Environmentalists Opposed to Palisades Atomic Reactor Restart - Appeal
Michael J Keegan
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NEWS FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR Michael Keegan, chair, Don’t Waste Michigan, Monroe, MI, mkee...@comcast.net Terry Lodge, attorney, Toledo, OH, tjlo...@yahoo.com Wallace Taylor, attorney, Cedar Rapids, IA, wtayl...@aol.com Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer/expert witness, (802) 238-4452 |
| Environmentalists Opposed to Palisades Atomic Reactor Restart Appeal Yet Again to NRC Commissioners |
| Coalition challenges agency licensing board approval of steam generator tube repair plan, alleges dangerous inadequacies |
| COVERT TWP., MI and WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPTEMBER 3, 2025--Environmental groups have appealed to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioners yet again, this time regarding an NRC Atomic Safety (sic) and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP) ruling against the coalition’s challenge opposing Holtec’s plan to merely repair severely degraded steam generator tubes, rather than replace the steam generators entirely. The appeal was filed by yesterday’s deadline. The coalition alleges Holtec’s plan to merely sleeve 80% of a very large number -- reportedly around 3,000 individual tubes, as revealed by NRC staff testimony at a meeting of the agency's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards this morning -- of damaged tubes fails the test of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, which requires “reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public health and safety.” Holtec has also proposed to plug 20% of damaged tubes too far gone to sleeve, while also unplugging more than 600 tubes, plugged 35 years ago as a precaution against damaging vibrations, for which Palisades' early 1970s era steam generator design is infamous. The coalition’s expert witness, nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, with more than a half-century of relevant experience, has warned a cascading failure of a large enough number of tubes can result in a reactor core meltdown, and consequent release into the environment of catastrophic amounts of hazardous ionizing radioactivity. Gundersen has testified in multiple NRC licensing proceedings related to the Palisades restart that he knows of no steam generators as degraded as Palisades that have not been entirely replaced with brand new ones. He long warned that failure to implement wet layup on the steam generators would result in dangerous degradation. And yet Holtec did just that, from 2022 to 2024, allowing corrosive chemicals in the already degraded steam generators to further crack a very large number of the exceedingly thin-walled (as thin as a dime) tubes. Gundersen chalked it up to a “rookie error,” by a company that has never operated, repaired, constructed, or restarted a reactor. The environmental coalition has clamored against the unprecedented restart of a closed reactor, pointing out it is unneeded, exorbitantly expensive for the public, and extremely high risk for health, safety, security, and the environment. Holtec applied for a License Amendment Request (LAR) to sleeve damaged tubes earlier this year, after August 2024 inspections revealed an unexpected, alarming number of cracked tubes. NRC quickly issued a rare Preliminary Notification of Occurence in September 2024, followed the next month by a summary report revealing more disturbing details. During a January 14, 2025 technical meeting between Holtec and NRC, watchdogged by the environmental coalition, an NRC staffer acknowledged that Holtec had neglected wet layup on the steam generators from June 2022, to May 2024. Wet layup is the immersion of the steam generators in ultra-pure water, with anti-corrosion chemicals like ultra-toxic hydrazine added in. The environmental coalition petitioned to intervene, and requested a hearing, by the June 16, 2025 deadline. On July 18, 2025, the coalition replied to Holtec and NRC attacks upon its intervention petition and hearing request. By July 21, 2025, the coalition immediately protested NRC complicity with the breaking revelation that Holtec had simply barged ahead with the sleeving repairs, while the ASLBP had not yet even ruled on the matter, let alone the NRC Commissioners. By July 29, 2025, the environmentalists formalized their objection to the NRC-Holtec steam generator tube rushed repair collusion, by filing an emergency enforcement petition. This particular appeal to the NRC Commissioners joins many others. The environmental coalition has challenged multiple previous License Amendments Requests related to Holtec's Palisades restart scheme, as well as an Exemption Request and License Transfer Request. The coalition has also challenged NRC's environmental review of the scheme. The ASLBP has ruled against every single one of the coalition's intervention petitions and hearing requests. The coalition has appealed each and every ASLBP rejection to the NRC Commissioners. The NRC Commissioners recently announced they would rule on all the appeals at the same time. They have not done so yet. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, the environmental coalition’s expert witness on nuclear safety issues, such as the dangerously degraded steam generators, stated:
“Since the very beginning, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been in a rush to get Palisades restarted. Why? The lights have stayed on in Michigan since Palisades was closed in 2022 and there is no need for the power. Indeed back in 2022 electricity from Palisades was too expensive and it was subsidized. That's why it closed! Again it appears that after restart the power will be further subsidized. Why does Michigan need expensive electricity? And today, Palisades is less safe than it was when it was closed in 2022! The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s attitude seems to be ‘Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!’" Coalition attorney Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio stated: “The historical record on Palisades suggests that Framatome, the sleeving contractor, made the sleeving plans based on damage assessments that do not appear to account for the lack of timely wet layup and drainage of corrosive water from the primary and secondary cooling loops. The collusion between Holtec, which has undertaken sleeving without preliminary or final license amendment approval, and the NRC Staff, which is inspecting this construction but obviously not enforcing NRC regulations at this point, exemplifies confirmation bias and reinforces concerns that there may be danger inherent in the Palisades restart.” Coalition attorney Wally Taylor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa added: “Complainants are not merely insisting on doing things by the book; they are attempting to ensure that each step on this unprecedented path is scientifically warranted and consonant with the public health and safety obligations inscribed in the Atomic Energy Act. NRC and Holtec see the pathway to restart as a comparatively simple reversal of the shutdown decision. Complainants maintain that there would inevitably be changed circumstances in the simple passage of more than three years since shutdown, even if the stabilization of equipment had been done correctly — but that there may be ominous consequences from the flawed efforts by Holtec following shutdown.” Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, stated: “A year after the beginning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, the Japanese Parliament published the first independent investigation in its post-World War Two history. It concluded that the root cause of the nuclear catastrophe, the reason the three reactors that melted down were so very vulnerable to the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed them, was collusion, between the safety regulatory agency, the company, and government officials. Frighteningly, there is just such potentially catastrophic collusion in spades at Palisades.” Michael Keegan, chair of Don’t Waste Michigan in Monroe, Michigan, stated: “Palisades’ original owner, Consumers Energy, admitted to the Michigan Public Service Commission in 2006 that the reactor’s steam generators needed to be entirely replaced. Several other $100 million plus components needed replacement, and so Consumers Energy decided to sell the plant. Entergy purchased Palisades and did not replace any of those big ticket items from 2007 to 2022, because NRC did not require it. Now Holtec, which gave lip service to replacing the steam generators in 2022, is looking to avoid that $510 million expense, by making unsafe, inadequate band-aid fixes on degraded tubes. Holtec, playing with ‘other people’s money’ and without financial skin in the game, intends to roll the dice and risk the entire Great Lakes Basin.” The environmental coalition opposing Holtec’s Palisades reactor restart scheme includes: Beyond Nuclear; Don’t Waste Michigan; Michigan Safe Energy Future; Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago; and Three Mile Island Alert of Pennsylvania. For more information, see Beyond Nuclear’s “Newest Nuke Nightmares at Palisades, 2022 to Present” — a one-stop-shop of web posts dating back to April 2022, when Holtec CEO Krishna Singh first floated “Small Modular Reactor” construction and operation at Palisades, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer first floated restarting the closed-for-good reactor. |
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Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.