From HEATMAP AM

Holtec prepares to restart Palisades reactor and begin work on building SMRs Holtec International is about to complete its transition from the nuclear industry's undertaker — a manufacturer of casks to store radioactive waste and a decommissioner of defunct power stations — to the midwife of its rebirth. The company said Monday that it’s completed one of the last major steps in its process to bring the single reactor at the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan that Holtec originally bought to decommission back online. The unit went offline in 2022, right when Holtec purchased the plant. Before significant demolition took place, the company struck a deal with the Department of Energy to finance the restoration of the facility instead. But that required significant renovations that the previous owner declined to perform. The latest step was “passivation,” a chemical process that removes surface iron and contaminants from stainless steel to keep it from corroding. To perform the process, the team at Palisades brought the reactor to its normal operating temperature and pressure for the first time since its permanent shutdown four years ago. The work restored the system’s protective surfaces following what Holtec called “extensive maintenance, inspection, and component upgrades completed over the past two years.” With that work complete, Holtec said in a press release that its system “will now be cooled and prepared for additional testing, equipment upgrades, and preparations for fuel loading.” At the same time, the company said it will now begin laying the groundwork to expand the facility with a pair of its in-house 300-megawatt small modular reactor, which I reported on for Heatmap in December. Once Holtec builds its first SMR-300s in Michigan, the company said last year it plans to build a hub in Utah to train workers on how to construct and operate more of the reactors throughout the region. But Utah Governor Spencer Cox wants more than just reactors. On Friday, the Republican held a press conference announcing the state’s bid to host one of the Department of Energy’s proposed nuclear campuses that the agency said in its request for information should “support activities across the full nuclear fuel life cycle, including fuel fabrication, enrichment, reprocessing used fuel, and disposition of waste.” The federal deadline to apply to host a campus is tomorrow.