Holtec International is missing key documentation to prove the safety of the metals welded to nozzles inside the Palisades nuclear plant in Southwest Michigan.
Federal regulations require Holtec to keep the certified material test report, or CMTR, to show the characteristics of the metals used in the welding, to show the materials won’t break down under high pressure inside the plant.
“We do not seem to … be able to find the CMTRs data that we need to back up the post-weld heat treatment we have applied to three welds,” said Stephen Callis, a senior licensing engineer who represented Holtec at a meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday.
Callis said people at Holtec are still looking to find the documentation, but if it can’t be found, the company plans to ask the NRC for relief from having to meet the requirement.
The details come months after the date Holtec originally planned to resume generating power at Palisades. The nuclear energy plant went into decommissioning in 2022. Holtec originally bought the plant to oversee the decommissioning, but leaders decided instead to try to reopen the aging plant. If they succeed, Palisades would become the first decommissioned nuclear plant to reopen in the U.S.
It's a complicated, unprecedented effort, which has come with setbacks. Last year, Holtec discovered that thousands of tubes in the plant's massive steam generator system had cracks. In October, a worker fell into a pool of water inside the reactor cavity.
The NRC granted initial approval to Holtec last year to return the plant to operating status, but with repairs and regulatory requests stacking up, workers have not been able to load fuel into the reactor at Palisades.
Critics of the restart have seized on the welding issues as a sign of the many problems facing the restart. Critics have said Holtec is trying to get away with repairs on important components that should be replaced instead.
They want the NRC to reject any upcoming request to set aside the requirement for CMTRs in the welding of the three components discussed at Monday’s meeting. Callus said the company would perform the tests instead on comparable materials of the same age from other parts of the plant, or from other nuclear plants.
“I don’t know hardly where to begin,” said Kevin Kamps, of Kalamazoo, a frequent critic of Palisades, who works with the groups Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan. “You’re trying to recreate evidence that you apparently have lost, incredibly.”
NRC representatives at the meeting said they would not approve any plans from Holtec that didn’t show the welding work was safe.
“Looking at overall, the overall approach and what was done, and verifying that we have no impact is basically what we’re looking for here at this point,” said Jay Collins, of the NRC. “But the actual testing that they’re going to do to verify this through analysis of their own materials as well as looking for other materials that might be available, we’re going to want in-depth information on.”
