A FRESH START FOR AMERICA’S MOST CONTROVERSIAL NUCLEAR REACTOR

COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN - Any day now Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant owner Holtec International will be ready to make history. Expected Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval of an “emergency” license amendment request may allow the company to resume a refueling plan that collapsed August 30. Right now no one knows if Palisades will create enough energy to power the equivalent of 800,000 homes or wind up in the ash can of nuclear industry history.

Holtec’s solution to the nightmare that rudely interrupted the plant restart is the energy story of the year. Another failure could turn little Covert Township, Michigan, into an international media and nuclear energy hot spot. This October surprise could also damage Republican attempts to hold on to Congress during the midterms.

CEO Krishna Singh, who lives 1,400 miles away from the scene in a $10 million Jupiter, Florida, home, has good reason to be a little jumpy about this speed bump on his path to becoming a billionaire. Unfairly dubbed the Donald Trump of nuclear energy, this low profile nuclear power speculator rules an empire stretching from Kiev to Camden, New Jersey. As soon as the war ends in Ukraine his company plans to begin work on 20 new nuclear reactors.

Today Holtec is more than two years behind its target to reopen Palisades. Some potential investors are pursuing other opportunities. Top managers have recently being pink slipped or quitting. The company website is looking more and more like what you would expect from an NFL team that just dropped out of the race to the Super Bowl.

Even worse, the primary rationale for reopening the plant with $3.1 billion in federal and state financial support is losing steam. Proposed new nuclear power plants costing about $16 a watt can’t compete with far safer, cheaper and quicker to build renewable solar and wind power coming in around $1 a watt. Across our planet much safer renewables are beginning to trounce slow to build nuclear.

Much has changed since Holtec did a 180 four years ago on its plan to buy and decommission half-century old Palisades on Lake Michigan’s southeastern shore. The NRC's “emergency” license amendment coupled with generous government subsidies, could make the plant profitable. Alternatively this reprieve would give Holtec an opportunity to make another error that would return Palisades to decommissioning.

“This emergency rush to restart Palisades,” suggests Don’t Waste Michigan’s Michael Keegan, “is about the need for greed not the need to protect public safety.”

To understand the gravity of this proposed repair job it’s important to know a little more about the way other modern nuclear power plants are designed in depth.

A reactor core is fueled by a mix of two-thirds new and one third spent fuel assemblies safeguarded in a pool of borated water. This protects workers and, in the event of a containment breach, the public, from radiation exposure.

The new assemblies are only slightly radioactive before they are placed in the reactor core. However a 500 degree radioactive spent fuel assembly raised out of the reactor cavity pool would expose workers to a fatal radiation dose Equally troubling is the possibility that radioactive gases emitted from the fuel rods inside an assembly could escape into the neighborhood around the plant.

This explains why thousand pound fuel assemblies are held under at least 10 feet of water. Dilution and partial retention of life threatening fission products protects employees and, in a worst case scenario, the public. No wonder Holtec left the damaged fuel assembly safely stowed underwater in the fuel pool cavity.

In their September 30 license exemption request the company asked the NRC to break one of the cardinal rules of nuclear power plant safety. Damage to fuel rods inside the assembly blocks access to the spent fuel pool via an underwater channel that resembles a tube. To get around this problem the company has proposed lifting the assembly above the water line. That is just as scary as it sounds.

Holtec wants to place the wounded fuel assembly in a shielded fuel transfer canister to be lifted out of the pool via a crane and special rigging. Under a self- imposed 133 hour limit, the company would attempt to return the fuel assembly to the spent fuel pool area via an equipment hatch. No company has ever done this before.

Industry veteran Arnie Gundersen who has worked in 70 nuclear plants during his career says he “doesn’t know of a single situation where a damaged spent fuel element has been transferred in the air.

"I’d venture that anywhere else no one would consider doing this in an operating nuclear power plant. The risk is just too high, especially in view of what just happened on August 30 at Palisades. If there is a mistake the cleanup could take a very long time.”

According to Gundersen, the fact that the spent fuel assembly is already beyond repair, means it could be safely moved to an out of the way underwater location. Failure of the specially designed fuel transfer canister shielding the spent fuel could expose workers to dangerous radiation.

