Crews are pushing to get the much-prized restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in western Michigan by the end of March, but owner-developer Holtec International has pushed back the schedule possibly to the end of March, with officials citing needed component upgrades.
The announced reactivation of the 800MW plant, which was set for December as the first in the US, has been pushed by the Trump administration to expand operational domestic nuclear power to boost US energy needs driven by data center development coupled with high demand for artificial intelligence. Palisades was completed in 1971 and has been decommissioned since 2022.
The company had originally planned to restart last October, but confirmed in press statements that the completion of necessary works and other unspecified project actions are causing the latest delay. “We are planning a Palisades restart in early 2026, following the completion of ongoing project activities,” Holtec spokesman Nick Culp said.
The plant’s owner, Holtec, also wants to add two small modular nuclear reactors at the Michigan site, each about 340 MW.
Representation courtesy of Holtec International
Holtec has not released the estimated cost of the restart, but the U.S. Department of Energy in October issued the company the sixth disbursement of a $1.52 billion agency loan due in 2024. The project has also received about $1.3 billion from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and $300 million from the state. About 600 full-time jobs were created or retained in December, Holtec said. last year the plant received 68 fuel assemblies now in safe storage until the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows them to be loaded into the reactor core.
According to reports in the nuclear trade press, major equipment restoration work is underway. Assembly of the main turbine generator is progressing after more than a year of inspection, testing and maintenance work. The plant, which also recently received and installed the second of two fully refurbished primary coolant pump motors, is now undergoing further inspections, maintenance and system assemblies under the commission’s supervision.
Steam generators are the focus area
Steam generator upgrades are a critical area of work after an inspection last year found 1,400 cooling tubes were cracked and in need of repairs, according to a local report. Holtec is performing “sleeving” and plugging of the cracked tubes as an alternative to the complete replacement of the generator and “deep cleaning” of the secondary systems. Workers are also reassembling large turbine and generator components, following detailed inspections and taking steps to decontaminate the primary cooling system to reduce radiation risks to workers.
Ongoing inspections are checking the integrity of the reactor vessel and hundreds of pipe welds to ensure they are not significantly degraded. Inspectors also verified the plant’s readiness to withstand heavy rain and external flooding, specifically for the service water system and turbine building. Cybersecurity and fire protection systems must also be verified to meet operational standards, while licensed operators undergo retraining and emergency response exercises with state and local agencies.
To handle the high volume of final restart tasks, the commission authorized a 60-day waiver beginning Jan. 6, allowing the plant to use less restrictive work-hour controls to finish restart activities.
There have already been unexpected worker safety issues, including a contractor technician doing radiological assessments who fell into a pool of radioactive water above the reactor last October, Holtec said. The remanufacturing effort is supported by more than 1,000 contractors, vendors and suppliers, according to the company.
“The plant will return once all restart activities have been completed to support long-term safe and reliable operation.” says Guilt.
At the time it was decommissioned, Palisades was licensed to operate until 2031. Holtec told the commission last year that it intends to seek a subsequent renewal of the plant’s license within the next three months to extend its operating period to 2051.
Holtec is looking for a small OK reactor at the plant site
In January, Holtec said it also filed its first major permit application with the commission to approve the start of construction and environmental review of its two-unit SMR-300 Small Modular Pressurized Water Reactor to be built next to the Palisades plant. Each has a capacity of about 340 MW. The application specifically seeks a limited building permit to begin preliminary construction activities at the site, such as soil compaction, backfilling and foundation installation.
According to Culp, the new SMRs would create an additional 300 full-time positions and support more than 2,000 jobs during peak construction. Holtec has asked the commission to approve its application by Dec. 31, 2026. The Department of Energy is providing $400 million in funding for the small reactors, which will be completed in the early 2030s.
The coalition of longtime opposition group Beyond Nuclear is criticizing the latest delay in restarting the Palisades plant and believes it won’t be the last. “For several years, Holtec International has repeatedly claimed, with false confidence, that its unprecedented restart* of the Palisades plant, said Kevin Kamps, its radioactive waste specialist and spokesman. “The plant has outdated and deteriorated machinery and equipment that Holtec and the [commission] The group added that the two planned SMR-300s would “exacerbate security risks.”
But advocates see restarting older decommissioned reactors such as Palisades, Unit 1 of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and the Duane Arnold power plant in Iowa as the only short-term option for adding more nuclear power to the grid, with new builds at least half a decade or more away.
The Pennsylvania plant, now owned by Constellation, recently accelerated its operating target to 2027 from 2028 due to fast-track grid link approvals from regional grid operator PJM Interconnection. The Energy Department closed on a $1 billion loan last November to help finance the estimated $1.6 billion project, with the first advance expected in the next three months, he said. Constellation signed a 20-year nuclear power purchase agreement with Meta in June 2025 for 1.1 GW, and Microsoft has a 20-year power agreement for its data centers signed in 2024.
Work is underway to restore the turbine, generator, main power transformer and cooling systems, the company said. By the end of 2025, the project was almost 80% staffed. Federal approval for safety, security and environmental issues is ongoing, a primary goal by 2026, the project team added.
The 615-MW Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa, shut down in 2020, is being restarted by NextEra Energy with a goal of coming online in early 2029. It has a 25-year power supply agreement announced in October with Google. The project still requires a series of approvals from the commission and state agencies,
Japan’s first nuclear restart since Fukushima delayed
Meanwhile, a technical glitch delayed the partial restart of the world’s largest nuclear reactor in Japan by its owner-operator on Jan. 19, the Japan Times and others reported a day after it went online.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), has not confirmed a new date to start plant operations at the seven-reactor, 8.2GW Kashiwazaki-Kariiwa plant, 135 miles northwest of Tokyo, according to local reports on Jan. 20, which said it needed more time to check a nuclear fission control rod safety alarm error that occurred on Jan. 17 after the plant shut down on Jan. 17. January The tsunami caused the meltdown of three reactors at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, also owned by the utility company.
The planned Jan. 20 restart of a 1.3GW unit at Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kanwa nuclear power plant, offline since the meltdown of its Fukushima plant caused by the 2011 earthquake, is now delayed by a fission rod alarm error.
Photo courtesy of TEPCO
One of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors, a 1.3 GW unit, had been scheduled to start up on January 20.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, which TEPCO said has passed nuclear safety regulator checks, would be the first nuclear plant to restart since the disaster, but the action remains a divisive issue in Japan, according to reports. The power company “only mentions a possible delay. But that’s not enough,” said Takeshi Sakagami, president of the Citizens’ Nuclear Regulatory Watchdog Group. “A full investigation is needed, and if a major flaw is confirmed, the reactor should be shut down permanently.”
