COVERT TOWNSHIP, Michigan — The Palisades Nuclear Plant has a chance to make history. If reopened, it would be the first decommissioned facility to come back online in the United States, possibly paving the way for further investments in the nuclear industry’s revival. But the process won’t be simple.

The Washington Examiner got an exclusive look inside the facility, touring its control room, turbine deck, chemistry lab, and training facility. More than 1,000 Holtec International employees and contractors are there, working to complete inspections, part replacements, chemical tests, and operations training to secure a restart approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this summer. 

The plant lies on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, where frozen waves and pebbled ice crash into the snow-covered beach below. Unlike with an active nuclear plant, there is no steam stretching high above from its dormant cooling towers. That may change come October. 

Where things stand

With parking lots overflowing with cars, scaffolding reaching three-story-high ceilings, and training shifts lasting 12 hours at a time, it is clear everyone at the Palisades Nuclear Plant is united by one goal: bringing the facility back online. Holtec faces a tight, self-imposed deadline of October to restart the plant as it navigates the complex regulatory processes involved. 

Like any nuclear facility in the U.S., physical security is paramount. After walking through what can only be compared to airport security checkpoints, visitors, who are accompanied by an armed guard, will find additional security barriers protecting nearly every area and department. 

Behind one of these locked doors is the facility’s massive turbine deck that has transformed into a full-blown construction zone. As of mid-January, Holtec employees, along with contractors with Siemens Energy, were taking apart the low-pressure turbines to inspect the condition of blades and valves. 

Field service engineer and Siemens Energy contractor Neil Wharton told the Washington Examiner that once done with these turbines, his team will begin a full inspection of the generator that transforms the energy produced into the electricity that passes on to the transformer and transmission lines. 

Small and large upgrades are ongoing across the facility, though one room appears to the untrained eye virtually untouched. Walking into the control room almost feels like a step back in time, with salmon pink and pale green paint covering the walls and panels that are littered with analog dials and manual control systems. There have been limited necessary upgrades in this room compared to the rest of the facility. However, Holtec is taking the time it has now to replace older screens and nuclear instrumentation while the plant is not in operation, Palisades chemistry manager Mike Lee said. 

Lee, who has spent nearly his entire career working at the Palisades Nuclear Plant, explained that the entire control room is completely offline, eliminating many cybersecurity concerns. 

“It’s completely disconnected,” he told the Washington Examiner. “You have a computer that you can get on the internet, but all the devices that actually operate the plant or control the plant are all not.” 

Several stories below the turbine deck sits the plant’s chemistry lab, where chemistry technicians and radio chemists are training to run daily tests on liquid samples on all aspects of the facility. For convenience, all samples are piped directly to the lab from the steam generators, water heaters, diesel generators, and more to assess for any abnormalities. 

One of the most important repairs Holtec will need to make to come back online is fixing more than 1,000 damaged tubes connected to the steam generators, which turns water heated by the nuclear reactor into steam that is later converted into electricity. 

An October 2024 report from the NRC revealed that stress corrosion cracking was affecting up to 1,400 tubes across two steam generator units, partly due to the age of the materials. The tubes were installed in 1990 using Alloy 600, which is now known to be susceptible to corrosion and cracking. 

Rather than replacing the damaged tubes, Holtec is opting to use a “sleeving” technique to repair the materials. This essentially involves coating the tubes with metal sleeves to cover any damage. 

Lee told the Washington Examiner that this process is expected to begin in March, with repairs taking place until June. While the NRC has said this technique has been used around the world, the agency has yet to issue a decision on whether it will accept it for the steam generator repairs at Palisades. 

‘A lot riding on it’ 

The Palisades nuclear facility was first opened on New Year’s Eve in 1971. It remained in operation for just over 50 years. In May 2022, the utility operator and then-owner of the plant, Entergy, ceased operations. 

That June, Entergy sold the plant to Holtec, which swiftly took steps to bring the facility back online. The decision came as a surprise to many, as the industry had been taking more steps toward decommissioning older facilities amid rising operation costs and lack of public support for nuclear power, thanks in part to the disasters at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Fukushima in Japan. 

Brad McDowell, who runs a fishing charter less than 10 miles north of the nuclear facility in the town of South Haven, told the Washington Examiner that even former employees were confident the plant would never restart.

“I know somebody that does hiring for the plant, and I asked them, I said, ‘You know there’s talk about reopening,'” McDowell recalled, adding that he was told there was “no way” the restart would happen, as many of the former employees retired and left town.

Amid rising demand for energy nationwide, both the public and private sectors have appeared to do a 180 on nuclear. Projects like Palisades have even secured massive federal loans backing the efforts to deploy more energy onto the grid. In September 2024, the Biden administration finalized a whopping $1.52 billion loan for the Palisades Nuclear Plant. 

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. 

