On October 21, 2026, the nuclear company Holtec announced that it had finished recovering a tilted fuel assembly at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan and had moved it to the spent fuel pool. This completes an important step toward resuming fuel loading. However, the successful recovery does not mean that everything needed to restart the reactor is in place.
Holtec is pursuing a plan to restart the existing 800 MW reactor and resume power generation. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is supporting the project with a loan guarantee of up to $1.52 billion. Meanwhile, on October 13, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved a change to the method for recovering the fuel assembly. On the same day, it found that the plant's procurement and quality assurance departments had a work environment in which employees were reluctant to report safety concerns. Whether the fuel assembly was recovered safely is a technical question. Whether the organization is set up so that employees can report problems and have them properly corrected is a separate one, and the two must be evaluated separately. To judge progress toward a restart, it is necessary to look not only at equipment work but also at how far workplace improvements and operator qualification reviews have advanced.
Tilted fuel assembly recovered using a nonstandard transfer method
Holtec began loading fuel at Palisades on August 30, 2026. According to the company's September 21 announcement, loading was halted after a fuel assembly, a bundle of fuel rods, tilted once it had been set in place and the gripper released. Holtec said it launched a root-cause investigation after the event. The announcement does not give the exact date on which the assembly tilted.
The assembly in question, "DD41," was tilted at roughly 30 degrees. As a result, it could not be recovered with the normal fuel-handling machine and transfer tube, and specialized equipment and a "fuel transfer cask" were needed. A fuel transfer cask holds a fuel assembly inside it, providing radiation shielding and maintaining containment of radioactive material during transfer. The recovery required handling under conditions different from ordinary fuel transfers.
In its October 13 approval document, the NRC authorized a one-time special operation applicable only to the recovery of DD41. The approval includes a change to the Final Safety Analysis Report and permits the assembly to be transferred through air using a dedicated cask. Because conditions differ from the usual underwater transfer, the NRC evaluated radiation shielding, the possible effects of dropping the fuel assembly, and heat management. The approval rests on safety analyses tied to the transfer route and working conditions, and it is limited to this specific recovery operation.
One key item in confirming safety is the fuel rod "cladding." Cladding covers the nuclear fuel and contains the radioactive material inside, so whether it is damaged must be checked separately from the fact that the assembly tilted or that its support structure was deformed. Based on chemical sample analysis and underwater video inspection, the NRC document assessed that there were no signs of cladding failure before the transfer. The recovery procedure also specifies methods for monitoring additional damage during work and criteria for halting work if an abnormality is found. The NRC's safety evaluation applies to this specific recovery procedure, including these monitoring measures and analytical conditions.
According to Holtec's October 21 announcement, DD41 was recovered using the specialized equipment and fuel transfer cask, and its transfer to the spent fuel pool is complete. The company says it carried out the series of operations safely. Although one issue related to fuel transfer has been resolved, separate confirmation is still needed on the root cause of the tilt and the measures to prevent a recurrence. Completion of the recovery cannot be taken as completion of all preparations required to resume reactor operation.
Procurement and quality assurance: a workplace where raising safety concerns is difficult
While equipment-side work has advanced, the NRC has also pointed to problems in how Palisades is run. The NRC conducted a workplace-environment inspection from July 20 to September 3, 2026, including interviews with more than 120 employees. According to the October 13 letter and inspection report, many employees felt they could report safety concerns, but the NRC found that in the procurement and quality assurance departments there was an environment in which employees hesitated to report problems for fear of retaliation. The figure of more than 120 refers to the number of people interviewed across the whole inspection. It does not indicate the number of employees in the two departments where problems were found, nor the share of employees company-wide who fear retaliation.
The retaliation employees feared included dismissal. Inspectors recorded statements that it was hard to raise concerns about procurement and qualification issues, work management, and implementation procedures. Some employees also questioned whether the quality assurance department was maintaining its independence. However, these are assessments of the workplace environment based on employees' perceptions and statements. They do not mean that unlawful retaliation was actually established.
If quality assurance staff are in an environment where reporting problems is difficult, it raises doubts about whether they are fulfilling their intended role of verifying safety independently of the departments carrying out the work. In restarting a nuclear plant, what matters is not only the ability to repair equipment but also a system that properly reports and corrects problems found along the way. The workplace problems the NRC identified therefore cannot be ignored in evaluating the organization's readiness for a restart. At the same time, no causal link has been confirmed between these workplace problems and the tilting of the fuel assembly.
The NRC's assessment of the workplace environment had changed from the previous year. An inspection in June 2025 rated it as healthy, but changes to schedules, scope of work, and senior management followed, and challenges arose in information sharing among staff. After anonymous problem reports increased in the first half of 2026, among other signs, the NRC conducted an additional inspection. Inspectors also noted that the plant had not completed its shift in work planning from a project-style management approach premised on decommissioning to one premised on plant operation. The question is whether the organization has moved from one focused on restoring equipment to one that can handle ongoing plant operations.
