring homes — was heavily scrutinized by multiple speakers.
But the NRC officials made it clear that it is not their responsibility to influence what Constellation chooses to do with the electricity it generates at the plant.
Constellation’s project is the second instance of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission overseeing a former decommissioned site being brought back to operational standards. The first was the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, which the NRC fully greenlit last week.
For similar approval, Constellation would need an exemption to current federal regulations and a host of other licensing approvals from the NRC, according to Licensing Project Manager Justin Poole.
Poole said Constellation has submitted its exemption application and several other applications; however, the NRC has not yet approved any of Constellation’s requests, except for the renaming of Unit 1.
Later this year, after Constellation’s last application is filed, the NRC will open the door for the public to request a legal hearing that could pull the plug on restarting the facility.
The legal case would be heard by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, according to Scott Burnell, a public affairs officer at NRC. Its three panelists would determine whether the case has any legal standing and issue a ruling, which could be appealed to the NRC’s five politically appointed members. The NRC ruling could then be appealed to federal court.
In 2022, the NRC denied Oklo Power’s application to build its Aurora compact fast reactor in Idaho. Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Andrea Veil cited “information gaps in (Oklo’s) description of Aurora’s potential accidents as well as its classification of safety systems and components.”
Constellation estimates that roughly 3,400 direct or indirect jobs will be created from the plant’s restart, and it will raise more than $3.6 billion in local, state and federal tax revenue.
Leaders of trade organizations and Ellen Willenbecher, vice president of Middletown Borough Council, touted those statistics to say they welcomed the reopening of the facility.
And Democratic state Rep. Justin Fleming, of Harrisburg, said he had “faith” in the plant’s safety system. From 2004 to 2007, Fleming worked for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.
“The emergency procedures that we had in place in case of an emergency worked and worked well,” Fleming told the audience.
Yet, not every official who spoke seemed fully confident in the plant. One of those was Democratic Sen. James Malone, whose northern Lancaster County district has portions within the 10-mile-radius emergency planning zone designated by Constellation.
“Three Mile Island Unit 1 will be among a small handful of commercial reactors globally that were shut down and then reopened,” Malone said. “That should warrant extra caution and guarantees to neighbors that this will be done with safety as a number one priority.”
If there was any takeaway from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s first public meeting on the restart of the nuclear power station at Three Mile Island, it may be this:
Forty-six years out from the nation’s worst-ever commercial nuclear accident, the days of widespread opposition to the very idea of nukes in the midstate seem over.
But what has stuck is a well-informed, highly-concerned minority that will do its level best to make sure regulators hold plant operators to the highest standards of operational safety, environmental protection and emergency preparedness.
As one example, representatives of the NRC’s Crane Clean Energy Center Restart Panel were repeatedly grilled Thursday night at Penn State Harrisburg with concerns about how the growing Capital Region could be evacuated swiftly and safely in the event of another emergency.
Crane refers to the new name that plant owner Constellation Energy has bestowed on the generating station.
“We need to see a realistic evacuation plan when Crane restarts this reactor at Three Mile Island because we did not have a realistic evacuation plan on March 28th, 1979,” said Larry Arnold, of Susquehanna Township.
Anti-nuclear activist Gene Stilp went so far as to predict before the meeting that those safety concerns would be the Achilles’ heel that keeps the plant from reopening.
There were also repeated concerns about the ability of the NRC to play a watchdog role in a Trump administration that is prioritizing deregulation and its own version of governmental efficiency.
“I know you have a lot of job openings (at the NRC). You haven’t been able to fill those,” said Lebanon County resident Maureen Mulligan. “I’m concerned that you’re not going to be adequately staffed.
“The mission has changed under the (Trump) Executive Order and the Advance Act,“ she said, referring to a 2024 bill designed to expedite development of advanced nuclear technologies. “And it’s very concerning that you’re going to be able to meet all these goals, especially when there’s a shift from safety to licensing and relicensing.”
The NRC reps conceded they can never guarantee that there will never be another major accident at any nuclear plant.
But they were adamant that safety remains their top priority.
“We are not going to accept just paperwork,” said Erin Carfang, one of the co-chairs of the Crane restart panel and a director of plant inspection efforts.
She had earlier estimated that the reborn Three Mile Island Unit One would receive about 7,500 hours worth of on-site inspection and plan review.
”We need evidence. ... We are going to go put our eyes on what is in the field to make sure the plant is ready to restart and it is safe for all of you.“
Carfang also tried to assure the room that the regional inspections division she heads has adequate staffing for the unique challenge ahead, noting some are actually delaying retirements to be part of the effort.
“These are some of the most senior people in the agency who have been with us for 40 years. They have a lot of experience, and they know this site very well, and they were there before, and they want to be there to ensure it is safe to restart,” Carfang said.
As for evacuations and emergency preparedness, the panelists noted there’s a lot of joint responsibility for that, starting with all-hazard emergency management plans developed by local and county governments, to be followed by a graded exercise.
Another undeniable takeaway from Thursday is that — safety concerns notwithstanding — there is a lot of support for the reopening.
“With the reopening of the island as Crane Clean Energy Center, hundreds of jobs are available again. And for some families who had to leave when the island closed, they are moving home,” said Ellen Willenbecher, a Middletown borough council member.
