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For the first time in U.S. history, a nuclear power plant is going back online.
The recommissioning of Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert Township, Mich., is just one part of an extraordinary turnaround in the nuclear industry engineered by a unique collaboration among the White House, the IBEW and American industry.
Palisades was shuttered in 2022, but a $1.5 billion loan guarantee, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will allow it to come back in 24 months for less than one-tenth the cost of a new nuclear plant.
And the whole project — including the small modular reactors proposed for the same site — is covered by a project labor agreement with the IBEW.
"Recommissioning Palisades is going to bring back middle-class, union jobs that we thought were permanently gone from this part of the state," said Sixth District International Vice President Mike Clemmons. "This was all made possible because we have the most important seat at the most important table in America today. When the nation's industrial and environmental policy was signed into law by President Joe Biden, it was 100% pro-labor."
Reopening Palisades will create or retain up to 600 permanent jobs next year and more than 1,000 temporary construction and maintenance jobs during the facility's regularly scheduled refueling and maintenance periods every 18 to 24 months.
"For the first time in generations, America is serious about becoming a manufacturing powerhouse, but it also needs to cut carbon emissions. We've always said we need nuclear to do that. But before Biden, that wasn't what was happening," Clemmons said.
Palisades was the 13th nuclear reactor to close down in the last 10 years. Six more closures have been announced. The U.S. Department of Energy issued a report in 2022 warning that half of the remaining 92 reactors were at risk of closing.
Just two years after that report, there are dozens of small modular reactors in the works, Diablo Canyon in California was rescued from closure, and Palisades — dark, defueled and in the process of permanent closure — already has dozens of IBEW members working to get the reactor back online. ![read_more](images/more.gif) |