Deep Fission under fire re nuclear project’s costs and safety
Marjorie Reynolds, founder of Prairie Dog Alliance, speaks in opposition to Deep Fission’s planned placement of a nuclear reactor in a mile-deep borehole in an industrial park near Parsons, KS. A tech assistant is in the photo. Marjorie’s presentation was Oct. 8 at the Tar Creek Environmental Conference at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College in Miami, OK. —Photo by Miranda Pelletier
Deep Fission (NASDAQ: FISN) shares fell more than 50% following a Sept. 24, 2026, report by Iceberg Research that described the company as a “money pit.” The report alleged underestimated costs, overstated economic potential, and significant regulatory and demand risks. A mile-deep borehole near Parsons, KS, is the planned site for a new experimental nuclear reactor, announced by Deep Fission in late 2025.
AI-generated image by Lynda Lovon Williams, physicist
Ann Suellentrop, vice-chair of the PeaceWorks KC Board, warned of the long-term dangers of nuclear waste. “Deep Fission is playing with fire. Radioactive waste is forever deadly and dangerous, lasting thousands and thousands of years,” she said.
Iceberg Research estimated that Deep Fission’s electricity costs could reach $148–$289 per megawatt-hour (MWh), far above the company’s projected $50–$70. The report also questioned whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could approve the technology quickly and challenged demand forecasts for the Great Plains Industrial Park in Kansas. Deep Fission rejected the report as “highly misleading.”
Suellentrop also criticized the federal government’s handling of nuclear issues, saying, “The Department of Energy (DOE) has misled the public for decades.” She pointed to what she described as a long history of secrecy, cover-ups, and misinformation.
Deep Fission’s technology uses a nuclear reactor designed to operate approximately one mile underground in solid granite. The company argues that a tall column of water can provide pressure, potentially reducing the need for expensive conventional equipment. The surrounding rock could also offer physical protection, passive cooling, and lower construction costs.
Prairie Dog says no!–Photo by Casey Carter
However, these potential advantages remain subject to engineering validation, regulatory approval, and successful commercial deployment. Significant challenges include retrieving or refueling a highly radioactive reactor core through a narrow, mile-deep shaft, managing corrosion caused by high pressure and harsh underground conditions, and developing a regulatory pathway for a technology the NRC has not previously licensed under an established framework.
The company must also demonstrate that it can deliver competitive electricity costs, meet regulatory requirements, and secure dependable customers. Until independent evidence validates its claims, Deep Fission faces substantial technical, financial, and execution risks.
“This is not merely a Kansas issue, but a national one, as officials aim to expand the model nationwide,” Suellentrop added.
Critics argue that Deep Fission’s promises could prove financially disastrous for investors and raise serious public-safety concerns. The allegations have also drawn legal attention, with five law firms reportedly seeking investors to participate in a proposed class-action lawsuit.
Whether the company’s technology can deliver on its promises—or whether investors have been misled—remains to be established. The allegations in the Iceberg Research report and any potential legal claims have not, by themselves, established fraud.
–Ruth de la Garza, an award-winning journalist, brings more than 25 years of experience in broadcasting, public relations, and mass media to the PeaceWorks KC Communications Team. Her reporting for regional and national outlets has examined politics, health policy, and community issues across Chicago and Northwest Indiana. Driven by a commitment to public health and grassroots civic movements, she focuses on revealing how legislation affects everyday lives and elevating the stories that matter most to the communities she serves.
A former top financial officer for Holtec International, which owns the defunct Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, won a $2.1 million jury verdict in connection to a whistleblower lawsuit involving the development of small modular reactors, according to the website Engineering News-Record.
Holtec, which is based in Camden, has expressed interest in building four of the company's first small modular reactors at the former power plant location in Lacey. The plans remain in early phases and have not been approved by local, state and federal authorities.
In 2023, former Holtec CFO Kevin O'Rourke sued Holtec, alleging the company fired him after he refused to present what he believed were misleading financial reports to Hyundai Engineering and Construction, a partner in the development of small modular reactors.
"The jury found that Holtec fired Kevin in violation of New Jersey's Whistleblower Law, the Conscientious Employee Protection Act," said Drake P. Bearden Jr. of the law firm Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins, which represents O'Rourke. "We are thrilled that after years of litigation the jury found Holtec violated his rights when they fired him for whistleblowing."
Holtec plans to appeal the verdict, according to Patrick O'Brien, a spokesperson for Holtec.
"The jury concluded that Mr. O’Rourke’s employment was terminated because he expressed a belief that a draft of an internal confidential document, that was never delivered to any potential investor, violated the law," O'Brien said in a statement. "We strongly disagree and will be appealing that issue.
"We are very pleased that the jury found that the Plaintiff breached his confidentiality agreement with Holtec by publicly disclosing confidential Holtec business information," he said.
In 2022, Holtec and Hyundai partnered to design small modular reactors, a new kind of mass-produced nuclear reactor that can be deployed in a variety of environments and at minimal cost.
These small reactors create about a third of the power of traditional nuclear reactors and their factory-assembled parts help to reduce design and construction costs, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
These small reactors can also be constructed at locations where a traditional reactor would not be feasible, such as isolated factories or rural areas, according to the agency. In addition, small modular reactors are designed to operate more safely than traditional reactors as well as passively, according to the IAEA. In the event of an emergency, the small reactors are designed to shut down without external power or human intervention, according to the agency.