“Local businesses can welcome back old and new customers. And community projects who serve residents may receive critical support. And all with low-carbon energy. I love saying that.”
Union member Tyrone Thomas said, after more than 40 years of mostly safe operations at Unit One, the restart is a calculated risk worth taking for the hundreds of families who stand to benefit.
That 1979 accident, in a footnote that is of vital importance to anyone affiliated with Unit One, occurred at TMI Unit Two, a separate station on the island.
The Unit Two reactor has been closed since the accident, and is currently in the early stages of a long-term decommissioning project led by Energy Solutions, of Salt Lake City, Utah.
“There’s no hundred percent guarantee that we won’t have another accident, no. There’s no hundred percent guarantee that something won’t go wrong,” Thomas said.
“But all we can do is plan based upon the knowledge we have to make it as safe as possible.”
Thursday’s was not a formal hearing; those will come over the next two years as Constellation Energy’s restart bid proceeds.
Constellation announced last year it wants to reopen the old TMI Unit One, which the company’s corporate forefathers shuttered in 2019 for economic reasons.
A technology-driven sea change in U.S. energy demand has changed that paradigm.
In TMI Unit One’s case, Microsoft signed a 20-year commitment to buy the equivalent of all the wattage produced by the restarted nuclear plant, guaranteeing Constellation’s projected $1.6 billion investment in the restart will be profitable.
Constellation has already held several public updates on its work toward the restart.
But Thursday’s meeting marked the first time the NRC - which ultimately holds federal government approval power over the project - held an open meeting expressly for the public on the restart.
Even here, the political and economic pressure surrounding the issue was unavoidable, as restart proponents organized a rally in support of restart on the Penn State Harrisburg campus, outside the meeting hall.
Inside, the commission used a ticket system to randomly select audience members for the chance to pose questions and/or comments to the NRC staff.
Constellation Energy plans to restart Unit 1 of the former Three Mile Island nuclear power plant as the Crane Clean Energy Center. (Capital-Star/Peter Hall)
On Thursday, community members had the chance to voice their hopes and concerns about the planned reopening of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor.
More than 100 people attended a public meeting held by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at the Penn State Harrisburg campus near Middletown, less than five miles from the now-decommissioned reactor.
“Tonight, the reason we’re here is transparency and communication with the public,” said Jamie Pelton, acting director of the Division of Operating Reactor Licensing.
With increased energy demands, due largely to a construction boom of power-hungry data centers driven by advances in artificial intelligence, Constellation Energy is working to reopen the nuclear facility — renamed Crane Clean Energy Center — by 2027. That’s a year earlier than initially expected.
It is slated to power data centers for Microsoft. An agreement reached between the tech company and Constellation is reported to last 20 years, could create around 3,400 jobs and bring $3 billion in state and federal taxes.
It will also be one of the first shuttered nuclear plants in the United States to reopen, along with another plant in Palisades, Michigan.
Attendees offered polarized views, with some concerned about the potential of another failure like the one in 1979, or the impacts on the environment and public health. Others were hopeful that reopening the reactor could bring much-needed jobs and stimulate the economy in Londonderry Township and surrounding communities in Dauphin County. Each person was allowed around two minutes to speak.
One of Three Mile Island’s two reactors partially melted down in 1979. That accident captivated the country and changed the course of the nuclear energy industry in the United States. No injuries or deaths were reported to have resulted from the accident. But some attendees at the meeting recalled what is why like during the crisis.
“I had a metallic taste in my mouth, and so did so many other people,” said Maria Frisby, 61, who lives in Middletown. “How are you going to prevent all of that from occurring again?”
Maria Frisby of Middletown spoke at a public meeting in Middletown, Dauphin County, about the planned reopening of the former Three Mile Island nuclear plant. (Photo by Ian Karbal)
The site’s other reactor continued operating until 2019 when it was shut down by Constellation Energy, the site’s owner, which deemed it more expensive to operate than it was worth.
Mark Rodgers, a spokesperson for Constellation, said in a statement to the Capital-Star that the reactor that operated until 2019 “was one of the highest performing and safest nuclear reactors in the country until we had to prematurely retire the unit in 2019 due to market conditions.”
“Microsoft is enabling us to make the investment to restart the unit as the Crane Clean Energy Center, bringing back over 600 jobs and putting over 800 megawatts of clean, emissions free power back onto the grid where it will go into the homes, businesses, schools and hospitals throughout the region,” he added.
But despite the site’s history, many people supported its reopening.
“I stand before you in support of a responsible restart of the Crane Clean Energy Center,” said Jim Enders, president of the Central Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council. “We’ve safely built and continue to maintain other nuclear facilities throughout the east coast and the Midwest, and we’re ready, willing and able to bring Crane back online in a safe manner. It’s time to turn the page.”
Others welcomed the impact new jobs and workers could have on the community.
“Middletown’s historic downtown is just minutes from the plant, and it has numerous small businesses that thrived over many years from the customers from the island,” said Ellen Willenbecher, vice president of the Middletown Borough council. “For some families who had to leave Middletown when the Island closed, they’re moving home. Local businesses will welcome back old and new customers.”
But the plan had detractors as well.
Patricia Longenecker spoke at a public meeting in Middletown, Dauphin County, about the planned reopening of the former Three Mile Island nuclear plant. (Photo by Ian Karbal)
Patricia Longenecker, who lives near the plant, raised concerns about the project’s environmental impact, and what it would mean to operate a reactor dependent on the Susquehanna River in an era of increased doubt and flood risk due to climate change.
