Holtec’s Palisades SMR-300s: Reference reactors for global buildout

[Yard sign design by Michigan Safe Energy Future-Kalamazoo Chapter, and Shut Down Palisades Campaign; photo by Kevin Kamps.]

As reported by Power Engineering, Holtec has announced development of a manufacturing and training headquarters in Utah, for deployment of more than a dozen “Small Modular Reactors” (SMRs), mostly in Utah and Wyoming, with testing at Idaho National Lab.

The article reports Holtec’s two, not small, 300 Megawatt-electric (MW-e) reactors at Palisades in Michigan “will serve as the reference plant for the Mountain West buildout, as well as Holtec’s SMR deployment programs in the United Kingdom, India, Ukraine and over a dozen other countries.”

Holtec and the Ukrainian government have announced plans for 20 SMRs in that war-torn country.

The Palisades SMRs would be built immediately adjacent to a state park campground, as well as the 800 MW-e, 60-year old, closed zombie reactor, which Holtec schemes to restart. The Palisades zombie reactor restart is unprecedented, unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely high risk.

Co-locating the breakdown phase zombie reactor, and the break-in phase SMR-300 new builds, on the tiny, 432-acre Palisades site, would represent both extremes of the risk spectrum. Domino-effect meltdowns, as at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan in March 2011, would also be possible.

Beyond Nuclear has co-led resistance at Palisades, since the zombie reactor restart, and SMR new build, nightmare schemes were first floated there in April 2022.