Radioactive waste does not belong in baby toys, frying pans, garden soil, jewelry, roads, cars, building supplies—or any of our everyday household items.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is moving to exempt hundreds of radioactive isotopes from the licensing controls that currently apply to radioactive materials and waste.
The rule change, entitled Exemptions from Licensing NRC-2025-1568, lists levels of every radioactive form of every radioactive element—radionuclides—as exempt from licensing. That includes some level of plutonium, cesium, strontium, radioiodines, and nearly 800 more.
In other words: materials currently required to be treated as LICENSED RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL AND WASTE could be moved to an exempt list in 10 CFR 30 and no longer require radioactive-material licensing controls.
And NRC has done no analysis of how much radioactivity could be released over time or how many cancers and other health effects could result.
Why take this risk?
Your comment should make three things clear: Withdraw this rule change. Exempting more radioactive material and waste from regulatory control is not just controversial—it has been widely opposed at many levels for decades. And use the phrase that your comments are significant and adverse.Tell the NRC to withdraw the rule and not exempt more radioactivity from regulatory control. If the NRC chooses to pursue this rule against public opposition and the science, it must first explain how the exemptions will work, how much radioactivity could be released, and what the health and environmental consequences could be. The NRC must also answer the significant questions that remain unaddressed in the draft or final rule.
Send your message of dissent to the NRC at the button at the bottom! Deadline to comment is NOVEMBER 4th by 11:59 PM EST!
Here are some topics you can reword and use in your comments:
1. NO DEMONSTRATED NEED FOR THIS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS RULE CHANGE
2. Unanalyzed health dangers
3. Unanalyzed environmental dangers
4. Violation and illegal superseding of state laws and regulations and Controversially overruling state, county, city, town resolutions calling for continued regulatory control
5. Allowing contractors to use radioactive materials and wastes without the restrictions of licensing that are currently required.
6. Wastes could get into regular trash, hazardous trash, incinerators that release radioactivity into air and our lungs—along with hazardous chemicals and other carcinogens and stressors.
7. Irreversibility of the releases of radioactive waste and materials into our consumer goods, building supplies, regular trash, air, water and daily use items with which come into intimate routine contact!
Make your comment count!
Your comment should call on the NRC to withdraw this exemption rule change.
The most effective comments will clearly explain why you oppose the rule change, why your concerns are significant, and why this proposal is controversial.
Writing your comment in your own words is best. You can use the talking points below for ideas, but personalize your comment and explain why you believe radioactive materials and waste should remain under regulatory control.
Background:
There are 15 states with laws, and many others being passed, when Congress overturned the exemption policies in 1992 including ME, VT, CT, OH, WI, PA, WV, IA, MN, OR, TX, NM, IL, SD, CO. These states passed laws or regulations requiring continued regulatory control over radioactive wastes and materials even if the federal government or other states exempted them from regulatory control.
NRC claims the change would save regulators $6 million over five years—a little more than $1 million per year. But the cost of managing and dealing with even one cancer could far exceed that trivial savings. The public would instead bear the potential health and economic costs.
We have fought this before.
This approach was previously called Below Regulatory Concern (BRC)—and the public overwhelmingly opposed it.
Congress revoked both of NRC’s policies to deregulate nuclear waste and materials in 1992. NRC withdrew its 1986 and 1990 BRC policies in 1993 after intense public opposition.
Since then, NRC, EPA, DOE, and DOT have tried at least 15 more times to deregulate nuclear waste, materials, emissions, and practices—and the U.S. public has opposed every effort.
Today, 14 states have laws against deregulating nuclear waste, and dozens of counties, towns, and cities have adopted resolutions opposing BRC.
Tell NRC: Radioactive waste belongs under radioactive controls.
NRC must answer some fundamental questions before exposing the public and environment to irreversible radioactive releases:
Where is the demonstrated need for this rule change?
Why hasn’t NRC analyzed the health dangers?
Why hasn’t NRC analyzed the environmental dangers?
Why should $6 million in projected savings over five years justify shifting potentially enormous health and economic costs onto the public?
Why should contractors be allowed to use radioactive materials and wastes without the licensing restrictions currently required?
Once deregulated, these wastes could enter regular trash, hazardous waste, incinerators, consumer goods, building supplies, air, and water. Incineration could release radioactivity into the air and our lungs alongside hazardous chemicals, carcinogens, and other stressors.
And once radioactive materials are dispersed into our products, communities, and environment, we cannot take them back.
There is NO SAFE LEVEL of radioactivity. There is no justification for adding more man-made radioactive waste to our environment and our families just to save regulators a little over $1 million per year.
Tell NRC: Keep radioactive waste under radioactive controls.
Palisades setbacks put nuclear safety culture in the underwriting spotlight
A regulator's warning over a fearful workplace at Michigan's restarting reactor lands just as data-center demand pulls more insurers toward atomic risk
The reactor on the Lake Michigan shoreline was supposed to prove that America could bring a retired nuclear plant back from the dead. Instead, Palisades has spent the autumn showing how hard that is when aging hardware, a first-time operator and a firm commercial deadline collide.
