The Department of Energy has approved a nearly $57 million disbursement for the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station — the project’s second tranche of funding since finalizing a loan with the Biden administration in September.
This is the second confirmed disbursement from the Loan Programs Office since the Trump administration took the reins at DOE in January, and temporarily froze disbursements of federal funds. In early February, the agency unfroze a $1.4 billion loan to Calumet subsidiary Montana Renewables, for sustainable aviation fuel production. In that case, Montana Sen. Steve Daines (R) advocated on the company’s behalf.
Holtec International, which purchased the Palisades plant from Entergy in 2022, received its first loan disbursement in mid-January — and it requested a much smaller portion of its up to $1.5 billion loan than the nearly 50% that Montana Renewables received.
The decision not to start drawing loan funds until January, and to request smaller tranches, is an intentional one, head of government affairs Pat O’Brien told Latitude Media in early March. The company is able to take that path in part because of funding from the state of Michigan, and partly thanks to private funding streams, he said.
“We’ve been able to continue to move forward, even in the initial uncertainty,” O’Brien added, nodding to the federal funding freezes. But it became apparent pretty quickly, he said, that the project’s loan “should be okay because we fit the mold of what they’re looking for.”
That confidence is echoed in the messaging from the Trump DOE. As the agency put it in a written statement today, the funding “highlights DOE’s commitment to advance President Trump’s agenda of unleashing affordable, reliable, and secure energy through investing in projects across the country that support American jobs, bolster domestic supply chains, and strengthen America’s position as a world energy leader.”
The real “heavy lifting” on the loan was getting from conditional commitment to finalized contract last year, O’Brien explained. “Once that closed, it was smooth for us,” he added. “We didn’t really foresee any challenges with an administration change.”
Going forward, Holtec is hopeful it won’t need to use the entire approved loan amount of $1.52 billion, O’Brien said.
“When we looked at the loan and what we asked for and received, I would say it was a very conservative number, meaning that we asked for probably more than we will draw down,” he said. The full $1.52 billion, he added, is for the “worst case scenario for restart.”The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station was decommissioned in 2022, but is expected to be back online at the end of this year. In addition to restarting the 800-megawatt reactor — the project DOE is helping to fund — Holtec plans to add two small modular reactors to the site, adding an additional 600 MW.