“My comments come from being a steward of Lancaster County farmland, with my family going back 200 years,” she said. “Last October, our area experienced a severe drought. One could walk across the river south of Three Mile Island on rocks. Where would 100 million gallons of water per day needed to operate the plant have been secured?”
The Capital-Star could not verify the amount of water required to operate the plant.
Maureen Mulligan, who lives in Lebanon, was particularly concerned about how the NRC, or any other group, could ensure safety amid President Donald Trump’s push to slash the federal workforce and deregulate the energy industry.
“There is a lot of pressure on the NRC to race to permit nuclear plants to enable these humungous, energy hogging AI plants to get built,” she said. “Our community, which has experienced the worst [nuclear] accident in U.S. history, deserves to be protected, and the NRC will have to earn our confidence back.”
In June, the Trump administration fired one of the five NRC commissioners. The move followed an executive order calling for “reform” of the independent commission, a “wholesale revision of its regulations,” and for the body to facilitate the expansion of the nation’s nuclear capacity.
Larry Arnold, 76, who also remembers the 1979 accident, put it more bluntly.
Larry Arnold speaks at a public meeting on restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant on July 31 in Middletown, Dauphin County. (Photo by Ian Karbal)
“What happens when the current administration decides it doesn’t like what the NRC is doing, and cuts staff and budget?” he said. “What will you be doing then and how will we be protected?”
Arnold also raised concerns about evacuation plans, which will be created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has recently had its funding slashed.
“We did not have a realistic evacuation plan on March 28, 1979,” he said.
Other speakers raised concerns specifically about the feasibility of evacuating nearby hospitals and senior centers.
The NRC panelists said another virtual public meeting will be held on August 6 at 4:00 p.m. Information can be found on their public meeting schedule.
Media Statement by Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear, re: Nuclear Regulatory Commission Staff Announcement of Partial Authorization for Holtec's Restart of the Closed Palisades Atomic Reactor
Environmental coalition vows to fight on, given unacceptable risks to the Great Lakes Basin
COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN and WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 24, 2025--On July 18, 2025, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Staff posted a NOTIFICATION OF SIGNIFICANT LICENSING ACTION on its Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), stating:
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Staff is filing this notification to inform the participants in this matter that the Staff has provided the Commission with a Notification of Significant Licensing Action stating that, on or about July 24, 2025, the Staff intends to issue a final no significant hazards consideration determination and license amendment approving changes to the operating license and technical specifications to support the reauthorization of power operations at Palisades Nuclear Plant. Concurrently with the issuance of this license amendment, the NRC staff intends to issue its approval of a license transfer application, exemption request, and three license amendment requests related to the reauthorization of power operations at Palisades Nuclear Plant.
In fact, NRC did pull the trigger, at 12:50pm Eastern Time on July 24, 2025.
In response, Beyond Nuclear’s radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps, issued the following media statement:
“Although NRC Staff and Holtec International would like everyone to believe the Palisades atomic reactor’s unprecedented restart is a done deal, our environmental coalition begs to differ.
The zombie reactor restart scheme is unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely high risk for health, safety, security, and the environment.
NRC Staff has determined there are no significant hazards to consider? How about the future wellbeing of the Great Lakes Basin — 21% of the entire planet’s surface fresh water — and all who call it home?
What about the risk of a Chornobyl- or Fukushima-scale catastrophe at Palisades? NRC is enabling Holtec to play radioactive Russian roulette on the Lake Michigan shoreline. It is a grand nuclear experiment, and those of us downwind, downstream, up the food chain, and down the generations are the potential guinea pigs.
A 1982 study commissioned by NRC, and carried out by Sandia National Lab -- "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences" -- estimated that a meltdown at Palisades would cause a thousand acute radiation poisoning deaths, 7,000 radiation injuries, and 10,000 latent cancer fatalities, as well as $52 billion in property damage. Adjusting for inflation to current dollar value figures, property damage would now surmount $168 billion. As the Associated Press has reported, the population has grown around Palisades in the past four decades, so resultant casualties would now be worse, as more people live, work, and recreate in harm’s way.
The first three Licenze Amendment Requests (LARs), Exemption Request, and License Transfer Request that NRC Staff have now tentatively approved, must still be approved by the NRC Commissioners. Even when they do, we plan to appeal against the final NRC greenlight for restart in federal court.
Our environmental coalition first petitioned to intervene, and request a hearing, in opposition to the Exemption Request in early December 2023. We did so again on October 7, 2024. At the same time, we contested various aspects of the LARs and License Transfer Request related to Holtec’s Palisades restart scheme.
We also have challenged the adequacy of NRC Staff’s Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact (EA/FONSI). 66 organizations and 145 individuals submitted extensive comments on the draft EA/FONSI, and our coalition filed related contentions with the ASLBP. When they ruled against us, we appealed that, as well, to the NRC Commissioners, who have not yet ruled.
