This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/how-michigan-is-going-nuclear-again/

Blue state provides blueprint for purple Wisconsin

America’s energy grids are strained as electricity demand continues to grow exponentially, and zero-emission goals are diminishing so-called “baseload” generating capacity.

The response on the other side of Lake Michigan: a remarkable atomic about-face that may hold lessons for Wisconsin.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in April 2022 announced that she supported keeping open the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which was due to close the following month.

The plant’s operator turned the reactor off shortly thereafter and, by summer of 2022, was planning to tear the plant down. The governor’s switch, however, led the plant’s new owner, Holtec Decommissioning International, to begin seeking federal aid to restart the reactor and to find a buyer for the plant’s electricity — a pair of energy wholesale cooperatives.

The governor’s change of heart was remarkable, said research analyst Josh Antonini of the Midland, Mich.-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

“Whitmer has advocated for some of the country’s most radical environmental policies, yet even she recognizes the importance of nuclear power,” Antonini said.

As a step toward reopening the plant, Holtec applied for a federal Civil Nuclear Credit in 2022. The credit was then denied by the U.S. Department of Energy, a federal agency overseen by former two-term Democratic Michigan Governor and current U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

“We fully understood that what we were attempting to do, re-starting a shuttered nuclear plant, would be both a challenge and a first for the nuclear industry,” Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said.

But this past March, the Biden Administration approved a $1.5 billion loan to recommission Palisades.

Whitmer — whose about-face encountered opposition from environmentalists and members of her own Democratic Party — applauded the move.

“Once complete, Palisades will become the first successfully restarted nuclear power plant in American history, protecting 600 union jobs at the plant, 1,100 in the community, and access to clean, reliable power for 800,000 homes,” Whitmer said in a statement.

Michigan Senate Republican Leader Aric Nesbitt celebrated the news, albeit with reservations about Whitmer’s green agenda.

“I am happy to see the governor and her peers acknowledging the need to reopen this vital nuclear power plant as we all brace for the predictable shortfalls of the extreme energy agenda forced through the Legislature by the Democrat majority last year,” said Nesbitt in a statement.

Whitmer seems to have embraced nuclear energy to compensate for the shortfalls of wind and solar energy and her own zero-emission policies and efforts to permanently close the dual five-mile Line 5 pipelines spanning the Lake Michigan floor between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas.

The closed nuclear plant on its own produced about 6.5% of Michigan’s electricity and about 15% of the state’s zero-emissions energy, according to Jason Hayes, director of energy and environmental policy of the Mackinac Center.

“Restarting Palisades means the return of a reliable and dispatchable source of zero-carbon baseload electricity, capable of helping Michigan meet its clean energy needs year-round without interruption,” said American Nuclear Society CEO Craig Piercy.

The Palisades recommissioning — which hasn’t yet happened and which still faces opposition during the regulatory process — is one of the few bright spots in Michigan’s renewable energy future after Whitmer signed legislation earlier this year that mandates 100% alternative energy sources by 2040. The Mackinac Center in 2023 estimated the mandates will increase household energy costs by $1,000 per year and require “billions of taxpayer dollars to various subsidies to accomplish the goal of eliminating traditional energy sources.”

“Michigan’s energy policy sets the state up for failure,” according to Hayes and Antonini. “The state’s net-zero mandates and requirements for wind and solar strain reliable resources. Michigan’s goals are some of the most aggressive in the Great Lakes region. Meanwhile, the large utilities are mostly marching in lockstep toward similar objectives. The blackouts the state will suffer are inevitable given these poor decisions.”

The reopening of Palisades is a good start, however, and the Mackinac Center analysts said Wisconsin might do its residents a favor by following Michigan’s lead.

According to “Shorting the Great Lakes Grid,” an analysis by Hayes and Antonini published earlier this year, the Midwestern states’ rush to decarbonize may present dire consequences, and Wisconsin is no exception.

According to Gov. Tony Evers’s Executive Order 38, issued in 2019, the state of Wisconsin has pledged that 100% of all electricity consumed by 2050 will derive from renewables. Unfortunately, most of the eggs in the state’s renewable energy basket rely on unreliable and expensive wind and solar that could spike household electricity bills.

Nuclear energy receives no mention in Evers’ executive order or in his administration’s latest Clean Energy Plan Progress Report.

Wisconsin’s one existing nuclear power plant, Point Beach Nuclear Plant north of Two Rivers, according to the state’s Public Service Commission’s most recent figures, supplied only 16% of the state’s electric power.

That figure is despite Wisconsin in 2016 removing a moratorium on building new nuclear reactors.

But there are signs of a renewed interest in nuclear power in Wisconsin. In May 2022, about the time Michigan’s Palisades was being turned off, La Crosse-based Dairyland Power Cooperative announced its intention to pursue a “small modular reactor” in Wisconsin.

While no specific plans have been announced, the electric supply co-op’s vice president of generation, Jeremy Browning, told the Badger Institute this month, “We are absolutely continuing our pursuit.”

One of the possible suppliers mentioned by Dairyland in 2022 was the Oregon-based NuScale Power Corp., whose design involves small, factory-made reactors. The company’s design won its certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2023.

“SMRs are no longer an abstract concept,” then-Assistant U.S. Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff said in a statement in January 2023. “They are real and they are ready for deployment.”

For some, the concept of any sort of nuclear energy still unfairly conjures up horror stories of Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl, concerns dispelled by the Mackinac Center’s Antonini.

“Small modular reactors are promising developments, but traditional fission plants often get a far worse reputation than is fair,” Antonini wrote.

“‘There were no acute radiation injuries or deaths among the workers or the public due to exposure to radiation resulting from the incident,’ wrote the World Health Organization in its Fukushima report,” Antonini went on. “Had the Fukushima plant’s backup generators not been built in at-risk, low-lying areas (which some scientists at the time opposed), there would never have even been a meltdown. Nuclear plants have been providing France with a majority of its power for decades — cleanly, reliably, cheaply, and with no disasters to speak of. The country is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity.”

Michigan-based Bruce Edward Walker has over 40 years of experience in literary reference, automotive, entertainment, science, and free-market think tank research writing and publishing.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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