Holtec’s Fiasco at Michigan's Palisades Nuke Demands Immediate Open Public Hearings
On the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan, an extremely hot, intensely radioactive 1,000-pound nuclear fuel assembly sits somewhere under specially treated water inside the Palisades nuclear power plant. That assembly has “tilted from its upright position,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and may have damaged other key components of the plant.
But the commission, nevertheless, just green-lighted a risky retrieval operation by the plant’s owner, the New Jersey-based Holtec Company. The “regulators” in charge of all this answer to Donald Trump who can fire any NRC employee at will, based on the Slaughter decision of the U.S. Supreme Court this year.
Despite serious uncertainties and vast potential danger, Holtec is now approved to pull those extremely radioactive rods out of the reactor core.
Trump is personally invested financially in the nuclear power industry.
Billions are at stake. Holtec needs Palisades to open ASAP.
The NRC has given Holtec a permit to proceed, which means that Holtec may soon pull those hot rods out from under water. If they do, all bets are off on the future of the reactor, the region, and the nuclear industry as a whole.
This incomparably high stakes radioactive situation erupted on or around August 30, 2026, when Holtec placed that fuel assembly into the water.
Palisades sits in Covert Township, 150 yards from Lake Michigan, 70 miles east of Chicago, 180 west of Detroit.
It’s one of three shut “zombie” reactors the industry’s billionaire backers want to re-fire for electricity for data centers, AI and crypto production.
Before moving those rods Holtec had planned a $900 million Initial Public Offering.
The company has taken gargantuan sums of money from the state and federal governments to re-fire Palisades and build at least three Small Modular Reactors, two on the Palisades site and one at the site, also in Michigan, of its Big Rock Point nuclear power plant.
Some repayments will to come due in March, 2027.
Palisades’ proposed electricity would be Holtec’s sole source of a fresh cash flow.
https://beyondnuclear.org/breakdown-of-bailouts-at-holtecs-palisades/
Sixty years ago—on October 5, 1966—the Fermi I reactor suffered a major accident across the state in Monroe. The near-catastrophe prompted John G. Fuller’s best-selling book We Almost Lost Detroit, and Gil Scott-Heron’s companion rap song.
Detroit Edison spent some three years and $100 million trying to revive Fermi I before shutting it in November 1972, with enormous losses.
Since going critical in the early 1970s, Palisades has never met basic NRC fire protection standards. Its previous owners suffered a wide range of operational errors, including two site evacuations of plant personnel from the containment building. X There was also mishandling of a 107-ton radioactive waste transfer container. In the face of enormous safety and economic challenges, Palisades was shut by Entergy on May 20, 2022. Holtec bought the plant later in 2022 with a commitment to decommission it, but then switched to announcing a re-start by 2024.
Holtec has never run or restarted a nuclear power plant.
In October, 2025, a worker fell into radioactive water in the reactor cavity inside the plant. Plant personnel records say critical staff may be dangerously overworked contributing to the nuclear assembly incident.
Holtec admits it has “lost” critical welding records. Some of what Holtec has admitted to the NRC are welds which have violated American Society of Mechanical Engineers standards and may be irreparable. Framatome, one of the world’s most experienced nuclear engineering companies, warns that critical steam generator tubing is cracked, and that Palisades probably can’t run a full fuel cycle.
The very idea of reopening Palisades has ignited bitter debate within the scientific and engineering community. Numerous veteran safety and management personnel have jumped ship. A manager of Palisades for Holtec has left. He has likened a restart to “trying to build a fire truck on the way to a fire.” The position of lead site safety manager may have been vacant during the fuel assembly problem.
As widely reported by Muskegon-based investigative journalist Roger Rapoport, and by long-time Kalamazoo-based nuclear expert Kevin Kamps, a restart involving removing the hot fuel rods from their borated pool could pose serious risks.
Ironically, a PR crew of Holtec was filming when what veteran nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen called a “rookie error” resulted in the tipping of the fuel assembly. But neither Holtec nor the NRC have released visuals of the accident, nor has the public been informed about what broader damage it may have caused.
Rapoport and Kamps further report that Alan Blind, a highly respected veteran engineer, has filed a range of technical questions with the NRC. The commission’s Petition Review Board has retaliated by attacking Blind personally. The attacks signal that Trump’s NRC is very much in Holtec’s camp.
With the fuel assemblies now in protective borated water, the NRC denies any radiation releases, and thus any harm to plant workers or the public. But Holtec brands the situation an “emergency.”
It needs to lift that errant assembly into the air to restart its cash flow.
So, with NRC approval, it may try to cram the errant fuel assembly into a cylindrical Fuel Transfer Canister, hoping to crush the fuel rods, which may not otherwise fit.
The U.S. nuclear industry has never pulled off such a stunt.
After five dead years, there’s no public need for Palisades’ power. Under federal law, Trump, Holtec and the NRC have very limited legal liability.
The nuclear industry's much hyped “renaissance” may now ride on the Palisades crap shoot. At least two other proposed “zombie” restarts (at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Unit 1, and at Duane Arnold in Iowa), await Palisades' lead.
Trump also wants to launch an untested, unproven fleet of Small Modular Reactors to run data/AI/crypto centers. Soaring costs, technical pitfalls and advancing renewables, have driven the SMR gambit to the brink. Billions of taxpayer and investor dollars hang in the balance.
Holtec’s fuel assembly debacle and dumped IPO have shredded the industry’s financial credibility, as has public rage against data centers, AI and crypto.
Trump is doing all he can to kill green energy. But the astonishing advances in solar, wind, geothermal and post-lithium batteries make the rise of a renewable-based “Solartopian" energy economy appear increasingly unstoppable.
Palisades' upper-level management has been decimated. In the wake of Elon Musk’s DOGE, some 500 NRC staff are also gone, along with about half the commission’s routine reactor safety inspections. Trump’s absolute control guarantees further attacks on critical industry stalwarts like Alan Blind.
Above all, Palisades demands open public hearings to vent the warnings of veteran experts like Blind, Rapoport, Kamps, Gundersen—and of an informed grassroots opposition.
History tells us such battles have been won—and that our survival hangs in the balance. But we’re likely to know what we need to know at this plant only after such hearings.
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Karl Grossman,a retired professor of journalism at State University of New York Old Westbury, is author of the book Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
Harvey “Sunny” Wasserman wrote Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, and The People’s Spiral of US History (www.solartopia.org). He co-hosts the weekly Solartopia Show at Pacificanetwork.org; the Green Grassroots Election Protection zoom runs most Mondays, 2-4:20pm PT at www.grassrootsep.org.