Even worse, if the special container is lifted above the water and something goes wrong in the vulnerable transfer process radioactive gases could escape containment. This could quickly turn into an emergency triggering an evacuation order for the surrounding community near South Haven.

Holtec’s Hail Mary application to the NRC raises another key question: How can there possibly be an “emergency” at a nuclear plant that is not in operation producing electricity?

The answer to this question speaks directly to the fact that one of key rationale’s behind President Trump’s heralded nuclear renaissance is power hungry AI data centers. The fact that Michigan’s gubernatorial and U.S Senate candidates agree the public has the right to a moratorium on data centers, undercuts billions in taxpayer subsidies wasted on the Palisades restart.

No one understands this better than the Trump centric leadership at the downsized and “doged" NRC which recently cut safety inspection hours by 38 percent and security inspections by 50 percent.

After giving Holtec a long list of safety related waivers on everything from fire protection to questionable steam generator tubes, the shorthanded NRC is moving the company’s license amendment request ahead at warp speed. This is happening without the customary comment, hearing and review process that can take four months or longer.

To better understand what’s at stake for the future of the nuclear energy industry and the public it’s helpful to turn back the clock to August 30. That was the day Holtec began loading nuclear fuel into the Palisades reactor core.

A crack camera team was on hand to document this first ever restart of a reactor closed for decommissioning. This happy day was interrupted by a surprise loss of control accident unprecedented in the history of American commercial nuclear power.

It started when a dangerously radioactive thousand pound fuel assembly tipped 30 degrees toward the safety critical reactor core shroud. This huge stainless steel cylindrical component is central to the reactor pressure vessel. The disaster also broke the beyond repair assembly containing 216 bundled fuel rods filled with uranium pellets.

Holtec personnel believed that this disaster did not trigger the NRC’s safety reporting requirements. On September 8, the company boldly launched a $900 million initial public offering road show aimed at pushing Holtec valuation to $10.2 billion. There was no mention of the wayward and dead on arrival fuel assembly.

Naturally a potential billionaire like CEO Singh would never roll the dice on an IPO in the middle of a true plant emergency. Courted investors were reminded that the long delayed plant would be opening soon.

What these customers didn’t know was that ten days earlier fuel loading was “paused" after that assembly went rogue and “tipped" and tipped 30 degrees. Inevitably the bad news leaked on Reddit and the media. Soon the Union of Concerned Scientists criticized Holtec. The company was forced to "pause" its IPO on September 17. The New York Times quickly noted that a nationwide call for a moratorium on power hungry AI data centers threatened investor support for nuclear.

Unless it can start selling electricity quickly Holtec’s Palisades division might have to borrow money to begin paying off a $1.52 billion Department of Energy loan that comes due in March.

This is one of the obvious downsides of corporate socialism. Hiding disturbing facts from generous taxpayers and the politicians they elect is always a struggle. Voters don’t like throwing away public money on pipe dreams.

As the media began piling on about this breaking news, Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s spokeswoman Victoria Mitlyng, made it clear there was “no radiological release” during the August 30 fuel loading crisis. She added that neither the workers nor the public were harmed. In her mind there was not an emergency in Covert Township.

In a surprise September 30 NRC emergency licensing amendment application the undaunted company asked to begin correcting its error and reloading fuel inside the plant October 2. The NRC withheld this letter from the public until October 5.

After reviewing this request the agency gave the public a day to comment on Holtec’s proposal. Comments submitted by veteran nuclear industry experts who, unlike Holtec, have actually spent decades operating nuclear plants, focused on the applicant’s dubious attempt to redefine a plant emergency.

The company justifies its application on the theory that "the NRC refers to emergency situations as those in which a failure to act in a timely way would result in … shutdown of a nuclear power plant.”

That’s a stretch in more ways then one. First, Holtec has never run a nuclear reactor. Second, this operator readily concedes that its request is not related to an actual safety related emergency:

“Palisades is requesting emergency processing of this license amendment request as a delay in approval of the proposed changes would result in a delay in the resumption of activities necessary to reach the plant conditions required to restore the plant to power operation.”

This sentence appears to immediately disqualify Holtec’s request for a emergency license amendment. It allows the company to skip posting a notice in the Federal Register, a NRC notice inviting public comment and a public hearing. There is a critical detail here that sheds light on Holtec’s confusion. For several years it has repeatedly failed to meet a self-imposed deadline to start the rebuilt plant. It has never sold a single kilowatt of nuclear energy. It is wrong to claim there is a need to "restore the plant to power operation.”

