Is West Michigan Facing a ‘Nuclear Zombie’ Scenario By Restarting Palisades Power Plant?

The United States is looking to jump-start some of the country's nuclear power plants, and one of those selected for resurrection is right in our backyard. The Palisades Power Plant was shut down in mid-2022, but put on a short list of plants to restart in the coming years, and should it stay on schedule, it will be the FIRST Nuclear Plant Reactor restart in the country.

However, some say restarting Palisades might have some negative results, even culminating in what one group is calling a "nuclear zombie" scenario.

Recently, the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert, MI, secured a $1.5 billion loan to support kickstarting the first reactor again at the plant, and this would be the first time in U.S. History that this has happened, this according to the Department of Energy.

Holtec International currently owns the shuttered plant, and just two years ago, the plant was in a three-year "shutdown" cycle, that would be followed by a decade of slowly dismantling, and removing spent fuel from the facility. However, this new initiative to turn more nuclear power back on in the U.S. gave new life to the plant, and it's expected to be back online - at least one reactor - by Oct. 2025.

But some people aren't as excited about the reactor's comeback.

A safe-energy watchdog coalition, made up of several organizations in and around the Great Lakes, has filed a petition to intervene with the restarting of the reactor. The petition, which is backed by Arnold Gundersen, the chief engineer of Fairewinds Associates Inc., warns of the extreme risks to "safety, security, health, and the environment" if Palisades is started back up. That is their "nuclear zombie" scenario.

In 1990, Gundersen became a whistleblower in the nuclear industry after spending 44 years as a nuclear engineer.

Also involved is David Kraft, who is the director of Nuclear Energy Information Service, a watchdog on the nuclear industry in Illinois.

"Lake Michigan is the drinking water supply for 16 million people in four states, including the City of Chicago. Whether routinely discharging radioactive, toxic chemical, or thermally hot wastewater into the Lake, as well as the risk of a Fukushima or Chernobyl-scale catastrophe, Palisades restart threatens the future of the Great Lakes, 21% of the entire planet's surface freshwater."

What all of the people involved have in common, though, is they're part of a group called "Beyond Nuclear," which is a non-profit that aims to "educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future."

They're entire platform is strictly anti-nuclear, no matter what, despite the fact that nuclear energy is one of the cleaner forms of energy production. It doesn't produce any greenhouse gases, or air pollutants while generating power, only radioactive spent fuel rods that are mostly disposed of properly.

Regardless of their petition, Holtec intends to move forward with the restart of Palisades Reactor 1 on Lake Michigan. But we're curious, how do you feel about the 50+ year-old nuclear plant firing back up after being offline for almost 3 years?