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COVERT, MI and WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 4, 2025--
On March 31, 2025, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) refused to grant a hearing on the merits for seven contentions brought by oppponents of Holtec International’s scheme to restart the Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in southwest Michigan.
See the 71-page ASLB ruling, posted online here.
“How is the concerned public supposed to take part in these life and death decisions?!”, asked Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio, co-counsel of the intervening environmental coalition. "We consulted experts, drew from some 30 years' understanding of the weaknesses and troubled operating history of Palisades, offered targeted criticism of the dangerous shortsightedness of the restart, but in the end, the public is completely unwelcome to participate in this uncharted scam," Lodge added.
The coalition includes Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, Michigan Safe Energy Future, Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago, and Three Mile Island Alert of Pennsylvania. The coalition’s expert witnesses include Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson, environmental engineer, Stanford University professor, and world renowned advocate for renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, as the most time- and cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to mitigate catastrophic climate change. (See his testimony in this proceeding, here and here.)
The coalition first petitioned to intervene and requested a hearing in December 2023, after Holtec submitted an Exemption Request to NRC for the restart, asking the agency to reverse Palisades' previous owner Entergy's certifications of permanent reactor shutdown on June 13, 2022. However, NRC immediately told the coalition it was too soon, and besides, Exemption Requests cannot be challenged. Nonetheless, the coalition included its challenge to the Exemption Request in its broader, relaunched intervention attempt in October 2024. Now, as revealed in the March 31, 2025 ruling above, by a 2-1 split on the ASLB regarding whether the Exemption Request is "inextricably intertwined" with Holtec's four License Amendment Requests (LARs), this legal and regulatory question is now very much in play. There is even an ironic agreement between Holtec and the environmental coalition that the Exemption Request is not "inextricably intertwined" with the LARs, versus the NRC staff, which maintains it is.
The ASLB did not yet terminate the proceeding and grant Holtec approval for the unprecedented restart of the closed reactor, as the environmental coalition still has open, new and amended contentions, submitted in response to NRC’s January 31, 2025 publication of an Environmental Assessment. The coalition will meet today’s deadline to defend its remaining contentions before the ASLB, and has vowed to appeal the ASLB’s adverse March 31 rulings to the five NRC Commissioners. If need be, appeals will be taken to federal court after that.
“We also plan to litigate against Holtec’s proposed BAND-AID fixes for Palisades’ dangerously degraded steam generator tubes, a self-inflicted wound due to two years of neglected maintenance,” said Wally Taylor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the coalition’s co-counsel.
“The extensive steam generator tube failures identified by Holtec in September 2024 were foreseeable and foreseen and entirely of Holtec’s making,” said Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer at Fairewinds, and a coalition expert witness. “Yet Holtec seeks permission from NRC to restart Palisades without replacing the severely damaged steam generators. Due to its lack of nuclear operating experience, Holtec damaged the steam generators and bungled the Palisades' restart, a rookie error that could lead to a meltdown. I have never been more concerned about the safety of a nuclear power plant than I am about Palisades returning to operations,” Gundersen added.
On January 7, 2025, in the lead up to a major NRC-Holtec technical meeting on January 14th, watchdogged by coalition representatives and deeply concerned local residents, Gundersen published a backgrounder, “The History of Steam Generator Damage at the Holtec Palisades Nuclear Reactor.”
"As I have testified in these licensing proceedings, Holtec informed the U.S. Department of Energy that the Palisades steam generators were degraded and must be replaced in 2022," said Gundersen. "Instead of addressing the underlying damage from decades of operation under previous owners, and new stress corrosion cracking in the steam generators caused by Holtec's improper wet layup, Holtec said it would unplug the 600 tubes plugged about thirty years ago. Now, the firm claims the aged and rundown steam generators will last for 30 more years. During my 53 years of professional experience, I am unaware of any steam generator, with so many previously known and newly identified flaws, that has not been replaced," Gundersen added. (See paragraph #107, on pages 121-122 of 303 on the PDF counter.)
Palisades’ previous owner, Consumers Energy, admitted to the Michigan Public Service Commission in 2006 that the already degraded steam generators needed complete replacement. However, NRC never required it, so Palisades’ next owner, Entergy, never did so from 2007 to 2022. Holtec has estimated replacing the steam generators would cost $510 million, but for the past year has made clear it has no plans to do so, despite the risks. (See Item #3, Table 3: Capital Projects, on page 9 of 42 on the PDF counter.)
“The Japanese Parliament concluded that the root cause of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe of 2011 was collusion between the safety regulator, Tokyo Electric, and government officials,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 35-miles downwind of Palisades. “There is such potentially catastrophic collusion in spades at Palisades, between the ASLB and NRC, Holtec, and government officials here. The entire Great Lakes region is being put at risk,” Kamps added.
For more information about the coalition's resistance to Holtec's Palisades restart scheme, as well as its proposal to build two "Small Modular Reactors" on the same tiny site, see: https://beyondnuclear.org/newest-nuke-nightmares-at-palisades-2022-present/
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