Palisades

The growing number of energy-intensive data centers coming online across the U.S. is spurring utilities to ramp up plans to add new sources of power generation but also complicating efforts to decarbonize. One of the hottest topics in energy today is how plans to restart shuttered nuclear plants and build new small modular reactors (SMRs) could help accomplish both goals. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at why data centers and nuclear power seem like a natural fit, examine which shuttered plants might be brought back to life, and outline plans by a pair of U.S. economic titans to bring new advanced reactors online. 

There is a lot of talk about the best way to meet the expected increases in U.S. power demand, driven by manufacturing growth and the rapid development of large-scale data centers, which has sparked renewed interest in nuclear power. The most recent reactors to come online were Units 3 and 4 at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power station, but they came in well over budget and far behind schedule. Still, the startup of those units is a significant milestone as they are the first new reactors to come online in the U.S. since 2016. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the lessons learned from the Vogtle project and what they might mean for future nuclear development. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is preparing to oversee a restart of a shuttered nuclear power plant for the first time — the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan. Other reactors have successfully restarted after stretches of inactivity but Palisades was in the process of being decommissioned and no longer has its operating license, so it faces a complicated — and unprecedented — path forward, helped in large part by a $1.52 billion conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss what it will take to restart the Palisades plant, which could provide carbon-free electricity for 800,000 homes.