Two shuttered nuclear power plants in the United States are now the subjects of active federal financing, regulatory review, and grid-interconnection filings, with operators Holtec and Constellation Energy pushing to return the reactors to service in 2026 and 2027 respectively. The Department of Energy has approved a sixth loan disbursement to Holtec for the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, while DOE separately closed a $1 billion loan to Constellation for the facility formerly known as Three Mile Island Unit 1, now renamed the Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center. Whether these restarts deliver power on schedule depends on a tangle of NRC licensing milestones, FERC market-rule decisions, and PJM transmission requirements that no previous U.S. nuclear project has had to clear in this sequence.
Federal loans and a FERC waiver tie the two restarts together
On the surface, Palisades and the Crane center are separate projects run by different companies in different states. But both rely on the same federal financing architecture and face overlapping regulatory clocks. DOE’s Loan Programs Office has closed a $1 billion loan to Constellation for the Crane restart, and the agency has now released six separate disbursements to Holtec for Palisades, with each tranche linked to NRC milestones including an environmental assessment and licensing approvals.
The financial commitment alone does not guarantee either plant will generate electricity again. Constellation filed a request for a prospective, limited waiver with FERC under docket ER26-2028, seeking relief from PJM market deliverability rules that could block the Crane center from participating in the next capacity auction. That filing ties the restart timeline directly to grid interconnection requirements, meaning that even a fully licensed reactor could sit idle if transmission rules are not adjusted in time. The waiver outcome will signal whether federal loans can overcome market-rule bottlenecks or whether grid operators retain an effective veto over restart schedules.
NRC licensing and DOE disbursements track Palisades toward 2026
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission maintains a dedicated information page for Palisades that consolidates restart inspection reports, the plant’s transition back into the Reactor Oversight Process, and NRC communications about review schedules. Submissions referenced on that page include steam generator operational assessments and other technical documents that the regulator must evaluate before authorizing a return to power. The NRC page does not list a firm calendar date for restart, but the project’s public trajectory points toward 2026 based on the pace of inspections and licensing actions documented there.
DOE’s decision to approve a sixth loan disbursement to Holtec confirms that the project continues to meet the agency’s internal benchmarks. Each disbursement is conditioned on specific regulatory progress, including the NRC’s Finding of No Significant Impact and broader licensing approvals. That structure gives DOE a built-in brake: if Holtec falls behind on NRC milestones, the next tranche of federal money does not flow. For ratepayers and grid planners in the Midwest, the practical question is whether Palisades can clear its remaining NRC reviews fast enough to contribute power during a period of rising electricity demand driven by data centers and manufacturing expansion.
Holtec has framed the restart as both a reliability measure and a decarbonization tool, emphasizing that an existing nuclear site can add carbon-free megawatts faster than a greenfield project. The NRC’s oversight, however, focuses narrowly on safety and security, not on climate or market needs. That separation of roles means positive signals from DOE and state officials do not translate into automatic regulatory shortcuts. Every component inspection, systems test, and staffing plan must still satisfy the same standards that apply to an operating reactor.
Crane center faces a different bottleneck in PJM market rules
The Crane center presents a distinct challenge. The NRC’s public information for the former Three Mile Island Unit 1 documents the name change, the permanent cessation date, and the submissions Constellation has made to support restoration and restart activities. On the licensing side, the project is advancing through NRC review, following a path similar in outline to Palisades: reconstituting safety programs, updating technical specifications, and demonstrating that equipment mothballed after shutdown can be returned to service or replaced.
Constellation’s FERC waiver filing under ER26-2028 reveals a second, less visible obstacle: PJM’s capacity market rules were not designed for a plant that shut down and then seeks to reconnect years later. In the absence of tailored provisions, a returning reactor can be treated like a brand-new generator, forced into lengthy interconnection queues and potentially responsible for major transmission upgrades triggered by its own reentry. For a project already carrying significant restart costs, that additional burden could be decisive.
Without the waiver, the Crane center could face transmission upgrade requirements and queue delays that push its commercial operation date well past 2027. That would strand the $1 billion DOE loan in a project generating no revenue and no power. The FERC filing effectively asks the commission to treat the Crane center as a returning resource rather than a new entrant, a distinction that carries real consequences for how quickly the plant can sell capacity into the PJM grid. If FERC denies or delays the waiver, the project’s economics shift significantly, and any future operator considering a similar restart at another shuttered plant would face the same barrier.
The outcome will also test how far federal policy can go in aligning nuclear restarts with regional market design. DOE can provide low-cost financing and public backing, but it cannot unilaterally change how PJM assigns transmission costs or validates deliverability. That authority rests with FERC and the grid operator, which must balance reliability, competition, and fairness to other market participants that have waited in the same queues or funded prior upgrades.
What the two projects reveal about restarting retired reactors
No U.S. operator has ever brought a permanently shut-down commercial nuclear reactor back to power. Palisades and the Crane center are testing whether that is a technical impossibility or simply a problem that had never attracted enough money and political will to solve. The evidence so far suggests the answer sits somewhere in between. Federal financing through DOE’s loan program has removed the most obvious financial barrier, but the projects still have to navigate a regulatory landscape built for either continuously operating reactors or entirely new plants.
On the technical side, both restarts must show that long-idled equipment can meet current safety standards. That entails detailed inspections, component replacements, and updated analyses reflecting today’s understanding of aging, seismic risk, and severe accidents. NRC staff must review not only the physical hardware but also the organizational capacity to run a high-hazard facility after years without routine operations. Training pipelines, emergency preparedness, and security programs all have to be rebuilt or substantially revised.
On the market side, Palisades and the Crane center illustrate different versions of the same structural question: how should the grid treat a resource that once existed, then disappeared, and now seeks to return? In Michigan, the focus is on whether a revived nuclear plant can slot back into regional planning assumptions quickly enough to influence transmission and capacity decisions. In PJM, the Crane project forces a more explicit reckoning with rules that implicitly assumed retirement was permanent.
If both projects succeed, they could establish a template for other retirements that still sit on intact sites with salvageable infrastructure. That template would likely include staged federal loans tied to licensing milestones, early engagement with grid operators on interconnection status, and clear guidance from NRC on the documentation required to reverse a permanent shutdown. If either project stalls-because of an adverse FERC ruling, an NRC safety concern, or simple schedule slippage-the lesson may be the opposite: that once a large nuclear plant closes, the combination of regulatory inertia and market design makes reopening the exception rather than the rule.
For now, Palisades and the Crane center remain test cases. Their progress will determine not only whether two specific reactors rejoin the U.S. fleet, but also whether “retired” nuclear capacity should be seen as a fixed historical fact or a potential reserve that policy and investment can still bring back onto the grid.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
