Palisades Stealth Timeline
"Palisades Nuclear Power Plant" by bradipo is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Holtec founder, CEO, president, etc. ad nauseum Krishna Singh had first announced SMR new builds at Palisades — rather than decommissioning — in an early to mid-April 2022 Exchange Monitor trade press interview.
Then Gov. Whitmer floated restart rather than decommissioning on 4/20/22.
The latest in 50 years of control rod drive mechanism seal leaks — the worst operating experience in industry — forced Entergy to shutdown the reactor on 5/20/22, 11 days earlier than scheduled.
On 6/10/22, Entergy removed all fuel from the core.
On 6/13/22, Entergy certified official, legally binding, permanent shutdown for good. That same day, NRC docketed the certification.
NRC allowed Holtec to take ownership and possession of Palisades (and Big Rock Point) on 6/28/22.
This despite the fact that our environmental coalition (plus MI AG Nessel) had been intervening against Holtec’s takeover since Feb. 2021.
NRC finally got around to officially telling us to go jump in a Great Lake around 7/15/22.
In its celebratory press release on 6/28/22 (since removed from its website for some odd reason), Holtec proposed building one or more SMRs at Big Rock Point, as well, for the first time.
On 7/5/22, Holtec secretly wrote DOE, applying for billions of dollars in bailouts to restart Palisades, scheming to add SMR new build as well, and laying out its “recommissioning” strategy.
Here is my Oct. 2023 press release and link to that 7/5/22 Holtec document, which I obtained via a FOIA request to the State of MI:
https://beyondnuclear.org/5775-2/
On 9/9/22, Whitmer and Holtec publicly announced Holtec’s restart scheme.
Ever since, we’ve been resisting Holtec and NRC’s efforts to restart Palisades, as well as to build two SMR-340s there, and one or more at Big Rock Point as well.
Our resistance, from April 2022 to Feb. 2026, is chronicled here:
https://beyondnuclear.org/newest-nuke-nightmares-at-palisades-2022-present/
Our resistance from Feb. 2026 till now is chronicled here:
https://www.dontwastemichigan.org/Palisades.html
And here:
https://www.dontwastemichigan.org/Holtec.html
And here:
https://www.dontwastemichigan.org/SMNR.html
—-Kevin Kamps
Ex. Dir.
Don’t Waste Michigan