Biden administration bailouts for Palisades reactor restart under threat from Trump?
[“Burning Money” image by Gene Case/Avenging Angels. It graced the cover of The Nation magazine in 2003, accompanying an article by Christian Parenti, about the Bush/Cheney attempted nuclear power relapse at that time. In fact, the $1.52 billion nuclear loan guarantee awarded Holtec by DOE for Palisades’ restart, below, was authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (as amended by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022), signed into law by President George W. Bush in the first place.]
“The Department of Energy made an unprecedented number of loans to ambitious clean energy projects throughout the Biden administration. Now the fate of that financing is uncertain amid President Trump’s ongoing attacks on federal climate and clean energy spending.
Under Biden, the DOE’s Loan Programs Office issued a total of 53 loans and loan guarantees worth over $107 billion. They went to large-scale projects including electric-vehicle factories from Ford and Rivian, the restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan, and facilities that produce sustainable aviation fuel…
…It’s unclear how the Trump administration will treat these loans.
LPO’s new director, John Sneed, is exploring whether it’s legally viable to cancel existing loans made by the office, per reporting from Bloomberg.
About 44% of the LPO financing announced under Biden — nearly $47 billion — is currently in the conditional phase, meaning it’s unfinalized and still subject to negotiations with the federal government. A big question mark hangs over these conditional loan commitments, though even finalized loans could be targeted for clawbacks, experts say…
…Sneed intends to focus the office’s remaining loan authority on technologies like nuclear power and liquefied natural gas, Bloomberg reported, technologies favored by Trump’s newly confirmed Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Wright is the founder and former CEO of fracking firm Liberty Energy and sat on the board of small modular nuclear startup Oklo. Liberty also invested $10 million in next-gen geothermal startup Fervo Energy under Wright’s tenure.“
Canary Media’s article contains a table where Holtec’s Palisades restart loan guarantee was a “[f]inalized commitment.”
Holtec Palisades’ loan guarantee finalization commitment took place in late September 2024.
The Wolverine rural electric co-op in Michigan, and the Hoosier rural electric co-op in Indiana and Illinois, also won a $1.3 billion grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to reimburse them for purchasing Palisades’ electricity under a Power Purchase Agreement. Even though the USDA grant came out of the same law as the DOE loan guarantee above — the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, targeted by Trump for repeal and potential claw back — it was not mentioned in the Canary Media article.
Another $300 million in already approved State of Michigan bailouts for the Palisades reactor restart are also in doubt. This is because the state grants are contingent on federal funds flowing first.
See Beyond Nuclear’s breakdown of the more than $16 billion of bailouts requested by Holtec, for Palisades’ restart, as well as so-called Small Modular Nuclear Reactor design certification, as well as construction and operation, on Michigan’s Lake Michigan shoreline.
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