Despite these facts it appears that the NRC will go ahead and approve a Holtec license amendment. If this happens there will not be a further opportunity for the public to challenge the company’s rushed plan to remove the damaged fuel assembly and resume fuel loading in a way no one has ever heard of.

By evading the hearing process Holtec and the public will not have an opportunity to learn from outside experts how to prevent another fuel loading disaster. It is also possible that public comment could help the company come up with a much safer solution to its damaged fuel assembly problem. Of course this inexperienced operator could be tutored by experts who know what they are doing. This will also give the NRC staff needed time to follow up with a thoughtful analysis of how Krishna Singh’s management allowed this improbable fuel loading accident to happen.

Holtec’s current attempt to begin work outside the normal inspection review and public hearing process could be self-defeating. If anything goes wrong there could be a real emergency potentially endangering the health and welfare of workers as well as plant neighbors. Failure could crush Holtec’s ambitions here and at four other reactors it intends to build in Michigan with taxpayer money.

The agency has failed to respond to a petition submitted by Alan Blind, the plant’s former design engineering manager. He wants to suspend any fuel loading and block Holtec’s proposed license amendment request pending a thorough public review of what went wrong August 30.

Blind says Holtec’s improvised solution "requires a lot of training, safety features and administrative oversight. Right now we don’t know what happened. Many things had to go wrong for this to occur. In addition to full disclosure on the fuel assembly drop and disengagement of the fuel handling grapple, he wants a review of the restart modification program.

“Safety doesn’t just happen in industry. There are many layers of protection,” says Blind. “This is why it’s incumbent for the NRC to prioritize the public benefit of doing a thorough and thoughtful job to eliminate the possibility of another mistake involving reactor fuel. Holtec does not understand the seriousness of this situation.”

Taxpayers supporting the multi-billion dollar reactor restart need to be aware of potential risks. The operator's proposed plan to rescue the wayward fuel assembly could have important radiological consequences.

“Holtec is taking legal shortcuts to restart fast without careful planning and review,” adds Blind. "The worst thing that might happen could potentially be within regulatory limits. They told the NRC that the doses within the control room and on the perimeter of the plant were acceptable.

"The legality of this action does not mitigate the fact that workers and people living near the plant could still receive a much higher dose than what they would normally get.

"For example workers in the control room could quickly receive up to 60 percent of their annual exposure limit in a worst case scenario. It’s also possible that radioactive gases escaping from the plant would force evacuation of nearby residents, despite the fact that this exposure level remains within NRC legal limits.

"As a nuclear power plant executive I too have requested emergency processing. This is the kind of thing that happens when you are waiting for a replacement pump that is arriving later in the day.

"It makes sense to keep the plant running rather than doing a shutdown for a short period of time. However, I have never heard of anyone using plant economics as the rationale for an NRC emergency licensing amendment during startup. Historically I don’t think the NRC has ever done this.

“Holtec has said camera monitors prove the damaged fuel assembly and reactor are also in a safe condition. There is no urgency to begin refueling. It is reasonable to assume that the work can be done safely following the normal review process that takes months.

"What is not reasonable is to do this work as if it is an emergency. Holtec needs to provide more information to the NRC to make sure everything is done legally."

One of Blind’s major concerns is why the design factors that prevent this kind of fuel assembly loading failure didn’t work.

“Emergency processing was never intended to shut down all avenues for public participation in the process that includes well informed experts."

A key question surrounds the NRC’s decision to give Holtec a waiver that allowed fuel handling staff to work well beyond normal limits during a startup.

Employees working in this safety critical realm were permitted to be on the job for up to 54 hours a week and get just three days off every fifteen days.

“Was fatigue a factor?” asks Blind who points out that this could kind of overtime could not happen in other safety critical industries such as the airlines.

He is especially concerned about the possibility that core loading could resume while the NRC is processing his petition. Additional fuel assemblies could be subjected to the same presently unidentified condition before the NRC has completed consideration of the requested enforcement action.

Another big question mark is turnover in senior management during the months leading up to the fuel loading failure. Holtec’s president, chief nuclear officer and plant manager Jeff Borah have all departed.

