Coalition Intervenes against BAND-AID Steam Generator Fixes at Palisades “Zombie” Reactor
[Yard sign design by Michigan Safe Energy Future-Kalamazoo Chapter and Shut Down Palisades Campaign; photo by Kevin Kamps]
| NEWS FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR For immediate release Contact: Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist, Beyond Nuclear, Kalamazoo, Michigan, (240) 462-3216, [email protected] |
Environmental Coalition Legally Intervenes against BAND-AID Fixes at Palisades Atomic Reactor |
Holtec’s Self-Inflicted Steam Generator Tube Degradation Risks Catastrophic Reactor Core Meltdown |
| COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN and WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 17, 2025–By the June 16 deadline, a coalition of five environmental organizations filed a petition to intervene and request for hearing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) against Holtec’s unprecedented scheme to restart the permanently closed Palisades atomic reactor in Covert Twp., near South Haven, on the Lake Michigan shoreline. The focus of this legal intervention is Holtec’s proposal to implement “sleeving” on a very large number of severely degraded, exceedingly thin tubes in the twin steam generators, while plugging many others too degraded to sleeve. To compensate for the reduced flow through the steam generators, Holtec also proposes to unplug more than 600 tubes that were pre-emptively plugged 35 years ago, as a safety precaution against damaging vibrations long associated with Palisades’ steam generator design, even when they were brand new.
The coalition petition/request, with accompanying expert witness report, was filed as a non-public document, due to the potential for SUNSI (Sensitive, Unclassified, Nonsafeguards Information) content. Holtec and its steam generator tube repair contractor Framatome will review the filing before the release of the public version of the coalition filings. This process could take up to two weeks. The coalition will publicly release its filings as soon as possible. The coalition’s expert witness, nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, with more than 50 years of relevant experience, said: “For two years (2022-2024) Holtec knowingly allowed a toxic soup of chemicals to eat away at the steel inside the Palisades steam generators. Then in August 2024, Holtec looked inside the steam generators and found gross steam generator tube failures. Fifty times more tubes failed while Holtec was not running the plant than in the 34 prior years when Palisades was operating.” Gundersen continued: “Now Holtec seeks the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval to restart the damaged steam generators, damage that Holtec created and damage that was avoidable if Holtec was an experienced nuclear plant operator.” Gundersen concluded: “It’s not a question of IF the Palisades steam generators will fail. They will. It’s a question of how much radiation they will release when they fail. The NRC should do its job and force Holtec to replace the old steam generators with a modern design before Palisades is restarted.” Holtec took over Palisades from Entergy on June 28, 2022. Instead of decommissioning it, as promised, Holtec instead applied to the U.S. Department of Energy a week later, requesting many billions of dollars in bailouts, in order to restart the permanently closed reactor, as well as to build two new reactors on the tiny, 432-acre Palisades site. Holtec began working with NRC in late 2022/early 2023 to cobble together an ad hoc, make it up as you go “regulatory pathway to restart” for Palisades, as no such NRC regulations exist for the unprecedented scheme. NRC has described it as a “First of a Kind (FOAK) Effort to Restart a Shuttered Nuclear Plant.” Holltec has touted it as a model to be emulated across the U.S. and around the world. Critics have dubbed it a “zombie reactor restart” risking a Chornobyl- or Fukushima-scale radioactive catastrophe, putting the Great Lakes at existential risk. In late August, 2024, Holtec inspected Palisades’ steam generator tubes. In early September, 2024, Holtec communicated the results of its inspection to the NRC. NRC was so alarmed, it issued a rare Preliminary Notification of Occurrence. Some weeks later, NRC revealed more details on the vast extent of the steam generator tube degradation. On January 14, 2025, during a technical meeting with Holtec, watchdogged and audio recorded by environmentalists and concerned local residents, an NRC staffer revealed that Holtec had neglected safety-critical steam generator tube wet layup, to safeguard it against further degradation. This neglect by Holtec, which has never operated a reactor, went on for nearly two long years (June 28, 2022 to May, 2024). Holtec applied to NRC 60 days ago for a steam generator tube repair License Amendment Request, making June 16 the environmental coalition’s deadline to intervene. Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 35 miles downwind of Palisades, said: “A cascading failure of enough steam generator tubes could lead to a full-scale reactor core meltdown. NRC’s own 1982 report has calculated that a reactor meltdown at Palisades would cause a thousand acute radiation poisoning deaths, 7,000 radiation injuries, and 10,000 latent cancer fatalities, as well as $52.6 billion in property damage. Adjusting for inflation alone to reflect today’s dollar figure values, that would surmount $168 billion in property damage. And the population has increased around Palisades in the past 43 years, meaning casualties would now be correspondingly worse, as more people live in harm’s way downwind, downstream, up the food chain, and down the generations.” “Holtec and NRC have made us all non-consenting nuclear guinea pigs for their all too real world atomic reactor experiments on the Lake Michigan beach,” Kamps concluded. Palisades’ original owner/operator, Consumers Energy, admitted to the Michigan Public Service Commission in spring 2006 that the steam generators needed replacement. However, from 2007 to 2022, the new owner/operator, Entergy did not do so, because NRC did not require it. Holtec gave lip service to replacing the steam generators on July 5, 2022, at a cost of $510 million — the single largest line item on Holtec’s Palisades restart costs chart. But by spring, 2024, Holtec Palisades’ spokesman Nick Culp claimed the degraded steam generators were good to go for decades of operations to come. Holtec’s August, 2024 inspection showed that was dangerously false. The intervening environmental coalition includes Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, Michigan Safe Energy Future, Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago, and Three Mile Island Alert of Pennsylvania. Attorneys Terry Lodge in Toledo, Ohio, and Wally Taylor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, serve as the coalition’s legal counsel. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, and climate scientist Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University, serve as the coalition’s expert witnesses. This intervention follows previous coalition interventions, dating back to December, 2023, against four prior License Amendment Requests, a License Transfer Request, and a wide-ranging Exemption Request, Holtec has submitted to NRC in order to restart Palisades. The coalition has also recently objected to NRC’s related Environmental Assessment/Finding of No Significant Impact with numerous contentions. Once the environmental coalition has exhausted all administrative remedies at NRC, it will appeal to the federal courts. “All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, will court disaster if they try to run Palisades again. Approval of Palisades’ restart is tantamount to criminal negligence,” said Alice Hirt of Holland, Michigan, an intervenor on behalf of Don’t Waste Michigan, a statewide, grassroots nuclear watch-dog group for the past four decades. Beyond Nuclear has posted a one-stop-shop at its website, of every single one of its web posts since April, 2022 regarding Palisades’ reactor restart, as well as “Small Modular Reactor” new builds, both at Palisades, and at its sibling atomic reactor site, Big Rock Point near Charlevoix, Michigan, also on the Lake Michigan shore, around 250 miles north of Palisades. April, 2022 was when Holtec CEO Krishna Singh first floated “Small Modular Reactor” construction and operation at Palisades, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer first floated restarting the closed, 60-year old reactor (Palisades was designed in the mid-1960s; ground was broken in 1967; very troubled operations began in 1971, and continued until May 20, 2022, when Entergy closed Palisades, supposedly for good). ### |
| Beyond Nuclear is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization. Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear. Beyond Nuclear: 7304 Carroll Avenue, #182, Takoma Park, MD 20912. [email protected]. www.beyondnuclear.org. |
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