Nuclear Restart Hides in Plain Sight
Documents reveal Holtec applied for federal bailouts weeks before the public announcement, citing a 2022 leak as the catalyst for new small modular reactor plans.
By Rosa Fuentes ·
The timeline for the Palisades Nuclear Plant restart appears less like a sudden policy shift and more like a pre-planned maneuver that unfolded over months of secrecy. According to a review of documents by Kevin Kamps, former director of Don't Waste Michigan, Holtec International moved quickly to secure ownership and funding long before officials told the public they were saving the plant.
Krishna Singh, the founder and CEO of Holtec, first discussed building small modular reactors at Palisades in an interview with the trade publication Exchange Monitor in early to mid-April 2022. This was weeks before Governor Gretl Whitmer floated the idea of a restart rather than a decommissioning on April 20, 2022. The reactor faced a critical failure in May 2022 when a seal leak in the control rod drive mechanism forced Entergy to shut it down on May 20. This incident was the latest in a 50-year history of leaks described as the worst operating experience in the industry.
Entergy removed all fuel from the core on June 10, 2022. Just three days later, on June 13, the company certified the permanent shutdown, a document the Nuclear Regulatory Commission docketed the same day. Despite an environmental coalition and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel intervening against Holtec's takeover since February 2021, the NRC allowed Holtec to take ownership of Palisades and Big Rock Point on June 28, 2022. The NRC did not officially reject the coalition's intervention until around July 15, 2022.
Holtec's press release on June 28, 2022, proposed building one or more small modular reactors at Big Rock Point. However, internal documents show a more aggressive strategy. On July 5, 2022, Holtec secretly wrote to the Department of Energy, applying for billions of dollars in bailouts to restart Palisades and add new small modular reactor units. The company publicly announced the restart scheme only on September 9, 2022, with Governor Whitmer.
Kamps obtained the July 2022 Holtec document through a Freedom of Information Act request to the State of Michigan. He released the file in October 2023, noting that Holtec had removed its celebratory press release from its website without explanation. The environmental group has resisted the restart and the planned construction of two SMR-340 units at Palisades, along with additional units at Big Rock Point, since April 2022.
The dispute has spanned nearly four years, with resistance efforts documented from April 2022 through February 2026, and continuing through the present. The timeline highlights a gap between the private application for federal funds and the public unveiling of the project.