In addition, we have challenged Holtec’s proposed band-aid fixes on the severely degraded steam generator tubes, a self-inflicted wound. The company — which has no reactor operating nor construction experience — neglected critical safety maintenace from 2022 to 2024, a ‘rookie error,’ as our nuclear engineer expert wtiness Arnie Gundersen has called it, one with potentially dire consequences. This neglect allowed corrosive chemical attack on both the inside and outside of the exceedingly thin-walled steam generator tubes.
As Gundersen has testified in these proceedings, the failure of a single tube would result in a release of radioactivity to the environment. But a cascading failure of tubes could cause a reactor core meltdown, and catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity onto the winds and waves. He warned about the potential consequences more than a decade ago, when he first served as our expert witness at Palisades, concerning yet another still unaddressed pathway to reactor core meltdown: the worst neutron-embrittlement of a reactor pressure vessel in the country, and likely in the world.
The steam generators and reactor pressure vessel are not the only critical safety systems, structures, or components at the brink of breakdown at Palisades, representing additional pathways to reactor core meltdown. Holtec does not plan to replace, or even repair, many of them, because NRC does not require it. Palisades’ restart will place the entire Great Lakes State and Great Lakes Basin at existential risk.
Holtec recently submitted yet another LAR to NRC, requesting a postponement on implementing fire protections that have also been neglected at Palisades for decades, despite related scandals there, and the fact that fully half of all reactor core meltdown scenarios can be initiated by fire, according to retired Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear power safety director, David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer. Our coalition is considering our options on this latest of Holtec’s growing list of LARs, another sign that Holtec and NRC are simply making it up as they go along.
For this reason, we will continue to resist Holtec’s Palisades zombie reactor restart scheme, enabled by a complicit and colluding NRC, at every opportunity. There is too much at stake to do otherwise.”
The coalition legally challenging Holtec’s Palisades restart scheme includes Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, Michigan Safe Energy Future, Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago, and Three Mile Island Alert of Pennsylvania. Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio, and Wally Taylor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, serve as the coalition’s co-counsel. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, as well as Stanford University professor and world-renowned climate mitigation researcher Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson, serve as the coalition’s expert witnesses.
A one-stop-shop of Beyond Nuclear webposts about the Palisades restart scheme, as well as Holtec's scheme to build two new reactors on the same tiny site, date back to April 2022. This was when Holtec CEO Krishna Signh first floated "Small Modular Reactors" at Palisades, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer first floated restart of the closed reactor.
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Beyond Nuclear is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization. Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear. Beyond Nuclear: 7304 Carroll Avenue, #182, Takoma Park, MD 20912. Info@beyondnuclear.org. www.beyondnuclear.org.
Federal regulators reauthorize operating license for Palisades Nuclear Plant
Photo by: FOX 17 File photo Posted 6:32 PM, Jul 24, 2025 and last updated 10:39 PM, Jul 24, 2025
COVERT TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A shuttered nuclear power plant in West Michigan has taken a big step towards reopening.
On Thursday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved a request by Holtec International to transition the plant from decommissioning status back to an operating license.
“This is a proud and historic moment for our team, for Michigan, and for the United States,” said Holtec International President Kelly Trice in a statement. “The NRC’s approval to transition Palisades back to an operating license represents an unprecedented milestone in U.S. nuclear energy. Our mission remains clear: to restart Palisades safely, securely, reliably, and in support of America’s energy future – while supporting local jobs and economic growth for decades to come.”
Holtec says the Palisades Nuclear Plant is now authorized to receive new fuel and formally transition licensed reactor operations to on-shift status.
Once it returns to service, Holtec says it will generate more than 800 megawatts of power — which is enough to power more than 800,000 households.
Federal regulators will continue working with Holtec to ensure a safe and reliable return to service.
In a statement, the NRC noted that there are still steps Holtec has to take before reopening.
"While these NRC approvals will allow Holtec to load fuel, there are still several licensing actions under NRC review and additional requirements that need to be met before the plant can start up under the original operating license, which would expire March 24, 2031," the statement reads in part.
Holtec says the project is led by approximately 600 full-time nuclear professionals at Palisades and supported by approximately 1,000 skilled trade workers, vendors and suppliers.
If all goes according to plan, the Palisades Nuclear Plant should reopen before the end of 2025.
Palisades first began commercial operations in 1971, and was owned by CMS Energy up until it was sold to Entergy in 2007.
Entergy closed the plant in May of 2022 due to financial reasons, and in June of that year, it was sold to Holtec International, an American energy company aiming to reopen it.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer also pushed to keep the plant open, and the then democratic-controlled legislature approved $300 million in state dollars to support the restart.
It was also a focus of the Biden-Harris Administration. In September of 2024, The Department of Energy announced a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to Holtec to help finance the restoration and resumption of service. Some of that money has already been given to Holtec.
Republican congressman Bill Huizenga posted on social media that he's looking forward to the Palisades restart.
Despite the push at the federal and state level, some residents who live near the plant have voiced concerns about the plant's safety.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated with a statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to clarify that there are still steps Holtec has to take before reopening.
NRC Proposes $9,000 Civil Penalty Against Aluminum Manufacturer Alcoa
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed a $9,000 fine to Alcoa Corp. in Newburgh, Indiana, for violating requirements associated with the safe use and control of NRC-regulated material.
Alcoa holds an NRC license to possess and use gauges containing radioactive material for taking measurements.
During a routine NRC inspection in July 2024, two violations were identified. One violation involved the failure to have an approved and qualified radiation safety officer named on the license. The second violation involved a failure to perform leak tests of a sealed source as required for the device.
