COVERT TOWNSHIP, Michigan — It is generally considered uncommon for someone to stay with one company their entire career. Yet for many employees at the Palisades Nuclear Plant, it is something that just makes sense.

Steve McDonald, 57, of Holland, Michigan, has worked at the power plant that sits along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan since the 1990s, when he left the Navy. Now, more than 30 years later, McDonald said he plans to retire just months before the power plant may make history as the first decommissioned facility to come back online in the United States.

Owner Holtec International wants to restart the plant by October and faces a slew of inspections, repairs, and approvals required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to get there.

The NRC confirmed to the Washington Examiner that it is planning to complete the remaining safety reviews and issue its final decision on whether the plant can restart by the end of July.

“It kind of excites me, because the nuclear renaissance that was supposed to have happened 20 years ago, and then 10 years, and now we’re looking at restarting some of the older plants and getting into the[small modular reactors], [micro modular reactors], and the microreactors,” McDonald told the Washington Examiner from the on-site training facility that sits a short drive away from the main facility.

“There’s a lot of new excitement in nuclear power,” he said.

Within the last year or so, Big Tech has made massive investments in nuclear power, with companies such as Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon looking to secure their own power for artificial intelligence capabilities.

At least one other decommissioned plant is expected to be revived: Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Discussions have also begun surrounding restarting the Duane Arnold plant in Iowa.

The Palisades Nuclear Plant was shut down in 2022 by Entergy, the utility operator and then-owner of the plant. Just weeks later, the plant was sold to Holtec, which soon announced plans to reopen.

The back-and-forth on decommissioning took many employees, including McDonald, by surprise. Dozens of past workers had already retired, left the state, or picked up new positions within the industry.

McDonald said the announcement generated confusion as to why the plant was closed in the first place.

“There was frustration on my part between Entergy and Holtec,” he said. “Why did you shut down a good operating plant, make all of us go through what we went through to defuel the plant, and not do the maintenance that could have been done to move forward and restart the plant in 60 days like we normally do?”

He explained that, traditionally, every 18-24 months, the plant would temporarily shut down for refueling and maintenance.

“But now it’s almost three years and we have to do all the maintenance that needs to be done to get us back to being able to produce power,” he said. “We need to buy fuel and get it loaded into the reactor, right? So, all of the things that would have been so much easier to do had we not gone through the classified defueling.”

McDonald was one of the few employees who remained at Palisades during the decommissioning period. He has spent his entire career outside the Navy at the plant, serving in a variety of positions, including nuclear plant operator and operations scheduler.

He has been licensed to operate the plant since 1997 and undergoes training to keep his license every five weeks. Every operator is required to undergo this regular training to ensure the facility is operated safely.

McDonald currently works as a noncertified fuel handler, meaning he works directly in the control room, monitoring the equipment. With retirement only months away, his duties have expanded to help new operators secure their licenses and be trained.

The longtime operator has not ruled out returning to the facility, as the reopening has brought some past employees out of retirement, but he explained that it feels like it is time.

“I’m 58 years old in March, I’ve been at the Palisades for 32 years, I’m tired of working shift work,” McDonald said. “Nights are terrible, especially 12-hour nights, especially in the middle of winter traveling back and forth to the town where I live. … So, I’d like to spend time with my family and do more camping and fishing and those kinds of things and not have to worry about, ‘Well, if I take this day off, somebody else has to cover for me.’”

McDonald reflected fondly on his time at the Palisades Nuclear Plant, as he was the youngest licensed nuclear control operator at one time.

He said he is looking forward to the effect the restart could have on the industry but is wary of the timeline Holtec faces.

“The only thing that I am kind of leery of is the aggressiveness of the schedule to get things put back together where they are,” McDonald said. “I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but it’ll take a lot of hard work.”

The speed of the restart has been the primary concern of those petitioning against the reopening.

Bruce Davis, who lives within a mile of the plant with his wife, Karen, and Alan Blind, who worked in the nuclear industry for 40 years, including at Palisades, have launched a petition calling for increased safety regulations and transparency from both Holtec and the NRC.

They have specifically pointed to damages found on steam generator tubing last year. Rather than completely replacing the tubing, Holtec has said it plans to repair the tubes using a common technique called “sleeving,” which involves coating the tubes with metal sleeves to cover any damage. The petitioners have cast doubt as to whether it will protect the materials from corrosion and cracking.

The NRC has yet to approve this repair process, set to begin in March, and any doubts from federal regulators could cause significant delays.

“From a project management point of view, there’s just huge risk,” Blind told the Washington Examiner. “And then we’ve all learned when you try to do too much in too little time, things become unmanageable very quickly.”

However, McDonald and other employees at the nuclear facility insisted that they do not believe Holtec would reopen the facility if it was not ready.

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“I am confident that if the plant is not ready to be restarted safely, it won’t be restarted,” McDonald said.

Spokesperson Val Gent echoed that sentiment, saying, “Everything here is literally being taken apart and spectated, inspected, and upgraded because nothing will be powered back up until we are safe to do so.”