On October 13, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Holtec International that inspectors had found a "chilled work environment" in two departments at the plant: supply chain and quality assurance. In NRC language, that means employees are reluctant to raise safety or regulatory concerns, in this case largely out of fear of retaliation, according to the agency's follow-up inspection letter.
The inspection ran from July 20 to September 3 and drew on interviews and focus groups with more than 120 people. Plant-wide, inspectors found most staff felt free to speak up. But in the two affected departments, they found the reluctance was driven largely by a perceived fear of being fired, and that it had spilled over into the plant's own corrective action and employee concerns programs. Staff also questioned whether quality assurance could operate independently, and inspectors noted a rise in anonymously filed condition reports in the first half of 2026.
Supply chain and quality assurance are the functions that decide whether the right parts arrive and whether work is done to specification. Those are precisely the controls that property underwriters and loss-control engineers lean on when they price a plant.
A fuel load that went sideways
The workplace finding arrived on top of a more visible problem. Palisades entered refueling mode and began loading fuel into its reactor vessel on August 30, according to Holtec's license amendment request to the NRC. During that reload, a single fuel assembly tilted over after it had been set in place.
No radiation escaped, the NRC told The National, but fuel loading stopped. Holtec later told regulators the assembly was too damaged for the refueling machine's normal grapple to lift, so it fabricated a custom recovery tool and transfer canister. The NRC approved that unusual retrieval plan on the same day it sent the work-environment letter, Michigan Public reported. The regulator is still examining why the assembly tipped.
It is not the plant's first mishap. In October 2025, a worker fell from a refueling bridge into a pool of water but was not seriously hurt, The National reported. The Financial Times has also reported that nine of 15 candidates failed the plant's initial reactor operator licensing exam this summer, leaving six newly licensed operators. Local critics have cited the same figure, though it does not appear in the NRC's public announcements.
The timing of the Palisades trouble is important for the insurance industry. Fuel loading is the moment a nuclear project changes hands between two insurance markets. Before it, conventional builders' risk and property carriers do most of the work. After it, specialist nuclear insurers take over the reactor and its surroundings. Marsh's US nuclear energy leader, Everett Hansen, described that handover between construction and nuclear carriers at fuel load in a recent interview.
That specialist market is small and concentrated. Most ordinary property and casualty policies carry a nuclear exclusion, and American Nuclear Insurers, a pool of insurance companies, writes much of the liability cover those exclusions remove. On the property side, AM Best has said the industry mutual Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited writes virtually all US nuclear utility property coverage.
Public liability sits inside a federal framework. Under the Price-Anderson Act, each large reactor site has had to carry $500 million in primary nuclear liability insurance since January 2024. Above that, every reactor of 100 megawatts or more can be assessed roughly $158 million per incident for a shared second layer, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Explainer: how Price-Anderson pays for a nuclear accident
Layer 1, primary insurance. Each large reactor site buys $500 million of liability cover from American Nuclear Insurers.
Layer 2, industry self-insurance. If claims exceed that, ANI can assess every covered reactor up to $158.026 million per incident, payable at no more than $24.714 million a year. The NRC set those caps in an October 2023 inflation adjustment, and the next is due within five years.
Layer 3, Congress. The Congressional Research Service puts total compensation available from the first two layers at roughly $16.6 billion. Above that, Congress decides how further claims are paid.
Why it matters for brokers. Most standard property and casualty forms exclude nuclear risk. Contractors working at a plant need to know where their own program stops once fuel arrives on site.
New capacity is arriving to meet demand. In May, Markel and Willis launched a dedicated nuclear insurance facilitycovering property damage and business interruption from construction through operation. Restarts such as Palisades, and the planned revivals of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Duane Arnold in Iowa, add a less familiar risk profile: old plants, rebuilt workforces and owners racing a calendar.
Palisades first produced power in 1971 and shut down in May 2022. Holtec bought it as a decommissioning project, then pivoted to a restart. The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office backed that plan with a loan guarantee of up to $1.52 billion in 2024. The plant's entire output is already sold under long-term contracts to rural co-ops Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy.
The schedule has already slipped more than once. Holtec first aimed for late 2025, then 2026, and its IPO prospectus still described the plant as on track to restart in 2026. Under its power purchase agreements, Palisades must return to service by March 1, 2027, according to a FERC filing. A Holtec spokesperson said in September that the plant remained on track for that date.
The bull case for nuclear still rests on electricity hunger from artificial intelligence. Some projections cited in IB's coverage of AI data centers stress-testing insurers' capacity put data centers at around 8% of US power demand by 2030. The Trump administration has made nuclear a pillar of that push, promising faster approvals and a less risk-averse regulator.
Critics say that combination is the problem. Allison Macfarlane, who chaired the NRC from 2012 to 2014, told the Financial Times that a novice operator under financial and political pressure was exactly the scenario in which staff need to feel safe speaking up.
The NRC's retaliation finding landed eight days before a courtroom loss on a related theme. On October 21, a New Jersey jury awarded former Holtec chief financial officer Kevin O'Rourke $2.1 million, finding the company fired him for objecting to statements in a draft investor document. Holtec says it will appeal, and notes the jury also found O'Rourke breached a confidentiality agreement. Its IPO filing had disclosed that he was seeking about $6 million and that Holtec expected him to lose.
