Press Release

Palisades Power Plant Returns to Service after Successful Refueling, Comprehensive Inspections and Other Maintenance

COVERT, Mich. (December 28, 2018) – Palisades Power Plant returned to service this morning, following the completion of its successful scheduled refueling and maintenance outage. Control room personnel returned the plant to operation, sending electricity to the grid after a planned shutdown that began October 28. This was the 26th refueling in the plant’s history.

“We are committed to continuing to provide safe, secure and reliable electricity to area families and businesses through the plant’s permanent closure in 2022,” said Charlie Arnone, Site Vice President and Entergy’s top official at Palisades. “Entergy continues to make the investments needed for the plant, as evidenced by the $87 million of work performed during this outage.”

During the scheduled refueling and maintenance outage, trained professionals replaced about one-third of the fuel in the reactor, inspected and upgraded hundreds of pipes, pumps, electrical components and other equipment.

“Around 1,900 professionals, including nearly 1,300 specialist contractors, performed hundreds of activities that can only occur while the plant is offline,” added Arnone. “Hundreds of thousands of person-hours of work were performed over the last several weeks to prepare Palisades for safe and continuous operation over the next 3.5 years. Thanks to the pride, professionalism and hard work of our team, Palisades is recognized as a top performer within the nuclear power industryand ranks in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s highest safety category.”

This was the second-to-last refueling outage at Palisades before the plant’s permanent retirement in the spring of 2022. On August 1, 2018, Entergy announced that it had agreed to sell the subsidiaries that own Palisades and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., to a subsidiary of U.S.-based Holtec International for purposes of accelerated decommissioning afterthose plants’ respective shutdowns and reactor defuelings. For Palisades, that transaction would not occur until after the spring of 2022 and would include the sale of the decommissioned Big Rock Point Plant near Charlevoix, Mich. The sales include the transfer of the licenses, spent fuel, and Nuclear Decommissioning Trusts. The transactions are subject to conditions to closing, including federal approval of the license transfers.