Holtec International has officially closed on a $1.52 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant.
Holtec hosted several partners at the facility Monday to celebrate the news with company CEO and founder Kris Singh saying not only will the community be revitalized with hundreds of good-paying jobs coming back, but Michigan’s energy future will be more secure.
In addition to restarting the existing reactor at Palisades, Singh said they’re bringing a new technology to the facility with two small modular reactors being planned now.
“Michigan is the soon to be home of the world’s first SMRs, which will be at the forefront of our nation’s clean energy transition,” Singh said. “You will be the first SMR plants. If our plan goes forward right, then we will have SMRs here running in 2030.”
Holtec has announced Hyundai will be its contractors for the SMRs all over the world. Hyundai was represented at Monday’s celebration, along with the White House climate advisor, the deputy secretary of the Department of Energy, the deputy secretary of the USDA, and the CEO of Wolverine Power Cooperative, which has signed an energy purchasing agreement with Holtec. Singh said all of these partners had to come together for the Palisades restart to be feasible.
State Representative Joey Andrews, who helped secure $300 million in state funding for the restart, told us nuclear power is being accepted as an effective way to combat climate change.
“The federal government has gotten much more friendly to nuclear power, and so a lot of those hurdles that came from the climate around nuclear for so long are gone now, and this is the future,” Andrews said. “Now they want to bring more capacity online. So I think it just kind of changes the whole landscape.”
Palisades operators held a demonstration of a reactor cooldown in the plant’s control room simulator as part of Monday’s event. They noted hundreds of staff members undergo extensive training in the simulator in preparation for work at Palisades. Right now, about 500 employees are on site, many of them returning to Palisades after 2022’s shutdown.
Singh said the plan is to power up by the end of next year, assuming the NRC gives Holtec approval.