The NRC expects the company to address the violations to ensure compliance with agency requirements. The NRC documented the violations and provided Alcoa an opportunity to address the issue in April 2025. Alcoa provided a written and an email response.
The company has 30 days to pay the proposed penalty, contest the penalty in writing, or request alternative dispute resolution with the NRC to resolve this issue.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was created as an expert, technical agency to protect public health, safety, and security, and regulate the civilian use of nuclear materials, including enabling the deployment of nuclear power for the benefit of society. Among other responsibilities, the agency issues licenses, conducts inspections, initiates and enforces regulations, and plans for incident response. The global gold standard for nuclear regulation, the NRC is collaborating with interagency partners to implement reforms outlined in new Executive Orders and the ADVANCE Act to streamline agency activities and enhance efficiency.
Amazon's recently acquired data center (foreground) in Salem Township, Pennsylvania, is a stone's throw from the Susquehanna nuclear power plant. In November 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission blocked the company's request to obtain more electricity directly from the plant. President Trump's nuclear-for-AI executive orders could bypass the traditional market and regulatory regime entirely by deploying reactors on federal sites. (Credit: Talen Energy)
As Big Tech turns to nuclear power to solve the artificial intelligence power problem, critics have cast doubt on energy developers’ ability to build new reactors on a timeline that will satisfy data centers’ energy needs.
High costs and lack of commercial economic viability have been persistent obstacles to new nuclear infrastructure development. But on May 23, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders that represent the most explicit government commitment to nuclear power for artificial intelligence yet.
Three of the orders explicitly mention AI as a driver for nuclear energy development and a potential beneficiary. One directive incentivizes the operation of privately funded advanced nuclear reactor technologies on federal sites—mainly national laboratories or military installations—allegedly to power AI infrastructure, labelled as “critical defense facilities,” and mandates the deployment of small modular nuclear reactors on one of these sites within 30 months.
Previously, tech companies were the most vocal advocates pushing for nuclear power to meet AI’s energy demands. Now the US government—heavily influenced by Big Tech’s hand—has made nuclear power for AI a national security priority, setting a goal of quadrupling the United States’ nuclear capacity from 100 gigawatts to 400 gigawatts by 2050. Whether government intervention can overcome the challenges that have plagued nuclear deployment for decades remains to be seen—and if so, at what cost?
Déjà vu. As with the rise of the nuclear power industry in the 1950s and 60s, the demand for nuclear energy is being created, justified, and incentivized by the government and its national security interests rather than by market forces.
Robert Duffy, a professor of political science at Colorado State University, summarized the history of the US nuclear power industry in a 2004 paper.
“The atomic energy subgovernment was endowed with additional prestige and power because of the program’s identification with national security issues,” Duffy wrote. “The actors in this tightly knit monopoly were united by the conviction that the development of atomic energy, first as a weapon but later as a means of generating electricity, was both necessary and desirable for the nation’s welfare.”
Duffy showed that the government’s rush to create a nuclear industry in the United States ultimately undermined that very industry. The hasty development, government incentives, and ambitious timelines led to cost overruns, safety problems, and public opposition that ultimately killed new nuclear construction for decades.
Today, the Trump administration is repeating history by declaring AI technologies driven by advanced nuclear power generators a key national security interest.
“There seems to be an aspect to the government’s interest in AI which is sort of positing that as the next nuclear weapons race,” Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, observes. “If you expect the most powerful countries in the history of the world, and the wealthiest corporations that have ever existed, which are trying to develop […] ‘digital gods,’ to not do everything they can to win that race, then you don’t understand human nature, and you don’t understand geopolitics,” Judson adds, paraphrasing what he heard from a panelist at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s nuclear finance conference in February.
But by trying to rush nuclear power development again for geopolitical reasons (then the Cold War, now the global AI race), the US government risks creating another failed—or at least costly and insufficiently safe—nuclear program.
AI’s unquestioned energy appetite. The government’s nuclear-first approach reflects the staggering scale of AI’s energy demands. Tim Fist, Director of Emerging Technology Policy at the Institute for Progress, says, “you’re roughly looking at tripling the amount of power used for data centers over the next five years, just coming from AI.”
The current global data center annual power consumption sits at around 40 gigawatts of installed electric capacity, but by 2030, he said AI data centers alone will require an additional 120 gigawatts, totaling about 160 gigawatts—just over half of Germany’s entire installed power generation capacity in 2023. Global consulting and auditing firm Deloitte similarly estimates data center electricity demand could rise fivefold in the next decade, reaching 176 gigawatts by 2035.
These massive energy requirements have prompted both the private tech industry and now the federal government to embrace nuclear power as their preferred solution (even as these massive energy requirements are being questioned after China’s DeepSeek showed it was possible to develop and train an AI chatbot at a fraction of the cost of and using 50 to 75 percent less energythan US ones). The Biden administration’s initial executive orders on AI infrastructure development laid the groundwork, but the Trump administration has gone a step further and explicitly targeted nuclear power as the answer to AI’s energy demands.
