A coalition of environmental groups are objecting to a proposed decision from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over spending at a shuttered Michigan plant.
The Palisades nuclear plant stopped operating in 2022. Its owner, Holtec International, has been spending millions from a decommissioning fund.
But environmental groups point out Holtec no longer plans to decommission the plant.
“It’s a real shell game that’s been going on,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “And it’s the public’s money. People paid for that on their electric bill over decades to clean up the Palisades site.”
Operating nuclear power plants in the U.S. are required to create decommissioning funds to cover the cost of safely shutting down the plant and storing spent nuclear fuel when the plant can no longer operate.
There are regulations about how money from the fund can be spent. Palisades originally went into decommissioning in 2022, and Holtec has said it’s spent more than $100 million from the decommissioning trust fund.
But environmental groups including Beyond Nuclear have questioned ongoing spending from the fund, as Holtec shifted its plans toward reopening Palisades.
If Holtec secures regulatory approval, Palisades will become the first nuclear reactor in the nation to go back into operation after being put into decommissioning.
The NRC has not given final approval to the plan. But Holtec has said it’s hoping to win that approval and resume power generation at Palisades by the end of this year.
Kamps said he and other groups will continue to push back as long as they can.
“But there is so much at stake,” Kamps said. “We’re trying to defend the Great Lakes against a really crooked company that’s doing a big nuclear experiment on the beach at Lake Michigan.”
The NRC said it looked into Holtec’s spending from the decommissioning trust fund. Last year, the NRC said out of $143 million spent from the fund, it found $57,000 that had been spent improperly.
“We take any violation very seriously and have already taken corrective actions to ensure the amount was restored to the trust fund, with interest, and that this issue does not recur,” a Holtec spokesperson said at the time.
But the coalition of environmental groups, which includes Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan and Safe Energy Future, petitioned the NRC again to look deeper into additional spending from the decommissioning trust fund, or DTF, and hold a hearing.
Last week, the NRC posted a draft decision denying the petition for a hearing. The agency said it looked into the spending further, and found some mistakes, but those mistakes were not connected to the restart activities going on at Palisades — in other words, it found Holtec was not spending decommissioning money to restart the plant.
“The sole unresolved item from the staff’s inspections related to misuse of the DTF during the relevant timeframe does not relate to restart-specific activities,” wrote Jeremy Groom, deputy director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. “Therefore, based on the NRC’s continuous oversight of Holtec’s use of the Palisades’ DTF, no further action is necessary at this time to address the petitioner’s concern.”
The coalition of environmental groups responded to that draft decision with a letter calling the NRC’s inspection and enforcement process “seriously inadequate.”
