A meeting of the Atomic Safety Licensing Board will be held Wednesday to review Holtec International’s plans to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant in Van Buren County.
The meeting will be a chance for Holtec, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and opponents of the plan to address an administrative law panel to lay out their positions. Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps tells us his group and a coalition of four others will have a chance to voice their concerns to the ASLB during a courtroom-like proceeding.
“We have two lawyers, one’s from Toledo and one’s from Iowa, and they’ve been doing this for a long time, so we’re very confident that our views will get across to this licensing board,” Kamps said. “And another big shoe that has dropped recently in the last week or two is this Finding of No Significant Impact on the environmental assessment.”
Kamps says his group strongly disagrees with that Finding of No Significant Impact. They’ll explain why to the administrative law panel Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Kamps says recent developments at the federal level are casting some doubt on the possibility of restarting Palisades.
“There are huge questions circling now because Trump has said that he would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021. This is the gravy train that Holtec has been seeking money from.”
Of course, Kamps says President Trump could just exempt nuclear projects from losing any funding.
Wednesday’s meeting will be virtual due to a snowstorm expected in Washington, D.C. It starts at 11 a.m. Kamps expects it’ll take a couple of hours. He predicts the opposition coalition will not sway the Atomic Safety Licensing Board, but tells us the group will take the matter to federal court next.