However, Deloitte’s analysis also predicts that new nuclear power capacity could meet only about 10 percent of the projected increase in data center power demand over the next 10 years. In the United States, where around 70 percent of the world’s most compute-intensive AI models have been trained, this translates to an immediate challenge: “Looking over the next five years, there’s these pretty serious energy requirements,” Fist explains. “90 gigawatts need to be built in the United States over the next 5 years.” That’s about 90 average-size new nuclear reactors. To put that demand in context, as of July 2024, 59 reactors were under construction worldwide, 23 of which were behind schedule.
Tech companies have increasingly aligned with Trump’s nuclear-for-AI strategy.
The appeal is obvious: Nuclear plants provide reliable, nearly 24/7 baseload power that data centers require. Judson notes that tech companies claim they need “the five nines of reliability,” meaning electricity available 99.999 percent of the time all year long. (The average capacity factor for nuclear reactors in the United States was 93 percent in 2023 and 70.7 percent for the 1971–2022 period preceding.)
So far, Amazon is the only major tech company that has made concrete nuclear investments, leasing land at Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant for a data center that could expand to 960 megawatts of capacity, Judson said. Microsoft and other companies have signed memoranda of understanding for future nuclear power purchases, but these deals—which now align perfectly with the federal government’s nuclear-first strategy for AI—remain theoretical.
The government’s nuclear-AI revolution. The May 23 orders represent the evolution in federal energy policy that began with general energy declarations and ended with explicit nuclear-AI mandates. On his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders declaring a national energy emergency and directing agencies to “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” which primarily focused on fossil fuel development but hinted at broader energy expansion.
Subsequent orders explicitly link nuclear expansion to AI competitiveness and national security. As White House Office of Science and Technology Director and former executive in the AI industry, Michael Kratsios, stated in a press release: “Over the last 30 years, we stopped building nuclear reactors in [the United States]—that ends now. Today’s executive orders are the most significant nuclear regulatory reform actions taken in decades.”
Each of the four orders addresses an area designed to accelerate nuclear deployment specifically for AI applications.
The first order directly mandates the development of nuclear power for AI as a national security priority, directing the Army Secretary to establish a program to build a nuclear reactor at a military installation within three years and requiring the Energy Secretary to work with private sector partners to deploy advanced nuclear technology for AI infrastructure within 30 months. These “advanced” technologies notably include small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors.
Another order requires a comprehensive overhaul of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reduce regulatory barriers, decrease dependence on foreign technologies, and require timely reactor licensing decisions—changes designed to speed up nuclear deployment for the energy-hungry AI sector.
Cementing prior Energy Department actions, a third order authorizes rapid nuclear deployment on federal land, with the government offering to lease federal sites for building new energy resources and data centers, streamlining permitting processes without involving private landholders.
Finally, the fourth order seeks to reinvigorate the US nuclear industrial base, including uranium mining expansion, domestic fuel enrichment capacity, and accelerated reactor testing at the Energy Department’s national laboratories.
As a White House fact sheet explains: “The federal government’s advanced computing AI infrastructure will require a substantial increase in scalable power solutions, which advanced nuclear reactors are well-positioned to provide. This will ensure our technological supremacy in the emerging technologies of both AI and nuclear power.”
The most crucial aspect of these orders is how they intend to solve nuclear power’s long-running economic problem: bypassing the traditional market and regulatory regime entirely by deploying reactors on federal sites. This approach would sidestep the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s traditional oversight and eliminate the need to make a conventional economic case for nuclear power.
According to Duffy, the federal government spent over $1.2 billion to develop reactor technology by 1962—twice the amount spent by private business. One Energy Department study from 1980 concluded that, without federal subsidies, nuclear electricity would have been 50 percent more expensive.
Today’s approach is even more direct. By allowing SMRs to be deployed on federal sites, the government creates an economic case by fiat. The federal government will fund the first fleet of reactors, eliminating the need for private companies to prove commercial viability. As Judson notes about the current situation: “[Nuclear reactor companies] don’t need to ask for subsidies. The government wants to make this stuff happen.”
This strategy echoes the 1950s playbook, when, Duffy noted, “the words and actions of government officials convinced the nuclear industry that in the future there would be nuclear power in America, with or without private sector involvement.”
In 1963, the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey Township, New Jersey (seen here circa 1971) was the first reactor built without any direct government subsidy. It was considered as a “loss leader” with which reactor vendors sought to demonstrate to utilities that nuclear reactors were an economically viable technology. The strategy worked and utilities began purchasing many nuclear reactors even before the Oyster Creek unit started commercial operation in December 1969. (Credit: US government, via Flickr)
Sticky problems. Even without the economic hurdles, the fundamental problem remains timing, and presidential orders cannot change the laws of physics. As Mycle Schneider, an independent nuclear policy analyst and main contributor to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, bluntly states: “I doubt that any SMR would be operating 10 years from now in the Western world.”
Schneider’s skepticism isn’t unfounded. Construction times for nuclear plants average around 10 years, he said, and that’s just the construction phase—which only begins with the pouring of reactor foundations. Even with the Trump administration’s regulatory streamlining and federal site access, the reality of nuclear development timelines clashes directly with AI’s immediate energy needs. “All of these deals with nuclear companies are about future power plants maybe coming online in the 2030s, but all the AI data centers are being built today,” Judson observes.
Small modular reactors have long been promoted by the industry—and now also the government—as a solution to nuclear power’s problems, promising faster construction, lower costs, and standardized designs. The Trump administration’s nuclear orders specifically enable SMR testing and deployment on federal sites, betting that government support can make SMR promises a reality.
