No major misuse of funds by Holtec at Palisades Nuclear Plant, finds NRC

COVERT, Mich. — The company working to restart a nuclear plant in Covert, Michigan, was found not to have had any major misuse of funds, according to a recent decision by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC).

A coalition of environmental groups recently accused Holtec International of improperly using funds designated for the decommissioning of the Palisades Nuclear Plant for the reactivation of the facility. The allegations include Holtec’s misuse of $120 million from the plant’s decommissioning trust fund (DTF).

The Palisades Nuclear Plant was purchased by Holtec from Entergy Corp in 2022, and in 2024, Holtec was awarded a $1.52 billion federal loan guarantee to restart the reactor.

The coalition — which consists of Beyond Nuclear, Michigan Safe Energy Future and Don’t Waste Michigan — claimed that $143 million of expenditures were listed by Holtec as “decommissioning expenditures” between 2022 and 2023. They also claimed that $23 million of those dollars were reimbursed through the DTF.

The groups also argue that Holtec shouldn’t be able to use any funds from the DTF because they are actively working to restart the facility, not decommission it.

The environmental groups were seeking a hearing on the alleged misuse of DTF funds by Holtec, but were denied the request by the NRC.

The NRC said that Holtec was not using funds from the DTF for restart-specific activities. But, the regulatory commission went on to say that they did find Holtec had made several withdrawals from the DTF in 2024 that were not for legitimate decommissioning activities.

“This review did not identify any withdrawals from the DTF for restart-specific activities; however, the inspectors opened an unresolved item to address questions related to use of the DTF for routine site maintenance costs because the inspection identified that the licensee continued to use the DTF for these expenditures in 2024,” the NRC decision read.

The NRC said that they would handle these improper use of funds through its normal inspection and enforcement processes.

This most recent accusation comes after a previous allegation that Holtec misused $44 million from the DTF in 2022. The NRC denied a request for a hearing regarding those allegations and instead said they had independently found limited violations through routine inspections. The violations included about $57,000 in improper DTF expenditures, and attributed them to inadvertent billing errors and inappropriate community donations, not restart-related activities.

The coalition wasn’t satisfied with the NRC decision and issued a letter that said in part:

“In a nutshell: the public demanded to know what $143,000,000 was expended on, or encumbered for purposes of decommissioning. The NRC’s investigation ignored the obvious differences between “decommissioning” and “restarting” while Holtec continued to incur millions of dollars’ worth of decommissioning costs for over a year and a half. During this time, Holtec was actively and expensively seeking, not to permanently decommission and dismantle Palisades, but to restart it for decades of prospective operation,” the coalition wrote in a letter to the NRC.