Palisades Power Plant shut down its reactor Friday, ending five decades of operation and likely ending Michigan officials’ attempt to find another operator for the west Michigan nuclear facility.
The closure was more than a week ahead of schedule; May 31 had been Palisades’ scheduled shutdown date. Owner Entergy Nuclear said operators closed the plant early because of the performance of a control rod drive seal.
“The enduring legacy of Palisades is the thousands of men and women who safely, reliably, and securely operated the plant, helping power Southwest Michigan homes and businesses for more than 50 years,” site Vice President Darrell Corbin said in a press release.
The control rod drive mechanism had a degrading seal, said Prema Chandrathil, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission public affairs officer, who described the early shutdown as “a conservative decision based on equipment performance” and not required by the NRC.
Inspectors observed the shutdown and identified no concerns, Chandrathil said.
The Friday shutdown paves the way for Entergy to transfer Palisades’ operating license and sell the plant to Holtec International, a New Jersey company that will decommission it. The sale is expected July 1, said Joseph Delmar, Holtec senior director of government affairs and communications.
That plan is unpopular with environmental groups and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who unsuccessfully intervened in the companies’ request for a license transfer last year. The parties raised concerns about Holtec’s plans to decommission the facility without spending any money beyond what is already saved in the plant’s trust fund.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in late April announced she would support a company’s attempt to keep Palisades operating using funding from the $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit Program, a fund created through the federal infrastructure law designed to subsidize nuclear plants that are slated for closure because of financial issues.
Keeping the plant open would help Whitmer achieve her goal of developing a carbon-neutral state economy by 2050.
Entergy did not receive any offers from companies interested in purchasing Palisades for continued operation, Entergy spokeswoman Val Gent said.
Entergy Palisades from Consumers Energy in 2007 and sold power purchased to the utility company through a power purchase agreement. Entergy announced in 2017 that it intended to close Palisades when the agreement ended this month. It permanently removed the plant from the grid on Friday, Gent said.
“There are significant technical and commercial hurdles to changing course at this point,” she said. “That said, alongside Holtec, we will work with any qualified party that wants to explore acquiring the plant and obtaining federal funding.”
More:Whitmer backs federal aid to stop closure of Palisades nuclear plant
About 600 people work at the Covert Township facility. About 260 of them will become Holtec employees when the company takes over for the first phase of decommissioning, Delmar said.
About 130 accepted other jobs at Entergy sites in the southern US About 180 will leave, though more than half of those are eligible for retirement, Entergy said in a press release.
Staff reductions won’t start for two to three months, said Patrick Dillon, executive vice president for the National Utility Workers Union of America, which represents about 160 of the plant’s full-time operation and maintenance employees.
Employees still have to move the spent fuel into cooling pools and storage, Dillon said.
Palisades employees have been preparing for the closure since Entergy announced it years ago, he said. Some have left for other opportunities or stayed a few years beyond when they could retire.
“I think the ultimate opinion and attitude (of our members) is a great source of pride for having run the plant safety and productively for 50 years and sadness that it’s closing, but by no means surprise,” he said.
He said he appreciates Whitmer’s effort to keep the plant open, although it would be a big and unlikely task to reverse course when Palisades is headed for decommissioning.
Kevin Camps, radioactive waste specialist for anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear, celebrated the plant’s closure. He said the plant had been headed for meltdown and had the potential to poison the Great Lakes and hurt people who rely on them for drinking water.
Still, the shuttered plant represents “a very significant risk,” Camps said in a release. He said it will be safer to have the fuel in dry cask storage, but moving it there could be dangerous.
Camps criticized Whitmer’s attempt to find a company to keep operating Palisades.
“It is now time to safeguard and secure the high-level radioactive waste stored on-site, to clean up the widespread radioactive contamination of the property before it further threatens Lake Michigan and adjacent groundwater aquifers, and to carry out a just transition for the workforce and host region, into the long-overdue clean, safe, and affordable renewable efficient and energy system of the future,” he said.
A committee of the International Joint Commission released a report last month warning of the gaps in US and Canadian decommissioning policies.
Committee members recommended plant owners be held to stricter long-term environmental monitoring requirements, remove waste from plant sites along Great Lakes shorelines, prohibit the transfer of waste over the Great Lakes and create more opportunities for community involvement.
More:Why shoreline nuclear power plants pose problem for Great Lakes
ckthompson@detroitnews.com
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