ZOMBIE NUKE?! Legal resistance; bailouts in doubt

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

Beyond Nuclear and our allies have resisted the leading closed-reactor-restart, at Holtec’s Palisades in Michigan, for nearly three years.

Our environmental coalition has intervened against it, and will have a “day in court” at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, beginning at 11:00 am Eastern Time.

A listen-only call-in number has been provided for members of the public, and news media, to listen in on the oral argument pre-hearings:

dial (301) 576-2978, and then enter passcode 101 394 753#.

Meanwhile, more than $3 billion in federal and state bailouts, already announced for the Palisades restart, are now in doubt, since Trump has threatened to repeal and reverse them.

Reportedly, Holtec paid a $5 million fine to avoid criminal indictment for fraud, in order to avoid losing out on the $3.12 billion (with a B), and still counting, federal and State of Michigan Palisades bailouts, a thousand-fold return on investment, at taxpayer expense, as well as public risk.

Restarts at Duane Arnold and Three Mile Island are also being resisted, as are ongoing operations at Diablo Canyon, CA (Unit 1 was supposed to have closed in 2024, and Unit 2 this year). So too at Summer Units 2 & 3 in South Carolina (both pre-operational reactors were abandoned midway through construction, amidst ongoing fraud; the project bankrupted Westinghouse, nearly bankrupted Toshiba, led to multiple prison sentences for executives involved, and led to the corporate death of one of the utility companies involved). These, listed above, are the zombie reactors being resisted across the U.S. (Bellefonte in Alabama had been a pre-operational zombie reactor, for decades on end, but hopefully it really is dead, for good, by now?!)