Governor Gretchen Whitmer touched off a flurry of discussion from diverse corners of the nuclear power debate this week, when she appealed to the Federal Government to intervene and keep the Palisades Plant open beyond its planned May shutdown—less that a month away.
Palisades has been on the road to final shut down of its reactors publicly since at least 2017—and probably earlier from the internal perspective of its owner-operators, Entergy and earlier Consumers Energy. It’s unclear what made the Governor think that a last-minute appeal was even remotely possible of succeeding. Critics say it’s simply a political grand-standing move to call for lessened economic impact of the shutdown, as the nation and state struggle with inflation and recovery from the pandemic. However, since the Governor and many of her supporters are no fans of nuclear energy, it’s curious she would choose this ideological ‘hill’ on which to take a stand that has so little chance of succeeding.
Whitmer’s appeal to the Biden administration to intervene has almost no realistic chance of staving off the planned Palisades shutdown, according to a 40-year veteran of the nuclear power industry with whom MOTM discussed the situation. He pointed out that such decisions are years in the planning—whether they call for shutdown or extension of a nuclear plant’s life cycle. For example, he cited discussions already underway to extend the life of Bridgman’s Cook Nuclear Plant—years ahead of its presently licensed term.
Our nuclear industry colleague explained that highly technical and critical planning goes into each re-fueling of a nuclear power plant, and that each such operation is unique, even from a previous one in the same plant. To simply say, “Nope, let’s just keep it operating into the future, to protect those jobs,” is not practically nor scientifically possible according to this inside nuclear industry observer.
The Governor’s call for a Palisades extension quickly generated understandably strong support from Van Buren County and SW Michigan economic interests concerned about the looming loss of hundreds of jobs at Palisades. Market Van Buren and Kinexus Group, who lead the effort to find, develop and train for jobs in the region were in the forefront of support for Whitmer’s call.
Equally loudly—but on the other extreme of the argument—several state and regional environmental groups that have spent years pointing out the alleged shortcomings of the aging Palisades plant, immediately renewed their warnings of impending doom—even talking of a ‘meltdown’—if Palisades were permitted to operate beyond May.
It’s likely that somewhere in the middle lies reality.
Palisades is an old plant, a smaller single-unit generator that makes it less efficient than other nuclear plants like Cook, with multiple units. It’s near the end of its useful life and the owners picked May, 2022 as Shutdown Day, the first step in a decades-long decommissioning of the plant site. That’s before one even gets to the discussion of what to do with the spent fuel that all such plants are still storing on-site because the Federal government—under both political parties– has failed in its responsibility to come up with a national solution to that very real problem.
So… we’re left scratching our head as to how and why Governor Whitmer reached the conclusion that a last-minute call for Palisades to stay open had any chance of success, and why it was even a good or practical idea.
By Gayle Olson, Managing Editor, MoodyOnTheMarket.com
