One fuel assembly leaning out of true has become the most closely watched object in the U.S. nuclear restart effort. Holtec International began loading fuel into the Palisades reactor in Michigan in August, then stopped after an assembly tilted from upright, and the company still has to determine why. Palisades is one of three shuttered American plants now being brought back, together worth about 2.25 gigawatts, and the other two are Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Unit 1 and Iowa’s Duane Arnold.
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The Department of Energy is lending up to $4.4 billion across the three projects, according to the Associated Press survey published on Oct. 16. Each is at a different stage, with a different owner and a different power customer waiting at the end.
Palisades: fuel in, one assembly out of line
Palisades, an 800-megawatt pressurized water reactor on Lake Michigan, ran from 1971 until Entergy closed it in 2022. Holtec bought it and had started dismantling it, though Michigan Public’s reporting says none of those steps were permanent. A 2024 federal loan of $1.5 billion, approved under the Biden administration and continued under the Trump administration, helped fund the return, and the plant’s license runs to 2031.
The regulatory groundwork came earlier. POWER Magazine reported that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Holtec’s licensing package in late July 2025 and that on Aug. 25, 2025 Holtec said the plant was authorized to receive fuel, the first U.S. plant to return to operations status. Michigan Public adds that regulators approved an emergency plan to move the tilted assembly, a step reported Oct. 14. Power purchase agreements require Palisades to be in service by March 2027.
Three Mile Island Unit 1, renamed Crane
The reactor Constellation Energy is restoring is the plant that Exelon, then Constellation’s parent, shut in 2019, citing losses and a lack of state subsidies. It is Unit 1, not the unit involved in the 1979 partial meltdown. The company now calls the site the Crane Clean Energy Center, a name the NRC approved in May, and NS Energy reports that Constellation is on track for 2027, possibly a year ahead of the original plan after an expedited grid connection was approved.
Microsoft has agreed to buy the output under a 20-year deal signed in September 2024. The restart was announced that year at a cost of $1.6 billion, and the same trade report puts staffing at more than 64% of its target, with nearly 400 full-time employees. Joe Dominguez, Constellation’s chief executive, said the company was on track to make history ahead of schedule.
Duane Arnold: the longest wait
NextEra Energy’s Iowa plant, near Cedar Rapids, is the furthest from power. It was due to close in October 2020 but shut early, in August 2020, after storm damage; Iowa Public Radio traces that damage to the August 2020 derecho, which hit two sets of cooling towers. NextEra and Google aim for early 2029, with Google taking more than 90% of the output pending NRC approval.
An NRC project manager, Justin Poole, told Iowa Public Radio that issuing a bundle of licensing actions, slated on or before January 2028, would let the plant move from decommissioning to operating status. NextEra chief executive John Ketchum, quoted by the AP, called the Iowa project a perfect example of data centers paying their own way.
The cost side is split too. The $4.4 billion in federal lending covers all three plants, and the AP does not break out how much goes to each. The only per-plant dollar figures in the sources reviewed are the $1.5 billion Palisades loan from 2024 and Constellation’s $1.6 billion estimate for the Crane restart.
Who backs the restarts and who doubts them
Opinion on the lending splits along familiar lines. In the AP’s account, Todd Allen of the University of Michigan said there is demand in the country for more power, and likened restarting a plant to restarting a car that sat idle for years. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said such plants can be restored safely if standards are set and funded, but added that “That’s not happening at this point.” On the policy side, Jennifer Gordon of the Atlantic Council supported federal financing for the restarts, while Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation opposed using taxpayer money for them. The AP also notes that Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly toured the Crane plant.
The sequence also differs by owner. Holtec’s plant is the only one of the three that has crossed the licensing line into fuel handling, while Constellation’s and NextEra’s remain in review, with the Iowa plant’s NRC actions scheduled for issuance no later than January 2028. That ordering explains why the March 2027 contractual date at Palisades is the first test of the restart model, and why a delay there would be read across the other two projects.
The dates now carry the story. Palisades faces a March 2027 contractual deadline, Crane aims for 2027, and Duane Arnold is not due until early 2029. What happens with the tilted assembly will show whether the first of the three can meet its date.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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