The restart of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Van Buren County may not come by the end of the year.

Holtec International, the owner of Palisades, has been targeting late 2025 for the restart. Holtec manager of government affairs and communications Nick Culp tells us while they’re still on track, the main priority is completing all of the necessary preparations, and not on meeting an arbitrary date.

So, when could Palisades be back online?

“We’re hopeful that that will happen sometime in the near future,” Culp said. “And whether that’s by the year end, which we are targeting, or if our work and approvals require us that we roll into the early new year, that’ll be determined by when we get our work completed.”

Culp says there are about 600 full-time employees on site and another 1,400 contracted employees working to get the plant ready.

“We are reaching the end of our restart project at this point. I will say we still have a lot of work that we need to get done before the plant comes online. And the bottom line is that Palisades will be synced to the grid back at 100% power once all of our restart work is completed.”

Culp says the plant just received all of its new fuel, and that’s waiting in the spent fuel pool before being placed in the reactor. Staff just completed cleaning the steam generators, and they’re now reassembling the main turbine generator. There’s also a lot of testing that needs to be done before the plant can be fired back on.

Culp says the focus is on doing everything thoroughly and safely, even as it feels like crunch time is almost here.