The Palisades Nuclear Plant hit a major milestone in its efforts to come back online as early as this fall, as federal regulators determined its restart will have no significant environmental effects.

Early Friday morning, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its final environmental assessment related to Holtec International’s application to restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant in western Michigan. 

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“In the final EA, the NRC staff determined that the environmental impacts of the proposed action would be NOT SIGNIFICANT for each potentially affected environmental resource,” the notice says. 

“In addition, the NRC staff determined that the projected effects of climate change would not alter any of the impact determinations described in the EA,” federal regulators said.

This is the most positive finding the energy company could have received and helps clear a pathway for the plant to make history as the first decommissioned nuclear facility in the United States to come back online.

The Palisades Nuclear Plant was opened on New Year’s Eve in 1971. It remained in operation for just over 50 years before it was shuttered in May 2022 by then-owner Entergy. Holtec purchased the plant one month later and swiftly took steps to bring the facility back online. 

The energy company intended to have the facility operational by October of this year, but it now looks as if the end of 2025 is more likely, as Holtec is still awaiting NRC approval on multiple license amendment requests and necessary repairs.

This includes repairs to more than 1,000 damaged tubes connected to the plant’s steam generators, which turn water heated by the nuclear reactor into steam that is later converted into electricity.

Last year, the NRC released a report that revealed stress corrosion cracking had affected up to 1,400 tubes across two steam generator units. Regulators said at the time that this was partly due to the age of the materials.

Rather than replacing these damaged tubes entirely, Holtec said it plans to repair the materials using a “sleeving” technique, which involves coating the tubes with metal sleeves to cover any damage.

During a January visit to the plant, Palisades chemistry manager Mike Lee told the Washington Examiner that the company expected to make these repairs in June. 

The NRC has yet to decide whether to accept these repairs, but it has said that the technique is used worldwide. 

While the project has received federal and state support, homeowners near the plant previously told the Washington Examiner that they were worried about the environmental health implications of nuclear waste sitting yards away from their homes. 

Bruce Davis and his wife, Karen, retired to a home roughly 400 yards from the facility. Karen grew up visiting the area before the plant was built.

They have long worried about their proximity to the plant, as Karen and two other family members were diagnosed with thyroid cancer within months of each other in the early 2000s.

“I’m scared,” Karen told the Washington Examiner in January. “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.”

HIGH HOPES FOR NUCLEAR PLANT RESTART IN MICHIGAN, WELL BEYOND POWER BOOST

If Holtec receives the final green light from the NRC to reopen the Palisades facility, the nuclear plant is expected to deploy roughly 800 megawatts of carbon-free energy to the local grid.

Holtec plans to sell the energy directly to utility companies Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy. The plant is poised to power around 800,000 homes in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana.