The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located on Lake Michigan, in Van Buren County'sCovert Township, Michigan, on a site south of South Haven, Michigan, USA. Palisades is owned and operated by Entergy. It was operated by the Nuclear Management Company and owned by CMS Energy Corporation prior to the sale completed on April 11, 2007. Its single Combustion Engineeringpressurized water reactor weighs 425 tons and has steel walls thick. The containment building is in diameter and tall, including the dome. Its concrete walls are thick with a steel liner plate. The dome roof is thick. Access is via a personnel lock measuring by. The Westinghouse Electric Company turbine generator can produce 725,000 kilowatts of electricity. Built between 1967 and 1970, Palisades was approved to operate at full power in 1973. On July 12, 2006 it was announced that the plant would be sold to Entergy. On April 11, 2007, the plant was sold to Entergy for $380 million. The plant's original licensee was due to expire on March 24, 2011. An application for 20-year extension was filed in 2005 with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was granted on January 18, 2007. Therefore, the plant was then scheduled for decommissioning by 2031. Entergy plans to close the Palisades plant in 2022. Earlier, Entergy had made a decision to close the plant in October 2018. A decision by the Michigan Public Service Commission influenced the company's decision. Consumers Energy attempted to buy its way out of a power purchase agreement it has with Entergy and the plant. The MPSC did not approve Consumer Energy's full request of $172 million, so Entergy decided to keep the plant open three years longer than planned.
Surrounding population
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of, concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about, concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Palisades was 28,644, a decrease of 4.5 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 1,326,618, an increase of 4.4 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include South Bend, IN and Kalamazoo, MI.
Two steam generators were replaced in 1992. This involved cutting a 28 by 26 foot opening through the reinforced concrete wall. The removed units are stored in a large concrete building on plant property.
Seismic risk
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Palisades was 1 in 156,250, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.
