Holtec gets $100M federal loan for Palisades nuclear plant restart
COVERT, Mich. — Holtec has received its fourth loan disbursement to help fund the restart of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced Friday.
$100,451,904 of the up to $1.52 billion loan guarantee was given to Holtec, according to DOE, which brings the installment total to $251,878,038 since September of 2024.
The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant is slated to be the country’s first restart of a commercial nuclear reactor that ceased operations, pending U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approvals.
In a post on X, DOE in part wrote:
Today’s announcement highlights the Energy Department’s leading role in advancing President Trump’s Executive Order 14302, ‘Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base,’ through funding the restart of nuclear plants. DOE remains committed to fulfill this mission in order to maximize the speed and scale of nuclear capacity in the United States, ensuring American’s have access to reliable, abundant, and affordable energy.
The last disbursement was an installment of $46,709,358 made in April, which followed a $56,787,300 payment made in March.
Talks of reopening the plant took place a month before the plant shut down on May 20, 2022.
On April 20, 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer sent a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm expressing interest in restarting the plant and keeping it operational until 2031.
Once operational, Palisades is expected to bring in about 1,000 jobs during the facility’s regularly scheduled refueling and maintenance periods every 18 months, according to DOE.
The plant is also anticipated to retain another 600 positions, many of which were filled by workers who have been at Palisades for more than two decades.
However, its reopening has caused some to voice concerns over the possible impacts it could have on the environment.
The NRC has held several meetings over the matter since the project’s announcement.
Radioactive waste specialist with Beyond Nuclear, Kevin Kamps, called the plan a “catastrophic disaster” at one of these meetings in November of 2024.
He believes reopening the plant will only cause cancer —among other diseases— as well as ruin crops and taint clean drinking water.
“Farm crops are already being exposed to some level of radioactivity, the drinking water is already being exposed to some level of radioactivity,” Kamp previously told News Channel 3. “This is a drinking water supply for not only South Haven and other area communities here.”
Despite some environmental concerns, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said that the reactivation of the Palisades plant is something that will help Michigan reach its “net-zero” goal of carbon-free electricity by 2050.
“Restarting Palisades is critical to that [the future of America’s clean energy], because not only is nuclear our single largest source of carbon-free electricity, it’s one of our single largest sources of electricity, period,” Granholm said in March. “By our estimates, to reach our net-zero goals by 2050, we need to triple at least our nuclear energy supply. So this, this is a big win for America, a big win for the nation.”
The State of Michigan directed $150 million in funding to support reopening the decades-old nuclear power plant within its record-breaking $82 billion budget in June 2023.
If plans remain on track, the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant is expected to officially open by the end of 2025.