Palisades Nuclear Generating Station

The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station is a moth-balled nuclear power plant located on Lake Michigan, in Van Buren County's Covert Township, Michigan, on a 432 acre site 5 mi south of South Haven, Michigan, USA. Palisades was operated by the Nuclear Management Company and owned by CMS Energy prior to the sale to Entergy on April 11, 2007.

Its single Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor weighs 425 tons and has steel walls 8+1/2 in thick. The containment building is 116 ft in diameter and 189 ft tall, including the dome. Its concrete walls are 3+1/2 ft thick with a 1/4 in steel liner plate. The dome roof is 3 ft thick. Access is via a personnel lock measuring 3ft 6in by 7ft 8in. The Westinghouse Electric Company turbine generator can produce 725,000 kilowatts of electricity.

Built between 1967 and 1970, Palisades was approved to operate at full power in 1973.

On July 12, 2006, it was announced that the plant would be sold to Entergy. On April 11, 2007, the plant was sold to Entergy for $380 million. The plant's original licensee was due to expire on March 24, 2011. An application for 20-year extension was filed in 2005 with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was granted on January 18, 2007. Therefore, the plant was then scheduled for decommissioning by 2031.

Entergy had made a decision to close the plant in October 2018. A decision by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) influenced the company's decision. Consumers Energy attempted to buy its way out of a power purchase agreement it has with Entergy and the plant. The MPSC did not approve Consumer Energy's full request of $172 million, so Entergy decided to keep the plant open three years longer than planned. On April 20, 2022, just weeks before the facility was scheduled to close, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer requested federal funding to keep the facility open.

Entergy closed the Palisades plant in May 2022 and its sale to Holtec International was completed in June 2022. However, in September 2022, Holtec applied for funds from the Civil Nuclear Credit to reopen the plant. This request was denied in November 2022. In December 2022, Holtec announced that it will reapply for funds from the Civil Nuclear Credit in order to restart Palisades. Other efforts have been made to "repower" the plant. On September 12, 2023, Holtec and Wolverine Power Cooperative announced that they had reached a power purchase agreement to restart the plant once the re-opening is approved. As of January 2024, Holtec has secured $150 million in state funding to restart the plant. The Department of Energy is also ready to offer a $1.5 billion loan to assist in restarting operations. If operations resume, planned for late 2025, the plant would be the first nuclear power plant to restart operations in the country.

Spent fuel storage
Spent fuel is stored outdoors in 21 16 ft storage casks, each containing 30 tons and resting on a concrete pad. This was intended to be a temporary solution until the spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository opened.

Parts replacement
Two steam generators were replaced in 1992. This involved cutting a 28 by 26 foot opening through the 3.5 ft reinforced concrete wall. The removed units are stored in a large concrete building on plant property.

Surrounding population
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 mi, concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 mi, concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.

The 2010 U.S. population within 10 mi of Palisades was 28,644, a decrease of 4.5 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within 50 mi was 1,326,618, an increase of 4.4 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include South Bend, IN (45 miles to city center) and Kalamazoo, MI.

Seismic risk
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Palisades was 1 in 156,250, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Visiting
Like all U.S. nuclear power plants since September 11, 2001, public access to Palisades is prohibited. However, Palisades can be glimpsed from the neighboring Van Buren State Park.

Decommissioning
Originally planned to operate through May 31, 2022, concerns over a faulty control rod drive seal prompted operators to remove the plant from service on May 20.

Once all fuel is removed from the reactor core, Holtec will buy the plant from Entergy and begin a three year process of moving all fuel to dry cask storage. Then a ten year pause to allow the decommissioning trust fund balance to grow followed by a 6 year long dismantling process, with an estimated completion date of 2041.

The cost of decommissioning will be covered by a $550-million trust fund, paid for by Consumers Energy customers.

Intention to restart operations
In January 2024, the federal government was poised to offer Holtec International a $1.5 billion federal loan to restart the Palisades nuclear plant. The loan was reported at the time to potentially start as soon as February 2024. The conditional agreement was announced on March 27. If successful, Palisades would become the first U.S. nuclear reactor to restart after its fuel has been removed and its license revised to prohibit further operation. The Palisades Nuclear Plant, located 5 miles south of South Haven, Michigan, was a pressurized water reactor that began operations in 1971 and shut down in May 2022. The plan for a restart by Holtec International (based in Jupiter, Florida) got a boost after Wolverine Power Cooperative, a local power company, agreed to buy as much as 2/3 of the plant’s output starting as soon as late 2025, though additional hurdles, including sign off from federal nuclear regulators. Holtec acquired the 800-megawatt power plant in 2022 after Entergy Corp. closed it due to financial reasons.

Small modular reactor plans
In December 2023, Holtec International announced that it intended to build the first two of its SMR-300 small modular reactors at Palisades by mid-2030.