The Palisades nuclear power plant in Van Buren County has received its first delivery of fuel since shutting down as the project to restart the facility gets closer to completion.

Holtec International’s Nick Culp tells us the fuel delivery was made this month and represents a major milestone in the historic restart effort.

“This is the first time that a shuttered nuclear plant that went into decommissioning has emerged from decommissioning back into operation status and has now received new fuel for its restart,” Culp said. 

Culp says securing a fuel vendor has been a major part of preparing for the restart, something the team has been working on behind the scenes for quite some time. After receiving authorization from the NRC in August to receive fuel, 68 assemblies in total are now on site and in secure storage.

“Each fuel assembly is made up of a bundle of rods that are approximately 12 foot long. Each rod contains several hundred fuel pellets that are roughly the size of the tip of your pinky or a pencil eraser. Each pellet has the energy potential of one ton of coal.”

While the delivery of fuel is a major step, Culp says there are still plenty of tasks to complete at the site before the reactor can be refired. Reassembly of the main turbine generator is now underway following more than a year of inspection, testing, and maintenance.

There are currently more than 2,000 workers at Palisades getting ready for the restart. Culp says 600 of them are regular plant staff, and the rest are support staff, similar to who would be brought in for a refueling outage.

Culp says there’s no hard date for the restart of the plant, but it remains on track for late this year.