Michigan Residents Push for an Environmental Impact Statement Before Restarting the Palisades Nuclear Plant

Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station is one step closer to becoming the first nuclear power plant in the United States to reopen. After closing in 2022, the company that was set to decommission the plant has changed course, aided by a $1.5 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to restart operations. 

Last week, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a draft environmental assessment finding that reopening the plant will have “no significant impact” on the local environment. 

The study uses the plant’s current decommissioned state as the environmental baseline. Resuming power production would only affect land that has previously been disturbed, the assessment notes, and “would not affect any coastal areas or resources in a substantially different way than during previous power operations.” 

Palisades is one of the oldest nuclear plants in the country, completed in 1971 along the shores of Lake Michigan. It spans 432 acres, surrounded by wooded sand dunes, wetland habitats and Van Buren State Park. 

Homeowners living near the plant, along with a coalition of local activist groups, are petitioning the NRC and the plant’s owner, Holtec International, to do a more in-depth environmental review. During a pre-hearing on Wednesday Feb. 12, groups including Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, Michigan Safe Energy Future, Three Mile Island Alert and Nuclear Energy Information Services argued the project should carry out an environmental impact statement—a more comprehensive process than an environmental assessment. 

The groups plan to challenge the finding of no significant impact. NRC staff “made the wrong decision” in determining that no further environmental analysis was needed, said Wallace Taylor, legal counsel for the petitioning groups. 

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has touted Palisades as essential to reaching the state’s clean energy commitments. “Reopening Palisades will keep energy costs low, shore up domestic energy production, and secure Michigan’s competitiveness for future economic development,” she said in a statement. 

In 2023, the state passed ambitious climate legislation requiring electric providers to supply at least 80 percent clean energy by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040. Clean energy includes nuclear, according to the legislation. If Palisades is brought back online, it would add 800 megawatts of electricity to Michigna’s energy grid, enough to power 800,000 homes. 

That amount of carbon free electricity coming back online “brings us a really significant step closer to meeting those legislative targets,” said Dan Scripps, chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission. “I think it’s absolutely an essential part of our energy mix.” Without it, he added, “it certainly makes a steep hill steeper.” 

Palisades’ restart would come within a few months of one of Michigan’s last coal plants’ planned retirement of three units, making the need for energy more urgent, Scripps said. The nuclear plant is expected to prevent 4.47 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. 

But the environmental assessment also acknowledges that “It may be possible to generate the needed power using nonnuclear power generation technologies such as natural gas, solar, or wind.” 

Residents argue that the state should pursue renewable energy instead, including solar with battery storage and wind. “Spending the taxpayers money to resuscitate something that’s outdated and dangerous, to me, it’s just fiscally irresponsible,” said Jan O’Connell, senior energy issues organizer at the Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club. “Our state should be pursuing renewable energy, which is the cleanest, the quickest, the safest and the cheapest.” 

Nuclear is “low carbon energy, but it’s far from clean,” O’Connell said. While nuclear power doesn’t produce greenhouse gas emissions, it does generate radioactive waste that can take hundreds of millions of years to break down. In the case of Palisades, that waste sits in storage tanks along Lake Michigan. If radioactive material leaks, it is devastating for both human and environmental health. 

Whitmer has already directed $300 million to restarting Palisades. The energy generated will be purchased by Wolverine Power Cooperative in Michigan and Hoosier Energy in Indiana and Illinois. Federal incentives passed under President Biden, including a $15 per megawatt-hour credit for electricity produced by existing nuclear plants, have made nuclear energy more appealing and affordable. The future of funding for such projects is unclear under the Trump administration, but nuclear energy is one of the few forms of alternative electricity that enjoys support from both Democrats and Republicans. 

“It seems that there is bipartisan support that certainly shows up in Michigan for nuclear power,” Scripps said. “My sense is that at the federal level as well, a project like this is on firmer ground than some of the other DOE loans.”   

The NRC is expected to make a final decision sometime between May and July on whether to permit the plant to reopen, Scripps said. The public can submit comments on the environmental assessment until March 3. “We’re still asking the NRC to do something that they’ve never done before,” Scripps said. “But they’ve overcome every hurdle so far. And I think the finding of no significant environmental impact is just the latest in that process.” 

Carrie Klein

Fellow

Carrie Klein is a New York City-based reporter covering renewable energy and climate policy. She recently earned her master’s degree in science journalism at New York University. Her work has appeared in Canary Media, Audubon Magazine, Live Science, and Scienceline.