Holtec Receives Latest Disbursement in $1.5B Loan Guarantee to Reopen Palisades Nuclear Plant
The company working to restart the retired Palisades Nuclear Station along the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan has received another $83.2 million disbursed from its $1.52 billion federal loan guarantee to fund the recommissioning of the plant after three-plus years of closure.
This is the fifth U.S. Department of Energy disbursement to Holtec International, the firm which handled decommissioning and caretaker duties and is now working to restart the Palisades plant in Van Buren County, Michigan.
Palisades is one of several retired nuclear plants nationwide which are moving toward possible restart to bolster U.S. power generation capacity in the era of rising data center load.
The original $1.52 billion loan guarantee was finalized in late 2024 under the Biden-era Energy Department. This time around, the Trump Administration’s DOE is reaffirming its commitment to expand nuclear capacity across the U.S.
“The Department of Energy is working in tandem with our regulatory partners to accelerate the reopening of the Palisades Nuclear Plant and unleash a true American nuclear renaissance,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. “These efforts will help reinvigorate our nuclear industrial base, deliver lower energy costs for millions of Americans and strengthen our nation’s energy security.”
Palisades Nuclear Station was built in the late 1960s to early 1970s and commissioned in 1974. It has one pressurized water reactor and connected turbine generator capable of close to 725 MW in generation capacity. The plant has gone through several owners, including CMS Energy and Entergy, before being sold to Holtec and closed in 2022.
Holtec has also received about $300 million in state of Michigan funding to help in the restart. To date, the federal disbursement has totaled $335 million.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month approved Holtec’s request to return Palisades to an operating license. More than 600 workers are employed on the restart project hoping to complete in the next year.
“This milestone is a testament to the expertise and determination of Holtec’s licensing team, whose work made this historic approval possible. It also reflects the dedication of the Palisades team working every day to safely return the plant to service, along with the strong support we’ve received from our corporate organization and peers across the nuclear industry,” read a Holtec company statement on the NRC approval.
Holtec also hopes to locate future small modular reactors alongside the Palisades plant. Nuclear power generation does not emit greenhouse gases and offers baseload-level power to bolster a grid facing an anticipated 125 GW in load growth around new artificial intelligence and data center capacity.
Constellation is also working to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania thanks to a long-term power purchase agreement with Microsoft.
Google, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft also has signed up to support development of nuclear fusion technologies such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Thea Energy.
Palisades will be the first U.S. nuclear power plant to restart operations after retirement if Holtec meets its timetable.
About the Author
Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor
Managing Editor
For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].
Rod Walton has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World.
EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.