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DOE LPO finalizes $1.52B loan guarantee to support restart of Palisades nuclear generating station

The US Department of Energy (DOE), through its Loan Programs Office (LPO), has closed a loan guarantee of up to $1.52 billion under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program to Holtec Palisades to help finance the restoration and resumption of service of an 800-MW nuclear generating station in Covert Township, Michigan.

This represents a first-of-a-kind effort by DOE to restart an American nuclear power plant—generating carbon pollution-free energy and saving and expanding a union workforce in Michigan while helping strengthen America’s nuclear energy sector and advance core climate and domestic energy goals.

The USDA also announced more than $1.3 billion in Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program awards for two rural electric cooperatives—Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy—to reduce the cost of electricity passed on to their members for clean power from Holtec Palisades and other clean energy sources.

Nuclear power is America’s largest source of carbon-free of electricity, supporting hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across the country and will play a critical role in tackling the climate crisis and protecting public health and the environment from its impacts.

—US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm

The Palisades Nuclear Plant, which ceased operations in May 2022, will be brought back online and upgraded to produce clean baseload power until at least 2051, subject to US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing approvals.

The NRC also issued new guidance to ensure the restart is performed safely and to high standards. Once complete, this project will be the first recommissioning of a retired nuclear power plant in US history.

The plant restart is expected to avoid 4.47 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year for a total of 111 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions during the projected 25 years of operations—an amount roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 882,000 homes. Reducing fossil fuel-based electricity generation also reduces other harmful pollution that is often released during the process and can cause or contribute to local health impacts.

Once operational, the Palisades Nuclear Plant will provide reliable, clean firm power generation around-the-clock with zero emissions—a vital addition to Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s (MISO) resource mix as coal plants are retired. Holtec Palisades has already signed long-term Power Purchase Agreements for the full power output with rural electric co-ops Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy which serve rural communities in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana.

This will significantly reduce Hoosier’s climate pollution and put Wolverine on track to reach 100% carbon-free energy before 2030, allowing rural communities across Michigan to lower their carbon footprint from grid-connected energy to zero.

The DOE also released a new Pathways to Commercial Liftoff report on nuclear,—an update to the report released last year. This new report includes updated analyses and insights, reflecting the rapid learning and progress made in the industry. Furthermore, Idaho National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory published a report analyzing the potential to deploy nuclear at existing and recently retired nuclear and coal power plants around the United States. The report, which looked at a wide range of factors, identified 60 to 95 GW of deployment potential at nuclear plants and an additional 128 to 174 GW at coal plants.

This loan announcement marks the first closing of a loan guarantee through the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program under Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Section 1706, first authorized and appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act. EIR can finance projects that retool, repower, repurpose, or replace energy infrastructure that has ceased operations or enable operating energy infrastructure to avoid, reduce, utilize, or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions.

Comments

Jer

Fascinating. From Three-Mile island to this to new porta-Nukes being actively solicited way above rates of just less than a decade ago, the new push to increase reliable baseload is astounding. The bizarre irony that it took the AI data centre-, bitcoin mining-, and EV brands-industry execs to push what municipalities, traditional energy companies, mass state-wide power reliability issues, mass customer bill-payer demands, endless wind and solar let-downs, innumerable incentives and cost guarantees over the decades, etc. could not do.

SJC

protecting public health
I don't see radioactive plutonium doing that for 10,000 years

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