Boyd Carter
A coalition of 191 individuals and 185 groups on Wednesday implored the federal government for the third time not to fund the revival of a roughly 51-year-old nuclear power plant, calling it an “insanely high-risk game of radioactive Russian roulette on the Lake Michigan shoreline.”
A coalition of 191 individuals and 185 groups representing thousands of people on Wednesday implored the federal government for the third time not to fund the revival of a roughly 51-year-old nuclear power plant that was shut down in May 2022 in Covert, Michigan.
In a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the coalition warned that providing financial aid to Holtec International, which purchased the Palisades Nuclear Plant (PNP) in June 2022, could lead to a massive public health and environmental disaster that reverberates far beyond the shoreline of Lake Michigan — a source of drinking water for millions of people in multiple states.
A little over a week after taking ownership of PNP “under the false pretense of decommissioning it,” Holtec secretly applied for funding from the DOE’s Civil Nuclear Credit (CNC) program in July 2022 to reopen the plant, the coalition explained in a statement.
The company’s application — supported by Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who had been advocating for a “dangerous ‘zombie reactor’ bailout and restart scheme at Palisades” since April 2022 — was made public in September 2022.
Quoting from the article, an example of more bad illegal regulation from the Biden administration:
“Terry Lodge, legal counsel for the coalition’s lead groups, Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan, wrote in Wednesday’s letter that “DOE’s recently issued amended ‘guidance,’ which was specifically rewritten to enable Holtec to apply for $1.2 billion of federal taxpayer funds, is not legal under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).””