Welcome to Politically Speaking.

I'm Elisabeth Bennion, chancellor's professor of political Science and director of Community Engagement at Indiana University South Bend.

After closing in 2020, the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert Michigan plans to reopen by 2025.

State legislators have also come together to put forward a new nuclear energy legislation in the state.

Joining us to discuss the future of nuclear power in Michigan are Representative Joey Andrews of Saint Joseph and Representative Graham Fuller of Saint John's.

I want to start by asking you about the Palisades power plant.

Representative Andrews.

Can you explain the significance of reopening the plant for Michigan's energy landscape?

Yeah.

So the Palisades plant up in Coburg is about 800 megawatts worth of electricity.

That's somewhere in the neighborhood of a million houses that that's able to power.

And with the contract that the co-ops have with the power plant, that means that every co-op in Michigan will now be 100% clean generating that represented.

So what steps are being taken to ensure the safety and reliability of the Palisades power plant as this happens?

Sure.

So there was a lot of outreach at the start when Holtec purchased Palisades and then started saying, Well, we're actually not going to decommission it.

We want it.

We want to put it back online.

And the conversation is not it's not just people in the state talking.

It's not just people in this country.

It's actually people all across the world because they've never taken a decommissioned nuclear plant and put it back on line in the history of sort of nuclear energy generation.

And so everyone's watching to see if they can do it.

And so far, every step of the way, Holtec has proved that that Palisades is ready to get back on line.

But I was just in Washington, D.C. for a nuclear energy conference, and I talked to a delegation from Japan.

I talked to people from Texas.

I mean, people are just really watching Palisades to see if it's possible.

Now, you talk about the safety.

It seems that Palisades or Holtec went in there and said, boy, this looks great.

Clearly, we need to spend some money on technological upgrades and safety, but we're ready to go.

So it sounds like the all eyes are on this reopening and this recent launch of a decommissioned plant.

Does that make you feel nervous or safer knowing that all these folks are watching but also giving the green light?

Yeah, So I don't get nervous about that because I'm just such a believer in in nuclear energy and its role in and the way we power homes and businesses and just our way of life.

And so I think it's really been exciting to see the bipartisan support for getting Palisades back on line.

We've got the energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, because it's been a remarkable supporter.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Representative Andrews and I have been leaders on it, along with other people in the state Senate here in Michigan.

And so, no, only excited.

And I think one thing to mention because of The Simpsons and because of Chernobyl, people people have this concept of, you know, everything turns green and the town explodes or whatever, and it's just completely unrealistic.

A And B, Michigan's been a top ten nuclear state for a long time, and we have three power plants and they've existed with zero issues and powered, you know, a quarter of Michigan's energy needs every year for many, many years.

And so if people knew how safe these were and and how much safer they've even gotten with the modern technology, I think they would be a little more confident.

I always I always tell people to you know, the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission isn't exactly known for being lax.

So the fact that they've been through the plant, I think several hundred times at this point and they're comfortable with it turning back on tells you that the level of safety in the plant has got to be very high.

Now, one of the things that you already mentioned is bipartisan support.

The two of you are from opposite sides of the aisle, as they sometimes say.

Did you feel like there was a lot of convincing to do of either party?

Or is this view widely shared among legislators that they're mostly just positive and very enthusiastic about this?

Yeah, you know, I think in Michigan, we're pretty we're pretty lucky to have a bipartisan what I would call a bipartisan consensus on nuclear energy.

Not to say that everybody on both sides of the aisle is universally supportive, But, you know, when the opportunity to restart Palisades came up, I think everybody saw that the opportunity was here, not just, you know, to have the clean energy, but also the jobs and what it means from a, you know, a national international perspective.

So, you know, I think future is pretty bright for nuclear in Michigan with the the legislature we have right now.

Yeah.

I'm going to add to that, which is I had a bill signed by the governor 2020 to 2021 that said we need to study nuclear energy in the state of Michigan.

And when I started having the talks to try to get that bill through the legislature, you had a Republican House and a Republican Senate led very close, though, and a Democratic governor.

And the more I talked with people, especially on the Democrat side, there was sort of this, hey, you know, we've been told to be scared of nuclear energy, but we're not.

But, you know, we've been told that everything is Chernobyl, but it's not.

And we really want to bring clean, reliable, powerful energy to Michigan.

And I could feel that tide turning a little bit after many years of people just not talking about nuclear.

And then the bill was signed and did go to the governor's office and eventually became law and a very, what I would call effective and straightforward study that was released earlier this year.

So I think the mood is changing across the country, probably across the world.

There was about a ten year run when you just couldn't talk about nuclear for whatever reason, right around Fukushima and after Fukushima and Japan.

But I think we're trending in a really good direction.

Now, I would love it if each of you would talk a little bit about the issue of the local economy and the job market.

What will this mean for the local economy there in Michigan and surrounding that plant in particular?

Yeah, So Covered township where the plant is located is a pretty a pretty low income, a lot of poverty within the township in Van Buren County, the county that Culver Township is in is one of the poorer counties in the state.

It's a heavily agricultural economy in that county.

And so when Palisades started shutting down, the county in the township, took tens of millions of dollars in in hit and losing taxable revenue, not to mention economic activity.

So the repowering of this plant is an enormous turnaround there.

The school system in covert by itself.

This basically completely reverses their budget troubles with this plant coming back online.

And then, you know, the jobs that the plant creates are all six figure jobs, almost all union labor.

So they just brought on 250 more employees over the last three months.

It's 250 more people in the local economy making, you know, more than $100,000 a year spending their disposable income in Michigan.

And every outage that the plant goes through when they have to do, you know, the upgrades and refueling and that sort of thing is more than a thousand construction jobs.

Again, all union labor, all, you know, in the six figure range.

And those jobs every 18 months or so, you know, will be created and boost the local economy, local small businesses, hotels, etc..

So, you know, that's I think, one of those hidden it's I call it the hidden benefit of nuclear power.

You know, all the the giant bucket of clean electricity is great.

And obviously that was one of the main reasons we need it.

But these plants can basically single handedly support the economy of a region like Cook does just to our south and Palisades does just to our north.

Yeah, And those are I mean, Joyce, Representative Andrews is so right, and it's almost even bigger than that, even because you've got deep down has Fermi down in Monroe.

And that's been amazing for that community.

And that's a community that's a big power generating community.

They had a coal plant that's now going to become something else.

And if you talk to folks down there, they will say, you know, thank God it's here.

My uncle works here.

It attracts people from, you know, engineers to come work here.

And then there's even a next level to that, which is Representative Andrews.

And I really want Michigan to be the go to nuclear state in the country.

And we're talking not just about people coming in to work at, say, Fermi or Palisades.

We're talking about people coming in to get an education at Michigan or Michigan State.

We're talking about engineers to come work around the plant.

We're talking even about manufacturing.

Let's bring nuclear manufacturing of technology and parts and even smart when they get rolling to Michigan, let's make Michigan the number one nuclear state.

And that that's a powerful thing when you can talk about it more than just energy creation.

That sounds like that's one of the ways not only that you hope to really create that robust economy in the state, but also to sell it to voters who may have those older concerns about safety or that mindset that nuclear is bad, to get them to listen more closely.

Yeah, that's 100% right.

And I think one of the great conversation is what's next?

And so we have three big reactors here in Michigan and that's exciting.

And they pump out clean, reliable energy.

Well, two of them do.

And we hope to get the third back online.

But what about small cars, which small modular reactors, which is where a lot of the nuclear industry is heading in Michigan?

Be a leader on that.

That's part of our legislative package.

And what comes with that manufacturing comes with that.

Can we create the parts for summers here?

And I think once you talk to the public about small cars and how they're unbelievably safe and how you could stack a couple of them, how Dow Chemical or I'm sorry, Dow in Midland could run their entire factory off one.

SRM Are you just talking about game changing possibilities?

It's the same with Hemlock Semiconductor and Smart Power.

Most of their operation and Palisades Holtec is planning on making Palisades the site for some of their first small modular reactors.

So next couple of years they plan to break ground on two summers up there, which, you know, there's a few different sites around North America where these are being sited right now.

But depending on how quickly processes move, Palisades could be the site of the first Smarties in North America.

Wow.

That is a big breakthrough.

Can you talk a little bit more about some of the legislative package that you've put together in terms of nuclear energy in Michigan?

What are other things that Michigan viewers, but also viewers in Indiana and across the country should know about?

Yes, we we are Representative Eller and I have been working on this package for almost a year now, actually, I think and we introduced it a few months ago in the legislature, you know, waiting on a hearing of the Energy committee right now in the House for it.

But what we saw in conversation with the Nuclear Energy Institute and our local power providers who have nuclear plants is the Smarties offer a pretty huge opportunity for our state.

Like Representative Eller said before, both in manufacturing and in terms of, you know, what's next for our old coal infrastructure and, you know, getting off of fossil burning and that sort of thing.

So we created a package that's designed to draw workforce to the state engineers and nuclear workforce, primarily.

But there's also a tax credit in the package in the bill that Representative Wenzel has that we create a credit for the manufacture of assemblers.

And a lot of these companies, because assemblers are such a new technology, are looking for which state is going to be home for them as they start to manufacture these.

And we think that, you know, Michigan has everything that you need to make it the, you know, the center of this industry.

And that's the goal of our package.

Now, if I understand correctly, one of the things you also seek to do is to define advanced nuclear reactors in state law.

Can you talk a little bit about that and why it would be important to do that?

Yeah, sure.

So, ExoMars, small modular reactors are the size of, you know, let's call it sometimes this room I'm in, you know, a decent sized playroom and that's a lot smaller than a gigantic nuclear reactor.

So what it does is it causes the kids to cuts the price from 15 billion to 1 billion, something like that.

But we're not quite there technology wise, and we're waiting for some of the some of the technology to be approved at a national level.

What we want is Michigan law to be in a great shape, a really pro se, more pro nuclear regulatory way so that when assemblers start to go online, maybe even in Palisades, one rogue commissioner or one, you know, one person in the regulatory structure can't stop that.

We can already say the legislature, both Republicans and Democrats, spoke loudly and said, Here's how we define ExoMars.

Here's what a nice summer is.

It can be in Michigan.

It's been approved by a bipartisan led legislature.

You also look at the state of Illinois that has had some real issues in the past year about defining ExoMars and supporting new nuclear.

And that's what we're trying to avoid.

I wonder about that partnership and collaboration with the state and federal governments in terms of creating this nuclear environment, a nuclear energy friendly environment in Michigan.

What kind of relationship are you hoping for there Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's mostly federal.

And that's why I think state legislatures have kind of ignored it for a long time or been able to speak the way we've been seeing a lot of power in the last year where almost every state in in the country has put forward a pro-nuclear legislation.

Some of it has been signed, some of it has not made it through the legislature, but before states pretty much ignored it and said, you know, we got to keep our hands off.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves this.

They take design bills, they approve or they disapprove.

And so we'll just wait on them.

States have begin to take a proactive approach.

And so Michigan is kind of the gold standard right now for how a state can can show a good atmosphere, a good pro-nuclear energy atmosphere, and then work collaboratively with a federal regulators and the Energy Department.

Yeah, I think the important things are, of course, nuclear is going to be most heavily regulated at the federal level.

It has to be.

You can't have variable standards happening.

So, you know, of course that's got to be the case.

But the issue is that in most states, what they're seeing is a lot of partizanship around the issue.

And I think, you know, from what we've heard, Michigan is emerging as one of the few states where there's, you know, kind of a bipartisan consensus that nuclear power is is good.

We should be leaning into advanced reactor technology, you know, having a bipartisan package instead of just a partizan package.

And for the industry, that's really helpful because you know, if you're going to build a nuclear reactor, you're planning on a decades long investment.

You know, you're not you're not in and out.

And so, you know, I think the industry wants to be able to know that regardless of which political parties in power at any given time, their investments are safe.

And I think that's, you know, the message we're trying to send to them is that, you know, in Michigan, you can be here for the long haul.

Now, that seems very important and especially in a state where we have seen the power, the majority in the legislature switch that who holds the governor near his mansions, which over time, that level of stability has to be reassuring for any companies looking to invest.

Yeah, so this is one of the arguments that I know Representative Andrews makes the same argument, but when you have a nuclear power plant right off the bat, utilities and others sort of naturally complain it costs too much.

It's not as it's not as cheap as wind and solar.

And maybe that's true right off the bat.

But investment in nuclear, yes, it takes a little bit more at the start.

But then you have 40, 50, 60, 80 years of clean, reliable energy and minimal incredibly minimal waste that sits in triple concrete and crate encased casks.

And so the investment, I would argue, is a really good investment.

It just takes a little convincing for those with with the dollars.

And importantly is like our whole economy is electrifying and chip manufacturing and data centers and that sort of thing become a bigger and bigger part of what we do.

We need reliable, consistent and constantly flowing electricity, and our wind and solar are great for providing what they do with peak load management, which is also very important.

But, you know, if you need a hyperscale data center running around the clock 24 hours a day, or if you're manufacturing semiconductors or, you know, manufacturing batteries for that matter, you need a lot of electricity and you need it to be reliable.

And so, you know, states that embrace this technology as Amazon and advanced reactors are going to naturally get a leg up in advanced manufacturing and the knowledge economy.

So this is just part of, you know, keeping us ahead of the pack in those in those industries as well.

Yeah.

And people are talking about AI and data centers now more and more and then they're talking about, well, what do we need and what do we want to to power these data centers?

And a lot of the time, the answer right now is nuclear energy.

The existing nuclear fleet or eventually plugging and plug in are right into and running that data center.

Why?

Why does that sound so good?

First of all, it's clean.

Second of all, it's reliable, right?

The nuclear you turn it up, you turn it down.

It's an amazing technology and that's what you want.

You just want powerful, reliable, clean energy to run these these data centers or similar technological centers.

I want to follow up on two points.

One, the waste and the other that knowledge economy in terms of nuclear waste that is a thing often that people are concerned about any leaking what that means for the environment.

So could you address those concerns briefly?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think a lot of those concerns are honestly media overblown.

You know, like Representative Heller said at the beginning, you know, people watch The Simpsons or something like that and they get this idea in their head.

But, you know, if we look back, I mean, I think Three Mile Island is always pointed to as the most significant American event.

But in the decades since Three Mile Island, the all of the research that's, you know, come on, that incident shows that there was actually no negative health implications from it.

It was addressed and it was locked down.

And it turns out that the concerns that were raised at the time, the science is borne out that it actually wasn't a problem.

You know, I've grown up kind of sandwiched between two nuclear power plants here in Saint Joe.

And for, you know, those viewing who haven't been here yet, I promise that none of us are walking around with, you know, 11 toes and three arms.

It's all been totally, you know, normal and fine.

We all swim in Lake Michigan up and downstream from these plants.

And it's there is no negative health implication.

You know, Fukushima was a rare incident that had a lot of, you know, kind of compounding factors with the tsunami and the earthquake and its geographic location and the emergency response.

That's not the case with you know, we don't have tsunamis in Lake Michigan.

And the American nuclear industry responded to Fukushima by requiring every single plant to have an offsite disaster ready response just in case.

So, you know, I think that if you divorce yourself a little bit from the sensationalism that you can get in the media and you actually just look at the facts, nuclear power is one of the safest forms of energy we have.

You know, coal ash is more radioactive than what comes out of a nuclear power plant.

So but, you know, that doesn't get nearly as much media attention because it's you know, nuclear is a it can be a scary word, but it shouldn't be so.

And and it if I say if the general public knew the amount of nuclear waste created, spent fuel rods essentially could, in the history of Michigan's nuclear power generation, you could take all the waste and it would be, I don't know, two or three football fields.

It's remarkably little and we haven't suffered any leaking any issues at every state that has nuclear across the country has sort of had the same situation.

Right.

We would love a national answer to this.

And, you know, there was some discussion on that.

But about 15 years ago that stopped the Yucca mountain conversation.

However, in the meantime, the waste has not been an issue.

There have not been damage to communities.

And if you talk to these communities who have nuclear plants, they are generally almost almost 100% supportive.

Now, I want to talk a little bit more about the educational aspects of your plans there in Michigan.

The legislation includes a grant program for educational programs that support the nuclear industry.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why that's important and how that fits into your larger workforce development plans.

So Michigan has, you know, MSU and University of Michigan in particular that are, you know, two of the top universities in the country.

And we already train a lot of this workforce.

You have EMS engineers come out of their nuclear engineering program and they go off to other states working in the industry.

And so what we wanted to do was invest in keeping that talent here and then also attracting talent from neighboring states.

You know, if you went to Indiana SB or you went to, you know, university or, you know, Ohio State or University of Illinois, something like that, that Michigan is a state you could look at in your backyard that would have attractive workforce incentives to come and work here.

And when you bring the workforce, the industry comes with it.

You know, industry wants to be where the workers are.

So part of that workforce attraction and employment attraction is, you know, we can we can tell the industry we're a place that workers in this industry are going to want to be.

So you should want to be here, too, because it'll be easier for you to find workers.

And, you know, as we're trying to draw population to the state industry and workforce is the tip of the iceberg.

There Yeah, that's right.

And Michigan is now competing with other states for everything.

And you're surrounded by Midwestern states who are mostly smaller than Michigan, maybe don't have the Great Lakes.

And so what are they doing to to attract workers?

Well, I can tell you, Michigan have more plants than all of the Midwestern states, I believe, except for Illinois and we want to compete with other states.

We want to beat the other states.

That's really at the heart of some of our plan is to turn this into not just a discussion about nuclear energy generation, but about making Michigan a unattractive state to live, work and play.

And how does that fit in to your overall sort of energy standards and energy goals plans for the state?

Yeah.

So we we created what I think is a very forward thinking climate plan last year.

Instead of just narrowing in on one or two technologies, we created a technology neutral plan that says, you know, as long as the by 2040 where the electric use is clean by, you know, standard, meaning they're not producing carbon, then it's good.

So that opens the doors for nuclear in Michigan.

That opens the doors for a lot of other emerging technologies.

And, you know, who knows 20 years from now, you know, maybe we're all talking about nuclear fusion instead of nuclear fission, but our climate plan allows for that.

So, you know, for me, going into that process, that was really important because I think, you know, the easiest way for us to decarbonize is to invest in nuclear.

And, you know, as we've seen, you know, the federal government agrees.

DOE said that they want to more than double the nuclear power production of the country in the next decade to 20 years.

The countries around the world are saying the same thing, that they want to double their nuclear output, if not more.

The only way we're beating climate change is with robust nuclear infrastructure.

And I think, you know, we did a good job in Michigan and we're continuing to do a good job in Michigan to, you know, lean into what is just going to be the best practice.

Well, unfortunately, this has just flown by, but that is all the time we have for this week's episode of Politically Speaking.

This has been an incredibly informative I know that viewers will learn a lot from watching this episode.

So I want to thank you both, Michigan State representatives Joey Andrews and Graham Feller.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion and reminding you that it will take all of us to make democracy work.

This WNIT Local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.