There is a workforce angle too. Among the documents the NRC reviewed were employee-filed condition reports from May 2026 on worker fatigue and shift coverage, alongside complaints about schedule pressure. Combined with last year's fall from the refueling bridge, that is the kind of detail workers' comp and contractor program underwriters will want to see addressed before restart.
Holtec says it is taking the findings seriously. "A strong safety-conscious work environment is fundamental to our culture," the company said in a statement. It has said its fuel recovery plan was backed by engineering reviews of structural integrity, heat and radiation protection.
The NRC, for its part, says the work-environment problem is confined to two departments, involves no rule violations and is not expected to delay the restart. The agency wants Holtec to reassure staff, bring in an independent evaluator and file a corrective action plan within 30 days, then carry it out under NRC oversight, according to its October 13 announcement.
Not everyone is reassured. Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who advises local opponents, called the NRC's sign-off on the retrieval plan ironic, given the regulator's own description of a visibly bowed fuel assembly, The National reported.
What it means for the market
For carriers and brokers, Palisades is an early stress test of the nuclear revival rather than a claims event. Nobody was seriously hurt, nothing was released and the NRC still expects a restart. But a fuel-handling error at the very moment risk shifts to the nuclear market, combined with a regulator flagging a culture of silence in quality control, is the kind of signal underwriters tend to remember at renewal.
The next milestones to watch are Holtec's evaluation plan, due to the NRC in mid-November, and a follow-up meeting the agency wants about two weeks later. Then come the removal of the damaged assembly, the NRC's explanation of why it tipped, and Holtec's appeal of the whistleblower verdict. Whether Palisades makes its March 1, 2027 deadline may say as much about the economics of nuclear restarts as any data-center contract.
Woes continue for the still mythical small modular reactors. Deep Fission (Nasdaq: FISN), the Berkeley, California-based startup whose micro-reactors would be buried in mile-deep boreholes at a site in Parsons, Kansas, is now facing potential lawsuits from alarmed investors. Six law firms are investigating Deep Fission for securities fraud to mislead shareholders when it issued its IPO last June, selling 2.5 million shares of stock at $16.00 per share. A subsequent report by Iceberg Research, claimed that Deep Fission’s technology is overhyped and unlikely to become commercially viable, which sent stocks plummeting. Failure to disclose these known risks could be a violation of securities laws. The Parsons community of 9,000 is also pushing back against the project.
HOLTEC BOTCHES REFUELING What else can go wrong now?
Holtec has screwed up refueling the Palisades nuclear plant in a rush to reverse decommissioning it, to instead restart it for power production. Now they’ve got a radioactive damaged nuclear fuel assembly leaning against the inside of the reactor pressure vessel that has stopped the refueling process indefinitely. They can’t move the damaged fuel assembly using the fuel handling machinery shielded under water back to the spent fuel pool without bending safety rules. Holtec is fashioning a short cut to transfer the damaged nuclear fuel in a cask without the required constant cooling and shielding underwater. Instead, the loaded cask will travel through a massive containment hatch outside, in a race to submerge it in the spent fuel pool before it overheats.
The U.S. grid’s greatest point of failure comes down to a handful of aging, hand-built machines most people never think twice about: transformers.
After more than three decades building infrastructure at the intersection of energy and technology, starting with EV charging in its earliest days, I've watched firsthand how physical infrastructure constraints become the limiting factor for entire industries. Transformers are the next one.
Most of the country's grid runs through a small number of massive, custom-built transformers. Replacing even one takes years. That vulnerability is baked into the design of the system itself, and the loss of a single transformer has the potential to be devastating across an entire region.
Since 2020, a shortage of these transformers has pushed wait times as long as five years, creating a constraint that touches every industry that depends on reliable power. Pandemic-era supply chain breakdowns collided with rising electricity demand, and now data centers are pushing demand to new records.
Transformer demand in 2027 is expected to more than double what it was in 2020. Meanwhile, the transformers already on the grid are aging out, and an estimated 75 percent of distribution transformers have already passed the end of their expected service life.
The design of these transformers hasn't changed much since the first commercial transformer went into use in 1886. They still rely on Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel (GOES), a specialty material that's difficult and slow to produce. Skilled labor is scarce, supply is tight, and only about 20 percent of transformers purchased in the U.S. are manufactured domestically, with the rest imported from a handful of countries, including China, South Korea, and Mexico.
Wait times continue to increase, with no sign of relief in the near future.
Even a facility that manages to secure new transformers still has to get in line. Connecting new generation or large loads to the grid means waiting in an interconnection queue, and for projects completed in 2025, the median wait from request to going live topped five years.
I built Blink Charging through a similar moment. In 2009, we deployed charging stations when the EV market was still in its infancy, well ahead of the demand that would eventually catch up to that infrastructure.
Diversification offers a way forward now, shifting load off the transformers causing the delay. On-site, distributed microgrids bypass both constraints at once, since they don't wait on grid capacity and don't rely on conventional transformers. Instead, they draw from energy sources generated and stored on-site.