But the reality has proven far more complex, even with unprecedented government backing. Canada’s recent approval of the world’s first SMR in a G7 country demonstrates both the promise and the problems. The project’s price tag sits at nearly $21 billion Canadian dollars ($15.1 billion US dollars) for four reactors at Ontario’s Darlington site, roughly $12.5 million US dollars per megawatt—far exceeding the costs of renewable alternatives that can be deployed in a fraction of the time. Even more so, Judson says the energy company GE Vernova-Hitachi chose to pursue its SMR project in Canada because the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regulations allow construction permit applications to be submitted with much of the design still incomplete. “The jury is very much still out on whether the BWRX-300 [SMR design] will prove feasible to build on time and on budget, but what we know so far is not encouraging,” he adds.
The long-term management of nuclear waste also poses a sticky issue to new nuclear development, especially the relatively higher waste per gigawatt from SMRs compared to full-scale reactors, which has no permanent solution yet. “If they want to build nuclear power plants at data centers, or build data centers at nuclear power plants, these are sites that are also going to be storing nuclear waste,” Judson points out.
The Trump administration’s aggressive 30-month timeline for nuclear deployment doesn’t give much time to work these issues out. The administration proposes reforms and new U-turn policies for managing and recycling spent fuel storage, but those policies would likely come as new nuclear power plants are already underway.
Without a permanent nuclear waste repository and management policy, every new nuclear facility becomes a de facto long-term storage site. This is particularly problematic for proposed “micro reactors” that would be shipped to sites with fuel already loaded for a pre-determined short period. “Where are these micro reactors going to go after they’ve powered a data center for 10 years?” Judson asks. “Are they going to start piling up dead micro reactors at the data center sites?”
Energy industry impacts of the nuclear-AI boom. Even with the most aggressive government nuclear policy intervention in decades, the disconnect between nuclear industry promises and deliverable reality may continue to widen. Companies like Oklo exemplify this gap, Judson said. Originally marketing a 1.5-megawatt micro reactor, the company’s application was rejected by the NRC as incomplete, he said. Oklo subsequently signed a series of agreements with Switch (an AI technology provider) to build 12 gigawatts of nuclear reactor capacity for the company’s data centers. But as Judson reveals, these “agreements” were power-purchase contracts that Oklo plans to fulfill initially with natural gas generators and potentially transition to nuclear power only if their reactors are ever built and approved.
This pattern reveals a fundamental paradox: Even companies well-positioned to benefit from the Trump administration’s nuclear-friendly policies are hedging their bets with conventional generation sources that can actually be deployed on AI’s timeline.
Fist outlines what he sees as a realistic deployment sequence that challenges the government’s nuclear-first timeline: “I think in the near term, if you want to build fast, it’s kind of solar and battery storage and natural gas. And then, a couple of years after that, you can start bringing on large-scale geothermal online. And then after that, it’s more like small modular reactors.”
The May 23 orders promote this dual-energy solution. One order states that, “In conjunction with domestic fossil fuel production, nuclear energy can liberate the United States from dependence on geopolitical rivals.”
While the Trump administration has made nuclear power central to its AI strategy, it shows less concern for climate considerations than its predecessor. Judson suggests that even in light of new executive orders, this may reduce pressure on tech companies to choose nuclear over fossil fuels: “What I’m seeing is at least some recognition that the power, at least for now, is going to be coming from fossil fuel generation […] and less pressure on the industry politically from the White House to make it seem otherwise.”
The federal government has moved beyond simply supporting AI infrastructure to making nuclear power central to the United States’ AI strategy. But as Duffy’s historical analysis makes clear, government enthusiasm and subsidies don’t guarantee success and can even kill a nascent industry at birth.
The question is no longer whether the government supports nuclear power for AI—it’s whether government intervention can make new nuclear reactors built on AI’s timeline without compromising safety or repeating past mistakes. The answer may determine not just the future of US energy policy, but the United States’ position in the global AI race itself.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s historic role of assuring safety is changing as the White House shifts some responsibility to the Department of Energy. A DOGE representative told the chair and top staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the agency will be expected to give “rubber stamp” approval to new reactors tested by the departments of Energy or Defense. The meeting was held after President Donald Trump signed a May 23 executive order that would supplant the NRC’s historical role as the sole agency responsible for ensuring commercial nuclear projects are safe and won’t threaten public health.
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Trump Administration Says It Won't Publish Major Climate Change Report on NASA Website as Promised:
Associated Press, by Seth Borenstein, July 14, 2025
The Trump administration has taken another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people. Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect in their backyards from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. The most recent report, issued in 2023, found that climate change is affecting people’s security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority communities, particularly Native Americans, often disproportionately at risk. Earlier, the White House said NASA would house the reports to comply with a 1990 law that requires the reports, which the space agency said it planned to do. But NASA has now aborted those plans.
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House Releases Interior-EPA Spending Bill with Deep Cuts:
E&E News, by Kevin Bogardus, Garrett Downs & Michael Doyle, July 14, 2025
House Republican appropriators unveiled their fiscal 2026 funding legislation for the Interior Department and EPA, with steep cuts proposed for both agencies. The bill would approve about $38 billion for agencies under its purview, nearly $3 billion below the fiscal 2025 amount. Interior would get about $14.8 billion and EPA would be funded at $7 billion, a 23 percent cut for the agency. The legislation is, however, more generous than Trump’s budget request. The bill would appropriate about $9.2 billion above what the White House requested.
