MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The number of nuclear energy plants supplying electricity in the U.S. peaked more than three decades ago. Fears of another disaster like the one at Three Mile Island back in 1979 heightened concerns about the use of nuclear energy. Still, there are more than 90 reactors across the country, and they generate about one-fifth of the nation's electricity. Just last month, the Trump administration announced a series of executive orders with the goal of quadrupling nuclear power capacity in the U.S. by 2050. The state of Michigan could help reach that goal. Dustin Dwyer of member station Michigan Public reports that a closed nuclear plant there might be the first in the U.S. to be restarted.
DUSTIN DWYER, BYLINE: Palisades Park is a lakeshore residential community in southwest Michigan. Karen Davis remembers spending summers there, sunbathing on the top of a dune when she was a teenager, swimming in the freshwater waves of Lake Michigan - down by the nuclear power plant on the beach next door.
KAREN DAVIS: The big draw at this end of the park was the warm water. People would go swim in front of the power plant because that's where the warm water was being discharged.
DWYER: After 9/11, swimming in front of the plant was no longer allowed. Now there are signs along the beach and security in place. Davis says she started paying more attention to the plant when she was older and there were a series of safety issues. In 2003, she developed thyroid cancer. She says she didn't think a lot about it at first. Cancer happens. And then she says she heard from other cancer survivors about the link between thyroid cancer and radiation exposure.
DAVIS: That's when the lightbulb went off in my head, and I'm like, is it the power plant? Could it have something to do with that next door?
DWYER: The state of Michigan said it looked into cancers at Palisades Park near the nuclear plant and found less than six cases from year-round residents, not enough to draw any conclusions. Davis says she's in touch with other residents to be a part of a new study. And six years ago, she and her husband, Bruce, decided to move to Palisades Park permanently. They built their dream home on top of a dune almost as close to the power plant as you can get.
So why move to a place that you think gave you cancer?
DAVIS: Because they were closing the plant. They were closing the plant.
DWYER: They were, and they did. In 2022, the reactor shut down. But then the plan changed. Holtec International, the company that bought the plant to decommission it, decided instead to try to do something that's never been done before - bring a decommissioned nuclear plant back online.
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NEIL WHARTON: At first, it seemed daunting.
DWYER: That's Neil Wharton, an engineer with Siemens Energy, one of the contractors hired to help inspect and repair a hulking turbine that now sits partially disassembled.
WHARTON: We got into a groove, and it's not to be confused with being complacent. At no point do we feel comfortable, but we do feel confident and competent in the work that we're doing.
DWYER: And there is a lot of work to be done. There have been hang-ups along the way, most notably with the tubes attached to the steam generators in the reactor building. And the goal is to have the plant back online generating 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 800,000 homes, by the end of this year if regulators approve it. The Department of Energy is helping with a loan worth up to $1.5 billion.
Steve Comello is with the EFI Foundation. The nonprofit supports low-carbon energy policies. He says restarting plants like Palisades is a good idea, but it won't be much of a factor in growing nuclear power.
STEVE COMELLO: You can count on one hand the number of sites where you can actually go and do these restarts.
DWYER: Besides Palisades, there is one more restart project in the works. Constellation Energy has announced plans to restart Three Mile Island's Unit 1 reactor. It was not involved in the accident that occurred in 1979, but it was decommissioned in 2019. Now Microsoft has agreed to buy the power from the reactor for its data centers. Federal regulators are still considering approval for both of these plans.
For NPR News, I'm Dustin Dwyer in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(SOUNDBITE OF AYANNA SONG, "GIRLFRIEND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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