When Entergy shut down the Palisades nuclear plant in May 2022, the town on the shore of Lake Michigan lost more than a landmark. It lost hundreds of steady, well-paid jobs overnight. This month, some of those same jobs are coming back, because the reactor itself is coming back online.
What Actually Restarted This Week
Holtec International started loading fuel into the Palisades reactor, a move that puts the plant on track to become the first US commercial reactor revived after full decommissioning. Workers are lowering 204 fuel assemblies into the core, some fresh uranium fuel, others partially used assemblies saved from the plant’s last operating cycles, part of a supply chain we’ve tracked in our look at the state of the US nuclear fuel supply in 2026.
Getting a shuttered reactor cleared to run again takes more than flipping a switch. Holtec’s crews replaced sections of steam generator tubing and scraped out corrosion. They swapped the control rod drive mechanism nozzles: the parts that steer the rods which shut the reactor down in an emergency. Technicians flushed the primary cooling system with chemicals to strip out contamination, then ran a passivation process to protect the metal from future corrosion, while inspectors checked the reactor vessel itself for cracks and wear. Every one of those steps had to pass Nuclear Regulatory Commission review before fuel could go in.
Why the Timeline Matters More Than the Megawatts
Palisades will add 805 megawatts of steady, round-the-clock power to Michigan’s grid, enough for roughly 800,000 homes, and it gets there far faster than building a new reactor from scratch would. Holtec also wants to extend the plant’s operating license from 2031 out to 2051, doubling its remaining lifespan. The US Department of Energy backed the project with a loan guarantee worth up to $1.52 billion and has already disbursed more than $491 million across six payments since 2024, treating an idle reactor as a fast, cheap source of new capacity instead of a stranded asset.
For the electricians, operators, and security staff who got laid off when Palisades shut down, that federal bet translates into something simpler: a paycheck at the same plant, doing the same work, years sooner than a brand-new reactor could have offered it.
A Blueprint Other Towns Might Follow
Holtec isn’t stopping at restoration. The company plans to add two SMR-300 small modular reactors, Pioneer 1 and 2, at the same Palisades site, pairing a life-extension project with new-build technology on one property. It also builds on a broader push to expand US enrichment capacity, including Urenco’s 50% larger enrichment plant now under construction.
If the restart goes smoothly, other utilities weighing early closures elsewhere will have a real precedent to point to instead of a hypothetical one. Watch for Palisades to reach criticality and reconnect to the grid, the moment a mothballed plant officially becomes a working one again. World Nuclear News has more on the restart timeline.