A battle is brewing over how to retrieve a tipped fuel assembly at the soon-to-be-restarted Palisades nuclear reactor in Michigan. The reactor, which closed in 2022 but was purchased by Holtec International, has become a poster child for an AI and data centre-induced nuclear energy renaissance in the US. Efforts to restart the reactor in Covert, Michigan, hit a snag on August 30, when, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), one of the fuel assemblies tipped during fuelling, causing resumption to be placed on hold. The NRC said no radiation was released during the incident. But the incident has confirmed concerns about the unorthodox nature of restarting a shuttered nuclear reactor, which are known as “zombie reactors”. According to publicly available documents and correspondence between Palisades workers and the NRC, Holtec International has proposed a method for retrieving the tipped fuel.In the requests Holtec made to the NRC, the company says that the fuel rods have “retained their integrity as primary fission product barrier”. The energy firm also says that the fuel assembly is situated at a 30-degree angle “from the core plate”. In its application, Holtec proposed using a specially designed recovery tool to lift the tilted assembly and a protective canister to support and enclose it during its transfer from the reactor vessel to the spent fuel pool.A news...
This page contains an attributed headline and the preview text supplied through the publisher’s RSS feed. Copyright in the original reporting belongs to The National.