Smart microgrids use solid-state transformers, built from ferrite and silicon carbide rather than GOES steel. Those materials are already in high supply because of their use in the EV industry, so equipment built around them isn't competing for the same scarce steel or the same backlogged production lines.
Solid-state transformers are also built from small, modular components, which means a damaged unit can be repaired by replacing a module rather than waiting years for a full custom-built replacement.
Battery storage adds another layer of resilience. Batteries make better use of the power already available on the grid, storing it when it's cheap and abundant and releasing it when demand spikes. A more resilient grid may not come from a handful of massive fixes. It may come from many smaller, distributed interventions working together, generating power on-site, forecasting demand, balancing loads intelligently, and storing low-cost energy for peak hours, exactly the kind of system our team at NextNRG has built our platform to manage.
The industrial sector has spent years adapting to material shortages and long lead times elsewhere in the supply chain. Power infrastructure deserves the same scrutiny, and the operators who start diversifying now won't be the ones caught waiting five years for a part.
COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN - Any day now Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant owner Holtec International will be ready to make history. Expected Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval of an “emergency” license amendment request may allow the company to resume a refueling plan that collapsed August 30. Right now no one knows if Palisades will create enough energy to power the equivalent of 800,000 homes or wind up in the ash can of nuclear industry history.
Holtec’s solution to the nightmare that rudely interrupted the plant restart is the energy story of the year. Another failure could turn little Covert Township, Michigan, into an international media and nuclear energy hot spot. This October surprise could also damage Republican attempts to hold on to Congress during the midterms.
CEO Krishna Singh, who lives 1,400 miles away from the scene in a $10 million Jupiter, Florida, home, has good reason to be a little jumpy about this speed bump on his path to becoming a billionaire. Unfairly dubbed the Donald Trump of nuclear energy, this low profile nuclear power speculator rules an empire stretching from Kiev to Camden, New Jersey. As soon as the war ends in Ukraine his company plans to begin work on 20 new nuclear reactors.
Today Holtec is more than two years behind its target to reopen Palisades. Some potential investors are pursuing other opportunities. Top managers have recently being pink slipped or quitting. The company website is looking more and more like what you would expect from an NFL team that just dropped out of the race to the Super Bowl.
Even worse, the primary rationale for reopening the plant with $3.1 billion in federal and state financial support is losing steam. Proposed new nuclear power plants costing about $16 a watt can’t compete with far safer, cheaper and quicker to build renewable solar and wind power coming in around $1 a watt. Across our planet much safer renewables are beginning to trounce slow to build nuclear.
Much has changed since Holtec did a 180 four years ago on its plan to buy and decommission half-century old Palisades on Lake Michigan’s southeastern shore. The NRC's “emergency” license amendment coupled with generous government subsidies, could make the plant profitable. Alternatively this reprieve would give Holtec an opportunity to make another error that would return Palisades to decommissioning.
“This emergency rush to restart Palisades,” suggests Don’t Waste Michigan’s Michael Keegan, “is about the need for greed not the need to protect public safety.”
To understand the gravity of this proposed repair job it’s important to know a little more about the way other modern nuclear power plants are designed in depth.
A reactor core is fueled by a mix of two-thirds new and one third spent fuel assemblies safeguarded in a pool of borated water. This protects workers and, in the event of a containment breach, the public, from radiation exposure.
The new assemblies are only slightly radioactive before they are placed in the reactor core. However a 500 degree radioactive spent fuel assembly raised out of the reactor cavity pool would expose workers to a fatal radiation dose Equally troubling is the possibility that radioactive gases emitted from the fuel rods inside an assembly could escape into the neighborhood around the plant.
This explains why thousand pound fuel assemblies are held under at least 10 feet of water. Dilution and partial retention of life threatening fission products protects employees and, in a worst case scenario, the public. No wonder Holtec left the damaged fuel assembly safely stowed underwater in the fuel pool cavity.
In their September 30 license exemption request the company asked the NRC to break one of the cardinal rules of nuclear power plant safety. Damage to fuel rods inside the assembly blocks access to the spent fuel pool via an underwater channel that resembles a tube. To get around this problem the company has proposed lifting the assembly above the water line. That is just as scary as it sounds.
Holtec wants to place the wounded fuel assembly in a shielded fuel transfer canister to be lifted out of the pool via a crane and special rigging. Under a self- imposed 133 hour limit, the company would attempt to return the fuel assembly to the spent fuel pool area via an equipment hatch. No company has ever done this before.
Industry veteran Arnie Gundersen who has worked in 70 nuclear plants during his career says he “doesn’t know of a single situation where a damaged spent fuel element has been transferred in the air.
"I’d venture that anywhere else no one would consider doing this in an operating nuclear power plant. The risk is just too high, especially in view of what just happened on August 30 at Palisades. If there is a mistake the cleanup could take a very long time.”
According to Gundersen, the fact that the spent fuel assembly is already beyond repair, means it could be safely moved to an out of the way underwater location. Failure of the specially designed fuel transfer canister shielding the spent fuel could expose workers to dangerous radiation.
Even worse, if the special container is lifted above the water and something goes wrong in the vulnerable transfer process radioactive gases could escape containment. This could quickly turn into an emergency triggering an evacuation order for the surrounding community near South Haven.
