The plan to restart Michigan’s decommissioned Palisades nuclear power plant—which would be a global first—was driven by surging demand for electricity and new investment in green energy.
Note: I have followed the instructions on how to share an article from the WSJ, but it doesn’t look any different to me than just pasting the URL in. Hope it works:
COVERT, Mich.—When Michigan mothballed the Palisades nuclear power plant in 2022, the facility looked like a perfect relic of nuclear power’s 1970s heyday. Walls were painted salmon pink and pale green. Control panels had analog dials, manual switches and hundreds of lights that flash green or red to indicate on or off. The valves, levers and ductwork in the turbine room gave off a steampunk vibe.
Just two years later, the 53-year-old plant’s owners are implementing a historic decision to give it another go. The federal government and the state of Michigan are spending nearly $2 billion to restart the reactor on the shores of Lake Michigan. When it reopens, Palisades will become the first decommissioned nuclear plant anywhere to be put back to work.
On the subject of keeping old nuclear plants running, the NRC recently approved a license extension for the North Anna plant in Virginia. The two reactors are now cleared to operate to 2058 and 2060, for an 80 year lifespan.
RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 28, 2024 /PRNewswire/ – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) today approved Dominion Energy Virginia’s application to extend North Anna Power Station’s operating licenses for an additional 20 years.
Also: The North Anna units were originally licensed to operate for 40 years in 1978 and 1980. Their licenses were renewed for an additional 20 years in 2003, following a stringent federal review process. Under its current licenses, North Anna reactors 1 and 2 could have operated through 2038 and 2040, respectively. With the renewed licenses, the units can operate through 2058 and 2060, respectively.
Any power plant that still has all its equipment, systems and structures can be restarted. It only requires lots of money, engineering, construction and time.
I do not know why you are calling this nuclear power plant green energy. It is not green energy - it is low carbon energy.
Then by that quibble, are not all green energy solutions actually low carbon solutions? Even solar and wind require carbon in their creation, production, transmission, and maintenance.
Now I’m going to go back and update all my previous posts about my solar panels, which require glass, aluminum, copper, plastic, steel, zinc, and lots of petrol energy to produce, transport, and install.
Green energy is energy that can be produced using a method, and from a source, that causes no harm to the natural environment.
I’ve seen diesel trucks delivering wind turbine blades and how are solar panels made and shipped?
Now, if one is only counting after the blades are installed and spinning and the sun is shining on the installed panels why don’t atoms splitting and heating water count?
Fossil fueled energy is not clean, not green and not renewable.
Nuclear energy is clean but not green and not renewable
Renewable energy is clean, green and renewable.
If the plant was mothballed properly restarting should not be a big deal. Stainless steel is probably fine but must watch for corrosion. Mechanical parts like motors, pumps and valves probably need maintenance and maybe replacement.
What about electronics and controls? Update or use the old? Is the old still reliable?
All safety related components, systems and structures (CSS) must meet NRC requirements to fully perform their safety functions during and after all manmade and natural accidents. The NRC will determine what needs to be replaced, updated to meet the quality requirements for all CSS. Some controls systems, instruments and wiring are not qualified for more than 50 years. They may need to be replaced for this old nuclear power plant.
I don’t know, but just because the plant was shutdown and “mothballed” wouldn’t they have still had to operate the residual heat removal systems and monitor them from a control room. Residual heat last for years and years.
After the fuel has cooled for 5 years or so in the pool, it can be moved to dry cask storage. See link from NRC here.
It appears Palisades already has some dry fuel casks positioned at the north-east portion of the plant.
My biggest concern would be the condition of the steam generators. They needed to be properly laid-up with all of the water removed and with preferably an inert atmosphere like nitrogen. Steam generators in a PWR this old can be a problem.
Holtec does appear to be serious about restarting this plant. They recently announced replacement of two large heat exchangers. The following article doesn’t say exactly what these heat exchangers are, but from the description and the picture, it looks to me like these are the service water (also called component cooling water) heat exchangers.
That is one of many major concerns. Remember the two San Onofre nuclear reactors in California were shutdown permanently because of many problems with their steam generators.
That is no way to think about it. Don’t you remember that each owner of these plants did an economic analysis and decided that it was too expensive to keep these money losing plants in operation. They documented their conclusions in their reports to state and federal agencies and the stock holders.
As I cautioned above, it looks like the steam generators at Palisades are not in very good condition. According to the article below, the steam generators were not properly laid-up when the plant was retired. To be fair, nobody expected Holtec to attempt to restart the plant years later, so not properly laying up the SGs isn’t all that surprising. Still, this is not good news.
From the link: The NRC’s October report revealed rapid degradation of the plant’s steam generator tubes since its last inspection in 2020, with stress corrosion cracking now affecting up to 1,400 steam generator tubes across both units. Some cracks neared 90% through-wall depth in just one operating cycle, undermining the plant’s ability to safely return to service.
Part of the unexpectedly rapid damage is due to the age of the two steam generators and tubes, which were installed in 1990 using Alloy 600 material, now known for its particular susceptibility to stress corrosion cracking. Additionally, the tubes were improperly laid up during the two-year shutdown period, causing 700 tubes in one steam generator and 248 in the other to now require significant repair.
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The “significant repair” described above is probably simply plugging the affected tubes, which takes them out of service forever. PWR steam generators are designed to have a certain number of plugged tubes and still function properly. But there is a limit as to how many tubes can be taken out of service in this way. Another, more expensive option, would be to replace the steam generators. This evidently has already been done once at Palisades, so that is an option. It would also delay the restart by perhaps a year or more. These are not off-the-shelf components, and would need to be specially manufactured off-site and transported to Michigan.
When SG tubes are plugged, then the SG produces less steam resulting in less electrical power generation.
San Onofre nuclear power plant needed 4 new SGs back in 2010. Southern California Edison spent over a billion dollars to remove the deteriorating SGs from the two reactors, have new SGs built in Japan, have them shipped to California, and installed in the reactor systems. Those SGs were constructed differently than the original SGs even though SCE told the NRC they were identical to the original SGs. After a few months of operation these new SGs began to have many tube leaks. SCE plugged the leaking tubes, but soon many more leaks developed in other tubes. After many tries, SCE could not stop the degradation. Finally NRC ruled that SCE was violating safety regulations with these SGs and demanded that SCE shutdown the two reactors until all safety issues were resolved. SCE decided that it would be more economical to permanently shutdown these reactors.
That would be true if steam production was the limiting factor in the design of all the components in the plant. But since they design in extra tubes there must be other factors, such a steam pipe size, turbine generator max capacity (both steam and electrical output), etc…
They have budgeted funds for upgrades/repairs to restart the plant. The issue is if those funds are sufficient. I think everyone knows there are risks involved. Restart and permits may not be possible. But worth a try.
Wishing them the best of luck (and good engineering decisions).