Holtec International has established a wholly-owned subsidiary aiming to “energize the presently placid business sector of modification and maintenance”, with the initial project being the recommissioning of the Palisades nuclear power plant.
Holtec Maintenance & Modification International (HMI) is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is headed by Christopher Bakken. In its statement announcing the move, Holtec International said the new subsidiary’s mission was “to meet the time-critical maintenance and modification needs of the world’s operating nuclear power plants with assured performance certainty”.
Holtec added, “To provide maximum value to its clients, HMI is poised to introduce cutting edge technologies such as AI-aided preventive maintenance and robot-led crew radiation dose reduction methods at its clients’ plants ... we believe the HMI management model will bring about a vastly improved control of operating costs of nuclear plants and ensure heightened plant reliability, which will support the expected renaissance in nuclear generation around the world.”
HMI will operate under Holtec’s programs on nuclear quality assurance, environmental protection, personnel safety assurance, corporate governance and supply management “but will be otherwise autonomous”. It will work with Holtec’s Nuclear Power Division “to provide replacement components and systems - reverse engineered as necessary to replace obsolescent items - to meet target outage schedules”.
As well as its initial work on the project to restart the eight hundred and forty megawatt Palisades nuclear power plant, Holtec says that “discussions with other clients in the USA and overseas are under way”.
Rick Springman is Holtec’s President of Global Clean Energy Opportunities. He said, “With the launch of HMI, we can now provide an integrated capability to meet the operating needs of the scores of SMR-300 plants that we hope to be building in the US and around the world.”
Holtec agreed to purchase Palisades from then-owner and operator Entergy in 2018 ahead of the scheduled closure for decommissioning. The purchase was completed in June 2022, within weeks of the reactor's closure. At that time Holtec planned to complete the dismantling, decontamination, and remediation of the plant by 2041. However, following the purchase, the company then announced plans to apply for federal funding to enable it to reopen the plant. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was amongst those pledging support for the action. The State of Michigan's Fiscal Year 2024 budget was signed by Whitmer in mid-2023. The budget provides one hundred and fifty million dollars in funding towards the plant's restart. In March, the US Department of Energy Loan Programs Office committed up to one billion five hundred and twenty million dollars for a loan guarantee to Holtec Palisades for its project to bring the Palisades plant back online. The intention is for the Palisades nuclear power plant to be back operating by the end of 2025.
Holtec has also said it intends to locate its first two small modular reactor (SMR) units at the Palisades plant. It also hopes for to construct fleets of its one-hundred-and sixty megawatt SMRs elsewhere in Europe in such countries as Ukraine, the Czech Republic and the U.K.