Holtec’s Hail Mary application to the NRC raises another key question: How can there possibly be an “emergency” at a nuclear plant that is not in operation producing electricity?
The answer to this question speaks directly to the fact that one of key rationale’s behind President Trump’s heralded nuclear renaissance is power hungry AI data centers. The fact that Michigan’s gubernatorial and U.S Senate candidates agree the public has the right to a moratorium on data centers, undercuts billions in taxpayer subsidies wasted on the Palisades restart.
No one understands this better than the Trump centric leadership at the downsized and “doged" NRC which recently cut safety inspection hours by 38 percent and security inspections by 50 percent.
After giving Holtec a long list of safety related waivers on everything from fire protection to questionable steam generator tubes, the shorthanded NRC is moving the company’s license amendment request ahead at warp speed. This is happening without the customary comment, hearing and review process that can take four months or longer.
To better understand what’s at stake for the future of the nuclear energy industry and the public it’s helpful to turn back the clock to August 30. That was the day Holtec began loading nuclear fuel into the Palisades reactor core.
A crack camera team was on hand to document this first ever restart of a reactor closed for decommissioning. This happy day was interrupted by a surprise loss of control accident unprecedented in the history of American commercial nuclear power.
It started when a dangerously radioactive thousand pound fuel assembly tipped 30 degrees toward the safety critical reactor core shroud. This huge stainless steel cylindrical component is central to the reactor pressure vessel. The disaster also broke the beyond repair assembly containing 216 bundled fuel rods filled with uranium pellets.
Holtec personnel believed that this disaster did not trigger the NRC’s safety reporting requirements. On September 8, the company boldly launched a $900 million initial public offering road show aimed at pushing Holtec valuation to $10.2 billion. There was no mention of the wayward and dead on arrival fuel assembly.
Naturally a potential billionaire like CEO Singh would never roll the dice on an IPO in the middle of a true plant emergency. Courted investors were reminded that the long delayed plant would be opening soon.
What these customers didn’t know was that ten days earlier fuel loading was “paused" after that assembly went rogue and “tipped" and tipped 30 degrees. Inevitably the bad news leaked on Reddit and the media. Soon the Union of Concerned Scientists criticized Holtec. The company was forced to "pause" its IPO on September 17. The New York Times quickly noted that a nationwide call for a moratorium on power hungry AI data centers threatened investor support for nuclear.
Unless it can start selling electricity quickly Holtec’s Palisades division might have to borrow money to begin paying off a $1.52 billion Department of Energy loan that comes due in March.
This is one of the obvious downsides of corporate socialism. Hiding disturbing facts from generous taxpayers and the politicians they elect is always a struggle. Voters don’t like throwing away public money on pipe dreams.
As the media began piling on about this breaking news, Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s spokeswoman Victoria Mitlyng, made it clear there was “no radiological release” during the August 30 fuel loading crisis. She added that neither the workers nor the public were harmed. In her mind there was not an emergency in Covert Township.
In a surprise September 30 NRC emergency licensing amendment application the undaunted company asked to begin correcting its error and reloading fuel inside the plant October 2. The NRC withheld this letter from the public until October 5.
After reviewing this request the agency gave the public a day to comment on Holtec’s proposal. Comments submitted by veteran nuclear industry experts who, unlike Holtec, have actually spent decades operating nuclear plants, focused on the applicant’s dubious attempt to redefine a plant emergency.
The company justifies its application on the theory that "the NRC refers to emergency situations as those in which a failure to act in a timely way would result in … shutdown of a nuclear power plant.”
That’s a stretch in more ways then one. First, Holtec has never run a nuclear reactor. Second, this operator readily concedes that its request is not related to an actual safety related emergency:
“Palisades is requesting emergency processing of this license amendment request as a delay in approval of the proposed changes would result in a delay in the resumption of activities necessary to reach the plant conditions required to restore the plant to power operation.”
This sentence appears to immediately disqualify Holtec’s request for a emergency license amendment. It allows the company to skip posting a notice in the Federal Register, a NRC notice inviting public comment and a public hearing. There is a critical detail here that sheds light on Holtec’s confusion. For several years it has repeatedly failed to meet a self-imposed deadline to start the rebuilt plant. It has never sold a single kilowatt of nuclear energy. It is wrong to claim there is a need to "restore the plant to power operation.”
Despite these facts it appears that the NRC will go ahead and approve a Holtec license amendment. If this happens there will not be a further opportunity for the public to challenge the company’s rushed plan to remove the damaged fuel assembly and resume fuel loading in a way no one has ever heard of.
By evading the hearing process Holtec and the public will not have an opportunity to learn from outside experts how to prevent another fuel loading disaster. It is also possible that public comment could help the company come up with a much safer solution to its damaged fuel assembly problem. Of course this inexperienced operator could be tutored by experts who know what they are doing. This will also give the NRC staff needed time to follow up with a thoughtful analysis of how Krishna Singh’s management allowed this improbable fuel loading accident to happen.
Holtec’s current attempt to begin work outside the normal inspection review and public hearing process could be self-defeating. If anything goes wrong there could be a real emergency potentially endangering the health and welfare of workers as well as plant neighbors. Failure could crush Holtec’s ambitions here and at four other reactors it intends to build in Michigan with taxpayer money.
The agency has failed to respond to a petition submitted by Alan Blind, the plant’s former design engineering manager. He wants to suspend any fuel loading and block Holtec’s proposed license amendment request pending a thorough public review of what went wrong August 30.
Blind says Holtec’s improvised solution "requires a lot of training, safety features and administrative oversight. Right now we don’t know what happened. Many things had to go wrong for this to occur. In addition to full disclosure on the fuel assembly drop and disengagement of the fuel handling grapple, he wants a review of the restart modification program.
“Safety doesn’t just happen in industry. There are many layers of protection,” says Blind. “This is why it’s incumbent for the NRC to prioritize the public benefit of doing a thorough and thoughtful job to eliminate the possibility of another mistake involving reactor fuel. Holtec does not understand the seriousness of this situation.”
Taxpayers supporting the multi-billion dollar reactor restart need to be aware of potential risks. The operator's proposed plan to rescue the wayward fuel assembly could have important radiological consequences.
“Holtec is taking legal shortcuts to restart fast without careful planning and review,” adds Blind. "The worst thing that might happen could potentially be within regulatory limits. They told the NRC that the doses within the control room and on the perimeter of the plant were acceptable.
"The legality of this action does not mitigate the fact that workers and people living near the plant could still receive a much higher dose than what they would normally get.
"For example workers in the control room could quickly receive up to 60 percent of their annual exposure limit in a worst case scenario. It’s also possible that radioactive gases escaping from the plant would force evacuation of nearby residents, despite the fact that this exposure level remains within NRC legal limits.
"As a nuclear power plant executive I too have requested emergency processing. This is the kind of thing that happens when you are waiting for a replacement pump that is arriving later in the day.
"It makes sense to keep the plant running rather than doing a shutdown for a short period of time. However, I have never heard of anyone using plant economics as the rationale for an NRC emergency licensing amendment during startup. Historically I don’t think the NRC has ever done this.
“Holtec has said camera monitors prove the damaged fuel assembly and reactor are also in a safe condition. There is no urgency to begin refueling. It is reasonable to assume that the work can be done safely following the normal review process that takes months.
"What is not reasonable is to do this work as if it is an emergency. Holtec needs to provide more information to the NRC to make sure everything is done legally."
One of Blind’s major concerns is why the design factors that prevent this kind of fuel assembly loading failure didn’t work.
“Emergency processing was never intended to shut down all avenues for public participation in the process that includes well informed experts."
A key question surrounds the NRC’s decision to give Holtec a waiver that allowed fuel handling staff to work well beyond normal limits during a startup.
Employees working in this safety critical realm were permitted to be on the job for up to 54 hours a week and get just three days off every fifteen days.
“Was fatigue a factor?” asks Blind who points out that this could kind of overtime could not happen in other safety critical industries such as the airlines.
He is especially concerned about the possibility that core loading could resume while the NRC is processing his petition. Additional fuel assemblies could be subjected to the same presently unidentified condition before the NRC has completed consideration of the requested enforcement action.
Another big question mark is turnover in senior management during the months leading up to the fuel loading failure. Holtec’s president, chief nuclear officer and plant manager Jeff Borah have all departed.
Borah was an exceptionally well-qualified Palisades employee who worked tirelessly in ten key positions at Palisades for both Entergy and Holtec since 2012. This well respected nuclear energy pro got it right when he told the New York Times in July that restarting this plant "is like building a fire truck on your way to a fire."
This underscores a question for the plant’s new chief safety officer. I’ve been told that his first day on the job was Monday August 31, the day after the fuel assembly disaster.
Who was in charge at Palisades on Sunday August 30th? How does this person explain what went wrong?
“We know that something highly unusual happened on August 30,” says Blind. “There had to be multiple failures for this to occur. A reasonable person would say that Holtec is going too fast. We need to understand everything that went wrong to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again. We want the NRC to make corrective actions."
Understandably, Holtec’s proposed recovery operation worries Kalamazoo based Kevin Kamps, executive director of Don’t Waste Michigan. This dedicated watchdog has kept a careful eye on this plant for decades.
From his vantage point, 35 miles downwind from Palisades, it’s clear that risks associated with Holtec’s recovery plan are not hypothetical. There are a number of precedents going back to the old days when Consumers Power (now Consumers Energy) and one of the nation’s most experienced nuclear fleet operators, Entergy, ran the plant. Here Kamps summarizes a few of the reactor’s greatest hits:
"In 1993, a broken fuel rod led to two emergency evacuations of all Consumers Power plant personnel from the containment. This was a precaution against significant potential radioactive hazards, including during the recovery operation."
"In 2005, a two-day dangle of a 107-ton, fully loaded highly radioactive waste container above the indoor wet storage pool was a close call with catastrophe."
"This Consumers Energy incident was kept quiet for several months. The recent August 30, 2026 incident was concealed until September 21. NRC's top public affairs spokesperson for the Midwest region, Viktoria Mitlyng, said in both cases, the public was not informed because the incidents were not deemed ‘reportable.'
"In both cases, it took vigilant watchdogs and reporters to bring the incidents to light, not the owner/operator of Palisades, nor NRC.