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House Republicans Buck Trump a Bit on NOAA Cuts but Savage NSF Funding:
Under the Commerce-Justice-Science bill, House Republican appropriators would cut NOAA by nearly $400 million for fiscal 2026 - amounting to a six percent cut from current levels. Republicans say the bill includes “reducing spending on reckless climate change efforts.” The National Science Foundation, however, would see a steep reduction in new spending legislation - a 23 percent cut of $2 billion.
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U.S. Threatens to Abandon the International Energy Agency Over Its Green-Leaning Energy Forecasts:
The U.S. may depart the IEA without changes to forecasting that Republicans have criticized as unrealistically green. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, “We will do one of two things: we will reform the way the IEA operates or we will withdraw.” Wright’s criticism of the agency that gets millions of dollars in U.S. funding is in line with Trump’s broader pro-fossil fuels thrust, and his skepticism about climate change and some environmental measures adopted under previous administrations.
The first half of 2025 showed the promise of the giant climate law passed under Biden. Solar power generation surged in the first half of 2025, a growing number of batteries were connected to the grid, and electric vehicles sales hit new records. Those clean energy trends are now expected to dim. EIA estimates that solar installations would fall from 36-GW in 2027 to about 18-GW in 2028, and less than 5-GW in 2029. Wind projects, which were already struggling with transmission constraints and growing opposition, are in tougher shape. Onshore wind installations are expected to fall from 8-GW in 2026 to 3-GW in 2027, and a little more than 2-GW in 2028. Cox Automotive initially projected EVs would account for 10 percent of new sales this year, but it downgraded that estimate to 8.5 percent after the Republican law was finalized.
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Trump’s Push to Keep Coal Plants Running Could Cost Consumers Billions:
DOE’s emergency orders to keep coal plants running could cost U.S. utility customers billions, and states are pushing back. 100+ planned closures could be blocked before Trump’s term ends. RMI says these orders could drive up U.S. power costs by roughly $15 billion annually by propping up aging fossil fuel plants. State regulators warn that reversing closures at the last minute - like what happened at Michigan’s J.H. Campbell plant in May - adds tens of millions in unexpected costs, undermines clean energy plans, and destabilizes long-term grid strategy.
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Trump's Trillion Dollar Spending Boost for Pentagon to Create Disastrous Amount of Carbon Emissions:
According to new analysis by the Climate and Community Institute, a US-based research thinktank, Trump’s huge spending boost for the Pentagon will produce an additional 26 megatons (Mt) of planet-heating gases – on a par with the annual carbon equivalent (CO2e) emissions generated by 68 gas power plants or the entire country of Croatia. The Pentagon’s 2026 budget – and climate footprint – is set to surge to $1 trillion thanks to the president’s One Big Beautiful Act, a 17% rise on last year. The budget bonanza will push the Pentagon’s total greenhouse emissions to a staggering 178 Mt of CO2e, resulting in an estimated $47 billion in economic damages globally.
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Trump Administration Memo Could Strike Fatal Blow with Strict Reviews for Solar and Wind Projects on Federal Lands:
Washington Examiner, by Callie Patteson, July 17, 2025
The Trump administration is taking new steps to stifle wind and solar energy development, requiring projects to get Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s personal signature to receive necessary permits. An internal memo sent to Interior Department staff said all wind and solar power facilities on Interior Department-controlled land must undergo strict political reviews from the secretary. This includes all decisions, actions, consultations, and other activities related to renewable energy projects
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Trump Taps Project 2025 Contributor David LaCerte to Fill Vacant FERC Seat:
LaCerte, who now works at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, served during Trump’s first term and helped on Project 2025, the conservative road map to “deconstruct the Administrative State.” LaCerte was a special counsel at the Baker Botts law firm for two years, starting in January 2023. While there, he worked on energy litigation and environmental, safety and incident response issues. If confirmed, FERC would have a 3-2 Republican majority. It is currently split 2-2 between Republicans and Democrats.
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Trump’s Rural Energy Freeze Hits the Midwest and GOP Districts Hardest:
Since 2014, the Rural Energy for America Program has provided more than $1.2 billion for more than 13,000 solar projects, making up about 70% of the total REAP dollars. More than $292 million went to energy efficiency, including for windows, lighting, heating, and efficient grain driers. Millions more were awarded for biogas, biomass, biofuels, wind energy, hydroelectric power, and other projects. More than three-quarters of REAP federal grants over the last decade have gone to Republican congressional districts. Ongoing delays and disruptions to a federal rural energy program threaten to disproportionately impact Midwest farmers and Republican congressional districts.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has exempted more big polluters from lifesaving EPA guardrails. The agency exempted 53 plants from standards that curb emissions of ethylene oxide, chloroprene and other toxic gases, eight taconite processing facilities that prepare iron-bearing rock for steelmaking from the first-of-its-kind standard to limit mercury emissions, and exempted three more coal plants from Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. In April, Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin exempted 68 coal-fired power plants from MATS, allowing these massive polluting plants to release even more toxic chemicals into the air.
