Palisades owners pitch adding two small modular reactors
COVERT TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — The company that owns the Palisades power plant in Van Buren County is proposing the addition of two small nuclear reactors at the site as it also plans to bring the original plant back online.
Holtec International says the new reactors would double the amount of electricity that could be produced at Palisades but critics are concerned about safety and the nuclear waste.
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If Holtec’s proposal becomes reality, it would be the first time the company’s modular reactor design would be used.
“Small modular reactors are the next stage of nuclear technology here in the United States and around the world, Nick Culp, the senior manager of government affairs and communications with Holtec, said. “So our design is a small pressurized water reactor similar to what operates at many plants in the United States today but it is of a simplified and smaller version and also modular, which means that it’s factory-built and deployable to virtually anywhere in the world.”
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Kevin Kamps with Beyond Nuclear, an advocacy group opposed to the plan, pointed out that Holtec has never operated a nuclear power plant and was hired to decommission the plant, not restart it.
“I call it radioactive Russian roulette on the Lake Michigan shoreline,” Kamps said. “All of the high-level radioactive waste ever generated at Palisades since 1971 is still on site. About two thirds of it is in the indoor wet storage pool, which is not good; it is packed to the gills. A storage pool fire could take out a large section of the United States.”
The group said the small reactors will produce more waste than the existing reactor and it is also concerned about the other way the nuclear waste is stored.
“There’s the dry cask storage, which has been very problematic. This is the outdoor silos of concrete and steel that contain the overflow storage for high-level waste on the beach of Lake Michigan, at most 150 yards from the water,” Kamps said.
The plant south of South Haven stopped producing electricity in May of last year. The state has approved $150 million for its restart and Holtec is working to secure federal loans.
“If we’re going to hit in a very serious way any climate targets, you need nuclear base load generation as part of that mix to make sure that we have around-the-clock energy for our households and companies,” Culp said.
Aditi Verma, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering with the University of Michigan, said successfully restarting the refurbished plant will depend on its condition, the requirements from federal regulators and future electricity costs.
“There are certainly plants that have operated for up to 60 years or even more and there are others that are licensed for up to 80 years,” Verma said.
She said the amount of additional waste produced using the small reactors would be small compared with waste produced from other forms of electricity.
Companies are designing small reactors because they are less expensive to build, simpler systems, can be more easily placed in an areas with transmission lines and can be built in a factory setting. Large reactors are more economically efficient overtime.
“There are just very different pros and cons associated with the two kinds of systems,” Verma said.
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Holtec is awaiting approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to move forward and says it has the expertise to run the plant.
“The U.S. nuclear industry is one of the most heavily regulated and safest industries in the country, so the spent material that is produced through the nuclear fission process is safely stored here on site. Holtec International, our company, is actually the domestic and global leader in dry cask storage,” Culp said.
The company says it expects the existing reactor to be refurbished by the end of 2025 and to start building the small reactors by 2030.
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