Borah was an exceptionally well-qualified Palisades employee who worked tirelessly in ten key positions at Palisades for both Entergy and Holtec since 2012. This well respected nuclear energy pro got it right when he told the New York Times in July that restarting this plant "is like building a fire truck on your way to a fire."

This underscores a question for the plant’s new chief safety officer. I’ve been told that his first day on the job was Monday August 31, the day after the fuel assembly disaster.

Who was in charge at Palisades on Sunday August 30th? How does this person explain what went wrong?

“We know that something highly unusual happened on August 30,” says Blind. “There had to be multiple failures for this to occur. A reasonable person would say that Holtec is going too fast. We need to understand everything that went wrong to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again. We want the NRC to make corrective actions."

Understandably, Holtec’s proposed recovery operation worries Kalamazoo based Kevin Kamps, executive director of Don’t Waste Michigan. This dedicated watchdog has kept a careful eye on this plant for decades.

From his vantage point, 35 miles downwind from Palisades, it’s clear that risks associated with Holtec’s recovery plan are not hypothetical. There are a number of precedents going back to the old days when Consumers Power (now Consumers Energy) and one of the nation’s most experienced nuclear fleet operators, Entergy, ran the plant. Here Kamps summarizes a few of the reactor’s greatest hits:

"In 1993, a broken fuel rod led to two emergency evacuations of all Consumers Power plant personnel from the containment. This was a precaution against significant potential radioactive hazards, including during the recovery operation."

"In 2005, a two-day dangle of a 107-ton, fully loaded highly radioactive waste container above the indoor wet storage pool was a close call with catastrophe."

"This Consumers Energy incident was kept quiet for several months. The recent August 30, 2026 incident was concealed until September 21. NRC's top public affairs spokesperson for the Midwest region, Viktoria Mitlyng, said in both cases, the public was not informed because the incidents were not deemed ‘reportable.'

"In both cases, it took vigilant watchdogs and reporters to bring the incidents to light, not the owner/operator of Palisades, nor NRC.

"From December 2024 to April 2025, Holtec undertook a large-scale transfer of highly radioactive waste from the indoor wet storage pool into outdoor dry cask storage.

"Holtec did so with no radiological emergency plan in place. There was no evacuation planning for the local, area, and perhaps even regional population, if a disaster unfolded, due to the drop of a heavy cask into the pool.

"Holtec took advantage of Palisades' then decommissioning status, a regulation-free zone, despite the inherent risks of such an operation.

"Rookie error-prone Holtec's unprecedented restart of the Palisades zombie reactor will risk a Chornobyl or Fukushima-scale catastrophe, a hundred yards from the shoreline of the Great Lakes, drinking water supply for more than 40 million people in eight U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and a large number of Indigenous Nations."

While Holtec and the NRC don’t share Kamps’s view this Palisades debate is caught in a kind of legal never never land.

In the near term it is unlikely that Congress, the Michigan Legislature, the state’s Attorney General, or public intervenors can quickly score a data center style moratorium on Holtec. Given Congressionally backed Department of Energy support for four other nuclear plants Holtec plans to build next to Palisades and in northern Michigan, the company remains optimistic.

Kevin Kamp's careful analysis reveals the total tab for this portion of Trump’s Nuclear Renaissance could bring in $16 billion for Holtec to pursue its dreams to operate five Michigan nuclear reactors.

At the moment it’s highly likely that Holtec will soon be pulling the trigger on a Palisades startup.

Only one person, the politician who effectively controls the NRC, could stop resumption of fuel reloading in beautiful Covert Township. Unfortunately at the moment he and his Secretary of Defense are a bit preoccupied with another nuclear reactor in far off Iran.

That could change quickly during a West Michigan campaign swing. Perhaps he and his wife would enjoy a tour with Republican Congressman Bill Huzienga who sees Palisades as an economic engine for his district located in the plant evacuation zone.

I can imagine Krishna Singh joining them for a grand reopening reactor tour days before the midterm election. They would look good posing for photographers on a Lake Michigan beach with sand beneath their toes.

There couldn’t be a better backdrop than Palisades going critical at sunset.

I wish them luck.

Roger Rapoport is the producer of The Nuclear Reactor Next Door Podcast.  He is the author of articles on Palisades for the Detroit Free Press, The Progressive and Counterpunch. He lives 70 miles from this reactor. More at rogerrapoport.com