A single fuel assembly tipped over during loading work at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert, Michigan, on Aug. 30, and the incident has paused Holtec International’s push to become the first company in the United States to restart a shuttered commercial reactor. Viktoria Mitlyng, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the assembly was not dropped but “tipped,” and that there was “no radiological release” and “no workers or the public have been affected.” Fuel loading at the plant remains paused nearly three weeks later while Holtec works out how to retrieve it.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed on Monday, Sept. 21, that it is reviewing the incident, more than three weeks after it happened and only after outside pressure forced the disclosure into public view.
A grapple let go and the assembly tipped over
Holtec’s own account, posted to its website after a reporter’s questions, said that during fuel-loading activities one fuel assembly “tilted from its upright position after it had been placed, and the fuel-handling machine grapple had been disengaged.” Plant personnel evaluated what had happened and notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company statement said, adding that “fuel loading remains paused while Holtec addresses the affected fuel assembly.” Mitlyng said Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors stationed at Palisades have monitored restart activities, including all fuel-handling work, since it began, and that the tipped assembly did not meet the threshold requiring Holtec to report it to either the agency or the public.
Consistent with the plant’s nuclear quality assurance program, Holtec said it had opened a root-cause evaluation to determine what caused the assembly to tip and to identify any corrective actions the finding requires before fuel loading can resume in full. Mitlyng added that the agency’s inspectors will keep monitoring the situation at Palisades, a presence she described as constant throughout the restart process rather than something added because of the tipped assembly.
Holtec plans to ask regulators how to pull it back out
Mitlyng said Holtec has indicated it plans to submit a license amendment request covering the method it wants to use to retrieve the tipped assembly, a filing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will evaluate before any retrieval work goes ahead. That review adds a new regulatory step to a restart timeline Holtec had hoped would put Palisades back online this year or in early 2027. The company bought the reactor, which first went online in 1971 and was shut down in 2022, with plans to reopen it, and it has cleared several regulatory hurdles this year, including federal approval to shift the plant’s status from decommissioned toward an operating license.
Just a day before the tipped-assembly incident, on Aug. 31, Holtec had posted photographs on Facebook showing nuclear fuel bundles being loaded into the Palisades reactor vessel for the first time, calling the moment “history in the making” after more than two years of inspection, maintenance and equipment upgrades across the station. A license amendment request is not a quick filing: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission typically takes months to review the technical basis for a proposed retrieval method before it can approve one, which means the tipped assembly alone could push any restart further into 2027 even without further complications.
A physicist’s social-media post forced the disclosure
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec said nothing publicly about the tipped assembly for roughly two and a half weeks until Edwin Lyman, a physicist and director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, flagged a Reddit post alleging Holtec had dropped a partially burned fuel assembly during fueling. Lyman wrote that an “eagle-eyed observer” had brought the Reddit claim to his attention, and that there had been “nothing but silence from either the company or” the regulator. A reporter then contacted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission directly, prompting Mitlyng’s on-record confirmation that an assembly had tipped, not dropped, and Holtec’s subsequent public statement. Neither the company nor the agency had issued a press release, a safety notice or any public acknowledgment of the incident in the roughly three weeks between the tip on Aug. 30 and the confirmation that followed the outside inquiry.
AI’s power appetite is driving the restart push
Palisades matters beyond Covert because it sits inside a broader industry bet that reopening shuttered reactors can help meet the electricity demand of AI data centers, a demand tied to why a plant closed since 2022 is being fueled again at all. The plant first went online in 1971, and over the final 15 years of its operating life under its previous owners, it drew repeated criticism over safety culture, criticism that predates both Holtec’s ownership and the current restart effort. A 2012 Nuclear Regulatory Commission report warned about a work culture at Palisades in which safety concerns were often dismissed, and security staff were placed on leave in 2016 for failing to follow fire-prevention protocols under a previous owner, Entergy.
A worker also fell off a refueling bridge into a pool of water a little more than a year ago, without serious injury, an incident that predates the fuel-loading phase but sits in the same file of minor mishaps regulators now weigh against Holtec’s push to bring the reactor back online.
Holtec had not responded to a request for comment by the time the tipped-assembly incident became public, and the company has not said when it expects the retrieval process, or the license amendment review behind it, to finish.
More from Morning Overview
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
