Regulators found a chilled work environment at Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant ahead of its restart

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found a chilled work environment in two departments at Holtec’s Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, where employees were hesitant to raise concerns partly out of fear of retaliation. The finding, issued in a letter dated Oct. 13, 2026, covers the supply chain and quality assurance departments. The agency said it identified no violations and no significant safety issues, and that it does not expect the finding to disrupt the planned restart of the plant.

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A chilled work environment is a workplace where staff are reluctant to speak up about safety. Regulators treat it as a warning sign because the people who handle procurement and quality checks are the ones who would notice a bad part or a skipped step. At Palisades the warning arrives while the plant is working toward its restart, and the NRC’s response is a set of required steps rather than a penalty.

What the NRC found in supply chain and quality assurance

The letter, posted in the NRC’s public document system, reports on an inspection that ran from July 20 to Sept. 3, 2026. Inspectors held focus groups and interviews with more than 120 people across many departments, along with first-line supervisors and senior managers at Palisades and at Holtec. Overall, they concluded that Palisades maintained a safety-conscious work environment in which most personnel felt free to raise concerns. The exception was the pair of departments named in the finding.

In those departments, employees were hesitant to use the corrective action program and the employee concerns program, in part from fear of retaliation, including termination. Concerns they raised touched on procurement and equipment qualification, procedures for work control, and whether quality assurance can operate independently. Some staff also felt management emphasized production over safety concerns, and some were unsure whom to contact after staff turnover. Work planning, coordination and communication also remained challenged.

The letter was addressed to Fadi Diya, Holtec’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, and signed by Jeremy Groom, acting director of the NRC’s Office of the Chief Nuclear Reactor Inspector. It credited mitigating factors, including independent verification, supervisory oversight and collaboration across departments, and stated confidence that the planned restart will not be adversely affected.

The corrective steps Holtec must take

The NRC’s news release lists what the company has to do. Holtec must share the findings with employees, take immediate steps to reassure staff, have an independent evaluation carried out, submit a corrective action plan within 30 days, and then implement the corrective actions. The agency will review the plan, oversee Holtec’s response and keep checking through inspections that the issues are resolved.

The letter is more specific than the release. The plan due about Nov. 12 must cover immediate reassurance, the independence of the evaluator, the extent of the problem beyond supply chain and quality assurance, the corrective actions and how their effectiveness will be measured, and whether the corrective action and employee concerns programs are working. The NRC also asked to meet with Holtec about two weeks after receiving the plan, and it wants an evaluator experienced in nuclear safety-culture assessments using enough interviews or surveys to support sound conclusions.

Palisades and the restart

The chilling-effect letter was not the only Palisades action that week. On Oct. 13 the NRC also approved a license amendment that lets the plant use custom equipment and procedures to move a tilted fuel assembly from the reactor core to the spent fuel pool. In its release on the amendment, issued Oct. 14, the agency said its review “confirmed that the activity can be carried out safely and in compliance with NRC regulatory requirements.” The release itself does not explain how the assembly became tilted.

The amendment document, Amendment No. 283 to the plant’s operating license, fills in the detail. It covers a single fuel assembly, designated DD41, that sits at about a 30-degree angle with its upper end leaning against the core shroud. The method uses the containment polar crane and a custom fuel movement device to lift the assembly underwater into a transfer canister. The NRC issued the amendment under exigent circumstances because the licensee needed to resume core loading, and the staff said underwater cameras and coolant chemistry sampling showed no cladding failure.

The NRC’s facility profile for Palisades places the plant in Covert, Michigan, about 5 miles south of South Haven, and describes a Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor licensed for 2,565.4 megawatts thermal. The profile says the plant permanently ceased operations on May 20, 2022, and lists the rescission of the cessation certifications on Aug. 25, 2025, along with both October 2026 actions among its recent entries.

The two actions point in different directions, and both belong in the picture. The amendment shows the regulator working through a specific hardware problem and clearing it. The chilled-environment finding shows it examining the culture around the plant’s work, an area that does not appear in any equipment list. Neither document sets a restart date, and the agency’s statement is only that the finding is not expected to affect the planned restart, based on current information.

The NRC grounds its approach in its 1996 policy statement on freedom to raise safety concerns and in a regulatory issue summary on maintaining a safety-conscious work environment, according to the letter. The next marker is the corrective action plan due in mid-November. Whether the independent evaluation confirms the NRC’s reading, and whether the problem extends to other parts of the organization, will decide how much attention the restart schedule draws.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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