Summary: Article on Palisades spent fuel assembly incident
Matheny, Keith, Nuclear regulators probe fuel assembly installation mishap at Palisades, Detroit Free Press, Sep 26, 2026. https://www.freep.com/story/news/environment/2026/09/26/palisades-nuclear-holtec-nrc/91934961007/ .
[“Built in the late 1960s, the Palisades nuclear power plant began commercial power generation at the end of 1971 and it operated for roughly 50 years until it permanently shut down in May 2022.” Holtec International is now attempting to make Palisades the first commercial reactor in the US to repower after permanent cessation.
On August 31, 2026, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued two notices of violation to Holtec for its Palisades restart work based on the findings of NRC inspectors that Holtec "‘failed to implement and maintain its radiation protection program for work activities with high alpha contamination levels,’ and ‘failed to monitor internal dose for individuals impacted by elevated airborne radioactivity in accordance with established procedures.’ Inspectors further found that ‘the issues with high alpha contamination levels and airborne radioactivity were not promptly raised to sufficient levels to initiate timely corrective actions to prevent repeated occurrences.’"
The NRC characterized the violations as Green-level findings because no regulatory dose limit was exceeded with workers despite the elevated levels of airborne radioactivity.
On August 31, 2026, Holtec issued a news release announcing that it had begun fuel-loading at Palisades. The press release said that refueling consisted of 204 fuel assemblies and included both new fuel and previously used fuel assemblies from the Palisades plant's final operating cycles prior to its shutdown in May 2022.
Apparently around the time it began the refueling process, a used fuel assembly tilted from its upright position after it had been placed, and the fuel-handling machine grapple was disengaged.
“A nuclear power plant's fuel assembly is a bundled structural matrix of ceramic uranium dioxide fuel pellets stacked inside long metal tubes, supported by a rigid framework. An assembly typically has 179 to 264 fuel rods, is 12 to 14 feet long and weighs between 700 and 1,750 pounds.”
“Neither the Palisades plant's owner, Camden, New Jersey-based Holtec, nor NRC officials released information to the public about the incident for weeks.”
Holtec finally mentioned the fuel rod assembly incident in one of several notices in a September 21, 2026 overview press release titled "Progress Report on Palisades’ March to Startup." Holtec said it has paused fuel loading activities while it seeks to determine the cause of the incident. The statement said: “‘Consistent with the plant’s nuclear quality assurance program, a root cause evaluation has been initiated to determine the cause of the event and identify any resulting corrective actions. In parallel, Holtec’s corporate engineering division has devised and is developing equipment for the fuel retrieval and on-site storage equipment to return the fuel to the spent fuel pool. Palisades is also preparing a License Amendment Request (LAR) for submission to the NRC related to the proposed methodology to retrieve the assembly.’"
In a Sept. 24 statement to the Free Press, NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said that the incident “‘did not meet reporting requirements to the NRC.’"
On September 26, 2026, in a news story headlined “Nuclear regulators probe fuel assembly installation mishap at Palisades”, the Detroit Free Press covered the incident and noted that Palisades’ refueling had been halted as Holtec seeks a license amendment from the NRC to retrieve the assembly from within the nuclear reactor vessel.
Edwin Lyman, a physicist and director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a leading nuclear energy watchdog, found the incident and lack of transparency disturbing: "‘I suspect that the rush to do things quickly is leading to mistakes − and you don't like to have too many mistakes when you're talking about a nuclear power plant’" he commented.
Lyman noted that the use of old spent fuel is an issue, “‘because once it's been irradiated there are fission products within the fuel, and if one of those fuel rods were to rupture, some of those gases could escape’". He added, “‘It's not as radioactive as spent fuel that's no longer usable and is waste. But it has more radioactivity than in an unradiated assembly. It will increase the challenge to recovery compared to if it was all unradiated fuel ... it will require very special precautions.’”
Lyman additionally called the August 31, 2026 NRC violation notices to Holtec "’very disturbing”" and that he does not put much stock in the NRC's assessment of the incident's low safety significance.
Referring to the agenda of the Trump administration to push ahead with nuclear development, Lyman reflected, “‘The NRC is now a tool of the White House political program, and that program is expanding nuclear power as fast as possible and getting rid of regulations that they saw as slowing it down.’”
President Trump’s Executive Order 14300 of May 23, 2025 ordering the reform of the NRC and directs "‘a deadline of no more than 18 months for final decision on an application to construct and operate a new reactor of any type, commencing with the first required step in the regulatory process, and (2) a deadline of no more than 1 year for final decision on an application to continue operating an existing reactor of any type, commencing with the first required step in the regulatory process.’"
One new rule proposed by the NRC, Lyman said, would reduce the scope of non-emergency events that have to be reported to either the NRC or the public in a timely fashion.
The recent incidents at Palisades, "‘illustrate that trying to speed things up, trying to reduce oversight to meet arbitrary timelines, is counterproductive in the end, because ultimately it only causes delays down the road or potentially even worse,’” Lyman said. “‘Nuclear power operation isn't something you can speed up and lower your guard on without expecting serious consequences.’"]
Michel Lee, Esq.
Chairman
Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy (CIECP)
Senior Analyst
Promoting Health and Sustainable Energy (PHASE)
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