Palisades specter looms over Series talk

The 11th annual South Haven Speakers Series will kick off Thursday, April 10, with Max Vanatta discussing “Nuclear Power: Risks and Rewards” on Lake Michigan College’s South Haven Campus starting at 7 p.m.

Small modular reactors, says Vanatta, a doctoral graduate from the University of Michigan, have the potential to help companies and the country meet emissions goals while satisfying growing energy demands. But they pose risks and challenges as well.

His dissertation notes the U.S. has not yet deployed its first SMR due to high costs and complexity. However, new U-M research suggests they could become economically viable — and immeasurably valuable — by 2050.

“The selection of this topic,” Series board member Dick Brunvand says, “is especially timely since the Palisades nuclear plant near South Haven is set to become the first facility in the nation to be recommissioned and develop a SMR facility on site.

“Vanatta’s study caught our attention as it explored various energy sources — including nuclear, wind, solar and gas — as part of a sustainable power future,” he goes on.

The speaker will give a brief history of the conventional Palisades power plant, which opened in 1971 to produce 800 megawatts of electricity, and how such plants have been catastrophic failures.

He will examine energy needs and new alternatives to fossil fuels for AI and other high-energy demands, plus look closely at the safety factors of all nuclear sources of power generation with special attention to the nuclear waste issue.

After Palisades closed in 2022, 204 fuel rod assemblies were removed from the nuclear reactor and placed into the plant’s spent fuel pool, an underwater storage facility that keeps the radioactive material cool.

SMRs are a major focus of Vanatta’s research. “While expensive and challenging, they do have the potential to be deployed,” he says.

Despite bipartisan appetite to develop nuclear energy at the Michigan state level, it is hard to predict the direction of regulations and funding nationally with a new presidential administration in Washington.

A week after taking over Palisades in 2022, Florida-based Holtec International surprised many by announcing plans to restart the plant. Some neighbors worry about radiation leaks and nuclear waste storage, while an industry engineer argues the aging plant cannot meet current safety standards and should remain closed.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “there is a revived understanding of nuclear energy as green power that could add to renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydropower. Nuclear-produced electricity is also seen as more consistent than wind or solar.”

The WSJ article continues, “some say reviving decommissioned plants is a faster and less expensive way to add to energy capacity. Building a new plant could take more than a decade, while the Palisades reopening is targeted for October 2025.”

Holtec only has experience in decommissioning nuclear reactors. Restarting and operating Palisades would be the firm’s first such effort, so it plans to outsource some operations to a more experienced nuclear company.

Covert Township Supervisor Daywi Cook says the township lost $1.6 million in tax revenue when the plant closed in 2022. Now it’s preparing for a boom in employment, housing and small businesses, she says.

Holtec has discussed building two 300- megawatt small modular reactors at the Palisades site, but the company hasn’t formally applied for a SMR license yet.

Admission to Speakers Series sessions is $10 for the general public, free for students. A wine and cheese reception will start at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit southhavenspeakersseries.org.