Fresh Start? Zombie Reactor Crisis: Hasty Restart Leads to Preventable, Critical Refueling Accident at Palisades on the Shores of Lake Michigan!
COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN Oct 9 - Any day now Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant owner Holtec International will be ready to make history. Expected Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval of an “emergency” license amendment request may allow the company to resume a refueling plan that collapsed August 30. Right now no one knows if Palisades will create enough energy to power the equivalent of 800,000 homes or wind up in the ash can of nuclear industry history.
Holtec’s solution to the nightmare that rudely interrupted the plant restart is the energy story of the year. Another failure could turn little Covert Township, Michigan, into an international media and nuclear energy hot spot. This October surprise could also damage Republican attempts to hold on to Congress during the midterms.
CEO Krishna Singh, who lives 1,400 miles away from the scene in a $10 million Jupiter, Florida, home, has good reason to be a little jumpy about this speed bump on his path to becoming a billionaire. Unfairly dubbed the Donald Trump of nuclear energy, this low profile nuclear power speculator rules an empire stretching from Kiev to Camden, New Jersey. As soon as the war ends in Ukraine his company plans to begin work on 20 new nuclear reactors.
Today Holtec is more than two years behind its target to reopen Palisades. Some potential investors are pursuing other opportunities. Top managers have recently being pink slipped or quitting. The company website is looking more and more like what you would expect from an NFL team that just dropped out of the race to the Super Bowl.
Even worse, the primary rationale for reopening the plant with $3.1 billion in federal and state financial support is losing steam. Proposed new nuclear power plants costing about $16 a watt can’t compete with far safer, cheaper and quicker to build renewable solar and wind power coming in around $1 a watt. Across our planet much safer renewables are beginning to trounce slow to build nuclear.
Much has changed since Holtec did a 180 four years ago on its plan to buy and decommission half-century old Palisades on Lake Michigan’s southeastern shore. The NRC's “emergency” license amendment coupled with generous government subsidies, could make the plant profitable. Alternatively this reprieve would give Holtec an opportunity to make another error that would return Palisades to decommissioning.
“This emergency rush to restart Palisades,” suggests Don’t Waste Michigan’s Michael Keegan, “is about the need for greed not the need to protect public safety.”
Creators and Guests
Guest
Alan Bind
During his more than 40 years in the nuclear energy industry engineer Alan Blind was a senior executive and plant manager in Michigan, New York and Canada. In addition to becoming the youngest plant manager of any nuclear plant at the D.C. Cook nuclear reactor in Bridgman, Michigan, he was also vice-president of nuclear for one of the nation’s largest utilities, New York’s Consolidated Edison. Blind was also a senior executive at Canada’s Ontario Power.
