The anticipated restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in western Michigan has been pushed back by four months, a move that critics say highlights the power source’s pitfalls.
Palisades, which produced enough energy to power over 800,000 homes and businesses, is expected to be the first commercial U.S. reactor to fully restart after going offline in 2022. While the plant’s current owner, Holtec International, previously said it expected the reactor to be supplying the grid in October 2025, it’s now aiming for February or March 2026.
The potential restart comes amid discussions of a nuclear golden age to supply reliable and carbon-free power for the growing number of artificial intelligence data centers. Restarting old reactors like Palisades, a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and the Duane Arnold power station in Iowa is considered the only near-term option for expanding legacy nuclear power on the grid. New nuclear builds could take up to a decade to complete.
To skeptics like Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog at the nonprofit Beyond Nuclear, the schedule change is a reminder of nuclear power’s recent history of cost and time overruns. He pointed to America’s two newest reactors, Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Georgia, as additional examples. The two reactors ran seven years behind schedule and cost roughly twice as much as originally predicted.