The NRC did not, however, identify regulatory violations or serious equipment safety problems in this inspection. Noting that measures such as independent work verification, oversight, and cooperation among departments were functioning, it did not assess safety as compromised, nor did it judge that the workplace problems it identified would adversely affect the restart plan. This is an assessment based on measures in place at the time of the inspection and does not mean the workplace has no problems. The NRC's finding that an environment discouraging reporting exists and its assessment that equipment safety has not been compromised address different subjects.
The NRC further noted that management had had earlier opportunities to learn of the problems, but its previous responses had not resolved the issues in either the procurement or the quality assurance department. It therefore asked Holtec to submit, within 30 days of the October 13 letter, an improvement plan that includes an evaluation by an independent organization. The plan must include measures to let employees report safety concerns with confidence in the near term, and efforts to check whether similar problems have spread to other departments. It will also be evaluated on how the effectiveness of corrective actions will be measured, and whether the corrective action systems and the channels for receiving employee concerns are working properly.
The 30-day deadline, however, is for submitting the improvement plan; Holtec is not required to have completed all workplace improvements by then. The NRC also wishes to meet about two weeks after receiving the plan. Going forward, the key thing to check is not only whether the plan is submitted but also whether concrete measures are carried out and the environment improves to the point where employees can report problems with confidence.
Where restart preparations stand, as seen in three NRC documents
At Palisades, a separate review of operator qualifications was also under way. According to the license examination report the NRC released on October 13, practical exams for new operators were held the week of July 27, and the written exam was held on August 5. There were 15 examinees: nine applicants for senior operator licenses and six applicants for operator licenses. Of these, three in each group, six in total, passed all exam sections and obtained licenses. The remaining nine failed one or more sections and received notice of provisional results. The results were finalized on August 31.
However, these 15 people are limited to new license applicants this time; this was not an exam covering all operators working at the plant. It therefore cannot be concluded that the nine who failed one or more sections means existing operators' qualifications have been revoked or that the plant is short of the staff needed to operate. Whether retests were held afterward, and whether the plant as a whole can staff enough qualified operators, also cannot be confirmed from this report alone.
The three documents the NRC released on October 13 concern the same plant but address different issues. Sorting out the approval of the fuel assembly recovery method, the improvement demand on the workplace environment, and the new operator exam results clarifies what has been confirmed and what remains to be addressed.
| NRC document dated October 13, 2026 | Subject of judgment | What was confirmed or decided | What the document alone cannot tell us |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approval of changed DD41 recovery method | One-time fuel assembly recovery operation | Approved transfer method using a dedicated cask, based on analytical conditions | Completion of all preparations needed to restart the reactor |
| Letter on workplace environment | Organizational system for reporting and correcting safety concerns | Found problems in two departments; requested an improvement plan including independent evaluation | Whether the improvement plan is submitted and carried out, and its effect |
| New operator license exam report | 15 new license applicants | Six obtained licenses; nine failed one or more exam sections | Whether the plant as a whole has secured and assigned the operators it needs |
The successful recovery of the fuel assembly does not mean the workplace problems have been resolved. Likewise, the results of this new operator exam alone cannot show whether the plant's overall operating staff is sufficient. The three documents each evaluate a different subject, and it would not be appropriate to combine them into a single common safety indicator.
Palisades also had another safety-related event reported the previous year. According to the NRC event report, on October 21, 2025, a person fell into the reactor cavity from which fuel had been removed, swallowed water, was decontaminated, and was taken to an off-site medical facility. That was a separate incident from the 2026 tilting of the fuel assembly, and no causal link to the workplace problems identified this time has been confirmed. Even when assessing past events, it is necessary to distinguish when and under what circumstances each occurred.
The restart of Palisades is also a project backed by large-scale U.S. government financial support. In a September 2025 announcement, the DOE described the loan guarantee agreement of up to $1.52 billion signed in September 2024 and the plan for the reactor to have an output of 800 MW after the restart. However, $1.52 billion is the ceiling of the loan guarantee and does not mean the full amount has already been paid out. Precisely because this is a plan to put a large existing reactor back into service as a power generation facility, it is important to evaluate the completion of individual equipment work separately from the readiness of the organization that will handle day-to-day operations.
The focus going forward is the root cause of the tilted fuel assembly and measures to prevent recurrence, workplace improvements based on independent evaluation, and progress in operational readiness, including securing and assigning qualified operators. These are not a comprehensive list of the NRC's formal conditions for permitting a restart; they are items to check in judging restart readiness in light of the problems that have come to light. If Holtec presents concrete measures and their effects, and the state of its operating-staff preparation also becomes clear, it will be possible to assess more accurately how close Palisades has come to a restart in terms of both equipment and organization.