It's a dilemma many industrialized countries are familiar with today: The United States wants to become more reliant on nuclear energy, but building new reactors is incredibly expensive. At the Vogtle nuclear power plant, near the city of Waynesboro, in the state of Georgia, two new reactors came into operation in July 2023 and this March, for a total cost of $35 billion.
What happened in Georgia should not be repeated in Michigan. To get additional nuclear energy, they don't build a new nuclear power plant there, they just pull an old one out of mothballs. The Palisades nuclear power plant, on the shores of Lake Michigan in the southwest of the state, stopped operating in May 2022, and the Florida company Holtec International now wants to restart it.
Nuclear debut in the United States
To do this, the government of US President Joe Biden is contributing large sums of money. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced it would support the project with a $1.5 billion guarantee. The floating power plant will operate at least until 2051.
“Nuclear energy is our largest source of zero-carbon energy, creating 100,000 jobs across the country,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. Gretchen Whitmer is also happy: the Palisades power plant will be the first nuclear power plant successfully reopened in the history of the United States, said the Democratic governor of Michigan. The plant could generate electricity for 800,000 homes.
Expansion in Diablo Canyon
There are currently 93 reactors in operation in the US, placing the United States by far in first place in the world. In addition to the expansion of renewable energy, the Biden administration sees nuclear energy as an important piece of the puzzle toward climate neutrality. And not only in Michigan: in the state of California, the Diablo Canyon power plant was due to close at the latest next year, but with the help of a state guarantee the deadline was extended until 2035.
Coastal population centers, in particular, depend on imports of coal-generated electricity from other states. Nuclear power could replace dirty coal-generated electricity. The Palisades project alone aims to avoid the production of 4.47 million tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of the emissions of almost one million combustion cars.
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New competition
But it's still unclear whether the Biden plan will work. There's a reason plants like Palisades were closed: For one thing, many power plants are already aging. The operation of the reactor in the US is planned for 40 years; A 20-year extension is possible, but usually requires extensive repair and modernization work. For many power plant operators this is not worth it.
And then there is the competitive situation: renewable energy in particular, but also fossil energy, is now much cheaper to produce in the US than nuclear energy. The Palisades power plant had to close because it sold almost 100 percent of its electricity to a local company called Entergy, but the supplier no longer wanted to extend the supply contract for cost reasons. There are now “more economical alternatives to ensure reliable power delivery to the region,” according to a December 2016 Entergy statement.
It is not yet clear at what prices the recovered power plant will be able to offer its electricity. And the Biden government does not want to depend on this alone either: the Ministry of Energy also funds the research and construction of so-called minireactors, “small nuclear reactors” (SMR), with billions of dollars. Owner Holtec announced that two of these reactors will also be located at the Palisades site in Michigan. The mini nuclear power plants are planned to come into operation in the mid-2030s, right next to the non-standard reactor.