With the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant close to receiving approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reopen, a public briefing and opportunity to comment on emergency plans for the facility will be held by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and state and local agencies on August 5 in Lawrence, Michigan, or in writing by August 8. However, the restart is not guaranteed, as a group of environmental organizations has filed an emergency challenge to the reopening of the previously shuttered plant, citing “the adequacy, from a safety perspective, of Holtec’s proposed repairs to severely degraded steam generator tubes.”
Since the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant opened in 1971, it has been plagued with serious violations and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) itself declared Palisades one of the four worst performing plants in the country. There is a reason that Consumers Energy wanted to get out from underneath this nuke plant in 2007, which was by then riddled with expensive problems and not profitable. Consumers sold the plant to Entergy, which concluded that they too did not want to invest the huge amount needed to keep Palisades running, as it was on its last legs anyway.
Despite the financial and environmental risks posed by the plant and previous approval for decommissioning of the facility, on July 24 the NRC issued Holtec, the owner of Palisades, an operating license which allows it to begin to move nuclear fuel back to the site.
As Alan Blind, a retired nuclear executive, former Emergency Plan Director at Palisades and Indian Point and a lead petitioner in the Palisades restart proceeding states, ““Holtec is no longer shielded by a decommissioning status that kept its restart plans in a regulatory gray zone. From here on out, its compliance will be measured against the full, enforceable standards of an NRC operating license. That changes everything.”
Jan O’Connell, the Michigan Chapter’s senior energy issues organizer, hopes Alan Blind is right. “I attended a lot of comment periods and hearings along with many other people,” O’Connell says, “and the number of speakers against the plant far outnumbered the few who spoke in favor.”
One particular concern is that during inspections last year, Holtec was made aware of many deteriorated steam generator tubes in the plant. Palisades steam generators are more than 30 years old and were built with out-of-date materials, which is a big concern. Questions have been raised about what has happened to all those severely damaged generator tubes. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson told Common Dreams that “The NRC is not an Elliot Ness tough cop regulator. Instead, the 'Friday Night Massacre' at Palisades shows NRC and Holtec are more like Ness joining in with Al Capone on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.”