"From December 2024 to April 2025, Holtec undertook a large-scale transfer of highly radioactive waste from the indoor wet storage pool into outdoor dry cask storage.
"Holtec did so with no radiological emergency plan in place. There was no evacuation planning for the local, area, and perhaps even regional population, if a disaster unfolded, due to the drop of a heavy cask into the pool.
"Holtec took advantage of Palisades' then decommissioning status, a regulation-free zone, despite the inherent risks of such an operation.
"Rookie error-prone Holtec's unprecedented restart of the Palisades zombie reactor will risk a Chornobyl or Fukushima-scale catastrophe, a hundred yards from the shoreline of the Great Lakes, drinking water supply for more than 40 million people in eight U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and a large number of Indigenous Nations."
While Holtec and the NRC don’t share Kamps’s view this Palisades debate is caught in a kind of legal never never land.
In the near term it is unlikely that Congress, the Michigan Legislature, the state’s Attorney General, or public intervenors can quickly score a data center style moratorium on Holtec. Given Congressionally backed Department of Energy support for four other nuclear plants Holtec plans to build next to Palisades and in northern Michigan, the company remains optimistic.
Kevin Kamp's careful analysis reveals the total tab for this portion of Trump’s Nuclear Renaissance could bring in $16 billion for Holtec to pursue its dreams to operate five Michigan nuclear reactors.
At the moment it’s highly likely that Holtec will soon be pulling the trigger on a Palisades startup.
Only one person, the politician who effectively controls the NRC, could stop resumption of fuel reloading in beautiful Covert Township. Unfortunately at the moment he and his Secretary of Defense are a bit preoccupied with another nuclear reactor in far off Iran.
That could change quickly during a West Michigan campaign swing. Perhaps he and his wife would enjoy a tour with Republican Congressman Bill Huzienga who sees Palisades as an economic engine for his district located in the plant evacuation zone.
I can imagine Krishna Singh joining them for a grand reopening reactor tour days before the midterm election. They would look good posing for photographers on a Lake Michigan beach with sand beneath their toes.
There couldn’t be a better backdrop than Palisades going critical at sunset.
The Limerick plant in Pottstown, Pa. (Photo: Constellation)
Google has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation to support adding 890 MW of new nuclear capacity to 11 reactors across the PJM Interconnection region, including in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
The announcement Tuesday is the latest in a growing number of deals involving utility companies, tech giants, and nuclear power generation. It is the second announcement in about a week involving Constellation, as the utility recently entered a long-term PPA with Amazon that will see its Calvert Cliffs power plant in Maryland get a 190-MWe uprate. Google, meanwhile, is involved with a number of nuclear projects, including a partnership with Southern Nuclear’s Georgia Power, announced in September, to uprate the Vogtle and Hatch plants.
Uprates incoming: Constellation will invest more than $4.3 billion in the 11 units as part of the PPA. This work will include modernizing and upgrading turbines, steam generators, and digital control systems. It has not been announced yet which Constellation-owned units are part of the PPA, but Constellation spokesman Paul Dempsey told Nuclear News the plants involved include Braidwood, Byron, LaSalle, and Quad Cities in Illinois; Limerick in Pennsylvania; and PSEG Nuclear’s Salem in New Jersey (Constellation owns 43 percent of Salem). A video Constellation posted on its Facebook page also named Braidwood as one of the selected facilities.
According to Constellation, the first uprate is “expected to be delivered by 2028.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s list of expected uprate applications has Constellation submitting multiple applications over the next few years, including one listed for the fourth quarter of 2028. The list, however, doesn’t contain any specific plant names or units for Constellation.
Both companies said the PPA aligns with the Trump administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge and the Department of Energy’s UPRISE program, and is intended to support energy growth by increasing the power output from existing nuclear facilities without passing costs on to customers.
“We’re committed to meeting our growth responsibly by actively investing in clean, reliable power that brings new capacity to our nation’s grids,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of energy and power. “Our agreement with Constellation to fund nuclear reactor uprates will strengthen the PJM grid, which serves 67 million people, all while protecting energy affordability and supporting local union jobs.”
Other details: In addition to the nuclear PPA, the two companies entered into a separate 15-year energy supply agreement for 2,700 MW of power within the PJM region.
Under an expanded five-year technology agreement, the two companies also reached an agreement on Constellation’s use of Google’s cloud and artificial intelligence services, including Gemini Enterprise agentic workflows. The “AI for Energy” approach would shorten engineering and regulatory work on uprates, improve construction and operation performance, and better protect critical infrastructure, according to the announcement.
This agreement is expected to sustain roughly 4,400 existing jobs and create another 7,200 new construction jobs during the building period, Google and Constellation said.
“Preserving and expanding the output of the existing nuclear fleet and developing new clean generation is critical to meeting our nation’s growing energy needs while keeping costs affordable for homes and businesses,” Constellation President and CEO Joe Dominguez said in a statement. “This long-term clean energy collaboration with Google can serve as a model for how technology companies and the energy industry can work together to responsibly develop the digital economy and invest in our nation’s energy infrastructure in a way that delivers grid-wide benefits for all, funded by private entities.”
Amanda Oglesby
