Holtec International, the owner of the now-shuttered Palisades nuclear power plant in Van Buren County, has announced plans to build two small modular reactors at the site as it seeks to reopen the facility.
Holtec spokesperson Patrick O’Brien tells us these 300-megawatt SMRs will be in addition to the current 800-megawatt reactor at Palisades, assuming it’s allowed to reopen.
“There are benefits to try to locate these types of reactors at a plant that has already been used for nuclear in the past, where it allows you to work through the environmental siting,” O’Brien said. “Obviously, the community already knows nuclear, so there’s a lot of benefit in bringing these to an area that already understands the nuclear process and the nuclear power industry.”
O’Brien says Holtec will seek the licensing for the SMRs in 2026 with plans to finish them in mid-2030.
“We’ll continue to work through the process to staff the facility with operators going forward in anticipation of restart, and then working our way through the NRC process to reauthorize power operations.”
Holtec is waiting for a response from the U.S. Department of Energy on its request for a $1 billion loan to reactivate Palisades, and it expects to hear back in early 2024.
O’Brien says if all goes well, Palisades could be operating again by late 2025. Initially, it would have about the same number of employees as it had before shutting down. O’Brien can’t tell us how many additional employees would be needed to run the small modular reactors.