This timeline is subject to change, however. A number of key licensing and inspection activities still need to be completed, including quality assurance, licensing operator examinations, an environmental assessment, and more. 

At the same time, a recent public meeting held by the NRC indicated that federal regulators have some concerns about what they described as a “very aggressive schedule” from Holtec. 

If Holtec receives the green light to restart Palisades this summer, it will be the first in the country to be recommissioned after previously being retired. And it likely won’t be the last. 

Big Tech has recently embraced the nuclear industry, as companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google are looking to advance their artificial intelligence capabilities. In September, Microsoft announced a purchase agreement with Constellation Energy with the goal of reopening Three Mile Island. Other tech companies have announced similar deals, with some also turning to small modular reactors. 

There is only one other decommissioned nuclear facility that could have the possibility to come back online: Duane Arnold in Iowa. In the fall, executives with utility giant NextEra Energy revealed the company was weighing backing a restart to support nearby data centers. 

As these announcements are dependent upon approvals from agencies such as the NRC, the final approval for Palisades will likely act as a catalyst for further investments. Once approved, the facility is projected to remain open until at least 2051. 

“I think there’s a lot riding on it,” Dan Geerlings, shift manager with operations for the plant, told the Washington Examiner in the Palisades’s control room. “I mean, it’s a huge thing for the industry to try and bring a plant back that’s been shut down and permanently de-fueled. I do hope there are a few other plants that are able to follow in our footsteps.” 

Neighborhood concerns

Plans to restart the power plant have received broad support from people who work and live in the towns near the power plant. 

McDowell emphasized how important the plant had been to the local economy for decades, employing hundreds of people in the region. As there have been advancements in technology within the nuclear industry, the longtime fisherman said that for him, there is no major downside to bringing the facility back online. 

“Obviously, we need the power,” McDowell told the Washington Examiner. “They’re pushing this electric on everybody … yet you don’t have enough electric as it is.” 

Once back online, the Palisades Nuclear Plant is expected to generate roughly 800 megawatts of carbon-free energy, sold directly to two utility providers: Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy. That amount of electricity is expected to power around 800,000 homes. 

While the desire for more power often dominates conversations regarding the plant, not everyone is convinced Holtec is approaching the restart in the best way. In fact, several residents who live within just miles of the facility, as well as former Palisades employees, have been petitioning against the possible reopening for months. 

Two of the main petitions have been spearheaded by Alan Blind, who served in several high positions within the nuclear energy industry for roughly 40 years. Blind ended his career while working at the Palisades Nuclear Plant, retiring in 2012. 

Blind, who once served as vice president for American Electric Power, told the Washington Examiner that his concerns aren’t with nuclear energy itself. In fact, he raved over the restart of Three Mile Island, calling it the “poster child” for how to restart a decommissioned plant. 

Instead, Blind has pointed to safety concerns over Palisades’s design standards, decades-old steam generators, and lack of restart rules issued specifically by the NRC, as well as the fact that Holtec has never run a nuclear facility. For example, Blind noted that amid decommissioning, the plant failed to place some systems in the process of wet layup that would have helped avoid corrosion in the steam generators. 

“This is basically a junk car that’s been sitting in the junkyard, and we don’t know anything about it, right?” Blind said. 

He went on to emphasize that Holtec likely won’t find out if the NRC will approve its repair plans for the steam generators until August, which could lead to unexpected delays. 

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

Blind’s concerns have been echoed by co-petitioner Bruce Davis and his wife Karen, who grew up coming to Covert Township and Lake Michigan since before the plant was even built. 

The couple, who retired in a home roughly 400 yards from the facility, was thrilled when former plant owner Entergy announced it would be shutting it down. Their family had long had concerns about their proximity to the nuclear plant, as Karen and two other family members were diagnosed with thyroid cancer within months of each other in the early 2000s. 

Like Blind, the couple is not against nuclear energy itself. They explained that while they live in a “green house,” using geothermal heat and electric cars, their safety concerns outweigh the pros of supporting the swift deployment of the carbon-free energy at Palisades. 

“I’m scared,” Karen told the Washington Examiner while walking along the Lake Michigan shore, with the Palisades containment building and cooling towers in full view. “I’ve got a granddaughter, she’s coming over today. I babysit for her a lot, and I don’t want to expose her to anything like this.” 

Karen and her husband said they believe their concerns about health and safety risks have fallen upon deaf ears. However, they are optimistic the petition can continue to shed light on the direct impact the restart would have on nearby residents. 

“We’re David going against Goliath, and they’re on a very aggressive timeline,” Bruce said of Holtec. 

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The petitioners will be traveling to Rockville, Maryland, next month for a pre-hearing conference with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, where they will be asking for a public hearing. 

When questioned about the petition, Holtec spokesman Nick Culp told the Washington Examiner that the company feels “very confident that this is a proper direction for us to be going to reauthorize the plant.”

Callie Patteson is an energy and environment reporter for the Washington Examiner.