The Hill publishes Beyond Nuclear op-ed

[“Burning Money” image by Gene Case/Avenging Angels.]

An op-ed authored by Beyond Nuclear’s radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps, has been published in The Hill.

Entitled “New nuclear push brings old dangers back — and bigger than ever,” the op-ed focuses on Holtec’s schemes at Palisades in Michigan as a microcosm of the company’s, and the rest of the nuclear power industry’s, current fever dream.

Holtec perpetrated a big lie, a con job, and a bait and switch trick to acquire Palisades in the first place, promising decommissioning of the reactor, closed for good by Entergy on May 20, 2022. But even a month earlier, Holtec CEO Krishna Singh, and Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, had floated trial balloons to instead re-nuclearize the site, with so-called “Small Modular Reactor” (SMR) new builds, as well as an unprecedented restart of the shutdown, 60-year old (designed in the mid-1960s) “zombie” reactor.

Knowing that Holtec could not be trusted, Beyond Nuclear and its environmental allies resisted Holtec’s Palisades takeover, even “just” for decommissioning purposes only, beginning in late 2020. Boy, have we been proven right!

Beyond Nuclear has posted a one-stop-shop about our resistance to these latest nuclear nightmares at Palisades, dating back to April 2022.

Beginning secretly just a week after the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved Holtec’s takeover of Palisades, despite our resistance, Holtec has held up its schemes at Palisades as a global model. In October 2023, Beyond Nuclear broke the story of Holtec’s scheme to build and operate so-called SMRs at all of its decommissioning nuclear power plant sites.

Holtec has now gone public with its plans to build “SMRs” at all sites it possesses, if it can get away with.

The company has also proposed restarting the Indian Point 2 and 3 reactors near New York City. This would be a flagrant case of waste, fraud, and abuse, as Holtec seeks $10 billion in public bailouts, in order to rebuild the two reactors, which it has already partially demolished.

Holtec’s Palisades “zombie reactor” restart precedent in Michigan has also led to copycat restart efforts by Constellation at Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania, as well as by NextEra at Duane Arnold in Iowa.

In addition to restarted closed reactors at Palisades in Michigan, and Indian Point in New York, and “SMR” new builds on those sites, Holtec has proposed “SMR” new builds at: Oyster Creek, NJ; Pilgrim, MA; across the U.S.; and around the world, including in the UK, Ukraine, and India, as well as many other countries overseas.