Once upon a time in Michigan, there was an aged nuclear power plant called Palisades. Since it started operation in 1971 until it was permanently closed in 2022, it ran about 73% of the time, about three days out of every four. But the old nuclear plant could not financially compete against renewables, and after its electric subsidy from Michigan expired in 2022, Palisades was closed and sold for scrap metal.

Holtec, the scrap company that bought the Palisades’ carcass, had never designed, constructed or operated a nuclear power plant. Its expertise was demolishing (decommissioning) them. So it neglected the aging steel pipes, allowing them to sit idle and deteriorate. It should come as no surprise that, like everything metallic, the nuclear pipes began to corrode and crack from that neglect.

In essence, Holtec deliberately pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall and claimed that it “wasn’t unexpected” that cracks developed in the nuclear plant’s pipes. They were supposed to be demolishing Palisades so the cracks did not matter!

Now here is where things get weird. In 2024, after two years of neglect, Holtec decided to “resurrect” the carcass of Palisades (resurrect is Holtec’s own word!). The State of Michigan gave Holtec hundreds of millions of dollars and the Department of Energy (DOE) promised billions in additional funds for the resurrection. And the Department of Agriculture even awarded subsidies to Rural Electric Cooperatives to buy power from Palisades.

Everyone seemed to forget how the nursery rhyme ends, the part about “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again”! To no one’s surprise, when Palisades nuclear reactor components were examined in 2024 and 2025, it had extensive cracks! Everywhere!

Two years after acquiring Palisades, Holtec finally performed inspections to see how extensive Humpty Dumpty’s cracks really were. Those new inspections showed that stress corrosion cracking, SCC, was extensive throughout all the nuclear reactor components. Only one tube was found damaged in the 2020 inspection before Holtec bought the facility while more than 700 tubes were found to be damaged under Holtec in 2024.

Unlike Palisades previous owner, Holtec ignored the need to maintain excellent water chemistry inside the nuclear plant’s pipes. Holtec acknowledged that proper “wet layup” water chemistry was NOT maintained for about two years and also recognized that cracks “were not unanticipated.”

Without adequate control of water chemistry through the addition of oxygen scavengers and proper pH control, Palisades tubes and pipes had rapidly deteriorated. Holtec put no priority on maintaining excellent water chemistry inside the nuclear plant’s pipes. Their indifference to industry standards pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall and made cracking inevitable.

The cracked components could have, should have, been replaced. In fact, Holtec acknowledged to DOE that many components were unrepairable. Half a billion dollars of DOE funds were requested “to replace old worn-out hardware such as the Steam Generators^[1]”. After securing DOE funding, Holtec chose not to replace any of the cracked nuclear components.

Rather than replace key nuclear components as they promised the DOE, Holtec asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for permission to apply Band-Aids to the cracked, broken pieces, to stick them back together. These Band-Aids were called “relief requests” or “license amendment requests”.

If Humpty Dumpty were really an extensively cracked egg, the Food and Drug Administration would never have allowed consumers to eat it. But our Humpty Dumpty is an extensively cracked nuclear power plant, subject to oversight and regulation by the NRC. And the NRC has never met a nuclear plant it didn’t like.

And what did the NRC do when they were asked to analyze and regulate Humpty Dumpty’s cracks? It approved restarting Palisades without replacing the cracked components!

A retired former Palisades executive and I have independently and repeatedly asked, no, we’ve begged the NRC to consider the totality of the crack damage at Palisades. To look at Holtec’s incompetence as the real root cause of the cracking in the first place. To understand the technical literature that shows the cracks will worsen if the reactor is pressurized and heated back up. To do their job and regulate, not perpetuate Humpty Dumpty’s flawed repair scheme.

Under executive orders from the Trump administration to speed up nuclear approvals, the NRC chose not to place public safety at the forefront of the Palisades resurrection. Rather, it placed legal constraints around the applicability of the expert reports, allowing my engineering analysis in those reports to be ignored. Last month, the NRC granted Holtec permission to load fuel and begin startup testing of the aged reactor in spite of the known cracks and the likelihood that they will grow larger.

So I thought that perhaps I was wrong, possibly Holtec did not push Humpty Dumpty off the wall after all. Perhaps the NRC was right and the cracks could be repaired. Maybe the cracks would not grow when heat and pressure were applied. So, for an independent analysis, as any 2025 college grad would do, I asked Grok and ChatGPT.

Here is what GROK said:

Hundreds more indications, possibly 10-20% additional plugging needed within 1-2 years, risking loss-of-coolant accidents if unchecked.

Here is what ChatGPT said:

It’s not far-fetched to think of a worst-case where a tube could leak or rupture soon after …We could anticipate one or more tube leak events in 2025–2026 if the plant runs without replacing SGs [Steam Generators].… the likelihood of a serious tube event is undoubtedly higher now than it was historically.

Ironically, Holtec claims the power from Palisades is needed due to increased electric demands from AI Data Centers, yet the AI programs identify that Palisades would be unreliable and unsafe. Catch 22!

Why is there such a rush to resurrect Palisades? The lights have not gone out in Michigan since Palisades closed; there are no current AI data centers in Michigan clamoring for the power, and indeed, the power that Palisades plans on providing will need to be subsidized to be competitive with renewable energy sources.

WHY? Follow the lobbyists and the money. Holtec is a privately held company. It plans an Initial Public Offering (IPO) early in 2026 that has been valued at between $5 billion and $10 billion. The cornerstone of that IPO is the resurrection of Palisades. When discussing the IPO, Barrons states:

“ Nuclear Power’s Biggest IPO in Years Is on the Way…

Holtec is also on the verge of doing something never before attempted in America—bringing back a decommissioned nuclear plant. The company is restoring a reactor at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, which had been shut down in 2022 for financial reasons. It has received hundreds of millions of dollars of support from the state of Michigan and the Department of Energy for the project.^[2]”

Ten Billion Dollars is a lot of money. Does Holtec plan on being rewarded for pushing Humpty Dumpty off the wall? I pray that my analysis is wrong, and that Palisades will not suffer radiation releases that could result in evacuating parts of Michigan if it is allowed to restart. But I know there is no second verse, no happy ending to the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. There is no “And they all lived happily ever after”.

Author’s note: This short piece is based on several months of detailed supporting analysis. Three longer, more complete reports including my expert report, testimony and the complete AI analysis are available at this link: https://beyondnuclear.org/9472-2/

NOTES

1. Page 2, HOLTEC INTERNATIONAL APPLICATION FOR FEDERAL AND STATE SUPPORT TO ENABLE THE RESURRECTION OF THE PALISADES NUCLEAR GENERATION STATION SUBMITTED JULY 5, 2022 ↑

2. https://www.barrons.com/articles/nuclear-power-holtec-ipo-6d2f07ae ↑

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