Nuclear

Michigan budget includes $150 million aimed at reopening Palisades nuclear plant

The fate of the shuttered plant still hinges on support from the federal government.

The newly-passed Michigan budget allocates $150 million toward reopening the Palisades nuclear plant, which is currently being decommissioned.

Holtec International bought the plant in 2022 and has applied for federal dollars to help get the plant running again. It hopes to tap a $6 billion fund at the Department of Energy earmarked to preserve the U.S. nuclear reactor fleet and associated jobs.

Federal energy officials are reviewing the $1 billion grant application, expected to be the primary investment in the nuclear plant restart. Holtec officials have been quoted as saying it would take hundreds of millions of dollars for facility renovations and to buy nuclear fuel.

In May a bipartisan group of Michigan lawmakers that make up a newly-formed nuclear energy caucus wrote a letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer expressing “full support” for the re-opening of Palisades nuclear plant.

Whitmer herself has supported reopening Palisades, a carbon-free baseload generating source as more solar and wind power infrastructure is built out.

But activists who long criticized Palisades as poorly maintained and dangerous don’t want it resurrected.

43 organizations representing Indigenous, climate, environmental, Great Lakes and water protection, social and racial justice and other interests recently wrote a letter to all Michigan state legislators, urging them to reject state funding aimed at reopening the plant.

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