The U.S. Department of Energy has made a third loan disbursement to Holtec International to assist with the company’s plan to restart the shuttered Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, the agency announced Tuesday.
The Biden administration finalized an up to $1.52 billion loan guarantee for the project in September. The most recent disbursement totals about $46.7 million, DOE said.
Holtec is on track to restart operations at Palisades in October and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects to issue a final decision on the required licensing actions by July 31.
“America needs to utilize all forms of energy that grow our economy, create new jobs, and secure energy independence,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. A “nuclear renaissance is just around the corner.”
Palisades will be the United States’ first commercial nuclear reactor to be shuttered and restarted, DOE said. The reactor will provide 800 MW of “affordable, reliable baseload power in Michigan when completed.”
Palisades was shuttered by Entergy in May 2022 due to difficult financial conditions. Holtec acquired the plant the following month. Initially Holtec had intended to decommission the plant but announced in September 2023 that it would instead work toward restarting operations.
Data centers for artificial intelligence are driving up electricity demand projections, leading the U.S. to invest in new nuclear resources.
Deloitte expects data centers to consume about 30%, or 11 GW to 19 GW, of the estimated 35 GW to 65 GW of new nuclear capacity added over the next decade through a combination of power uprates at operational plants, restarts of recently-retired reactors, and new reactor deployments at greenfield and existing power plant sites.
