Environmental Coalition Intervenes Against Palisades Zombie Reactor Restart

[Image above: Yard sign design by Michigan Safe Energy Future-Kalamazoo Chapter and Palisades Shutdown Campaign; photo by Kevin Kamps]

See the December 6, 2023 press release by Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, and Michigan Safe Energy Future.

See the legal and technical documents submitted to NRC on December 5, 2023, below:

PETITION TO INTERVENE AND REQUEST FOR ADJUDICATORY HEARING BY BEYOND NUCLEAR, DON’T WASTE MICHIGAN, AND MICHIGAN SAFE ENERGY FUTURE;

PETITIONERS’ DECLARATIONS/APPENDICES 1-9 (Legal Standing Declarations of Environmental Coalition Groups and their Members and Supporters);

PETITIONERS’ DECLARATION/APPENDIX 10 (Declaration of Arnold Gundersen, Nuclear Engineer);

PETITIONERS’ DECLARATION/APPENDIX 11 (Declaration of Mark Z. Jacobson, Environmental Engineer);

PETITIONERS’ DECLARATION/APPENDIX 12 (Declaration of Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist).

The coalition’s co-legal counsel are Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio, and Wally Taylor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The petition and request was brought by the three groups on behalf of their members and supporters, many of whom live less than two miles from the Palisades atomic reactor.

On December 11, 2023, Holtec submitted to NRC a motion for summary dismissal of the intervention request.

On December 13, 2023, the coalition’s legal co-counsel, Terry Lodge and Wally Taylor, rebutted Holtec’s motion for summary dismissal.

On December 15, 2023, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff published its NRC STAFF ANSWER TO INTERVENTION PETITION AND HEARING REQUEST AND TO LICENSEE MOTION FOR DENIAL OF PETITION.

On December 18, 2023, co-counsel for the environmental coalition, Wally Taylor of Cedars Rapids, Iowa, and Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio, submitted their PETITIONERS’ REPLY IN SUPPORT OF PETITION FOR LEAVE TO INTERVENE AGAINST PALISADES EXEMPTION.

Also on December 18, 2023, the NRC Secretary issued the Commission’s Order on the matter.

(In a closely related matter, on December 15, 2023, environmental coalition counsel Wally Taylor wrote NRC, objecting to Holtec’s application for a license transfer as premature. The Secretary of the NRC Commission responded on January 3, 2024.)

If approved, Holtec’s bogus exemption request above (in truth, it is a License Amendment Request, LAR) merely greases the skids for much more to follow, all in Holtec’s bid to undo Entergy’s permanent shutdown of Palisades in May-June 2022. On December 8, 2023, for example, NRC approved Holtec’s LAR, to undo the ending of emergency response preparedness. But emergency preparedness should never have ended in the first place, given the large amount of highly radioactive waste stored on-site, from which a catastrophe could be unleashed on any given day, under the right (wrong!) circumstances. Holtec has already begun requesting multiple LARs, including to transfer ownership of Palisades from Holtec Decommissioning International, to a brand new reactor operations Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), to further shield the mothership company from any liability for the unprecedented, astronomically expensive (for the public, with nearly $4.5 billion in federal and state taxpayer bailouts requested, and counting), and extremely high-risk zombie reactor restart scheme.

Beyond Nuclear and its allies will continue to resist all this, as well as Holtec’s proposed Small Modular Reactor (SMR) new builds at the Palisades site. Holtec has requested another $7.4 billion in SMR bailouts from the U.S. Department of Energy. The breakdown phase risks at the old zombie reactor, and the break-in phase risks at the SMR new builds, would represent both extremes of the risk spectrum, on the same small (432-acre) site, perched on the edge of Lake Michigan.

The partial core meltdown at Fermi Unit 1 in Monroe County, Michigan (October 5, 1966), the 50% core meltdown at Three Mile Island Unit 2 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (March 28, 1979), and Chornobyl Unit 4’s explosion and fire in Ukraine (April 26, 1986) are a few examples of break-in phase risks at brand new reactors.

And, like at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan in March 2011, domino-effect multiple reactor meltdowns could occur at the crowded-with-risk Palisades site that Holtec envisions. Holtec has never operated a reactor, nor has it ever restarted a closed reactor — no company has.