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For Immediate Release
March, 22 2023, 12:27pm EDT
Contact:
Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear, kevin@beyondnuclear.org
Environmental Coalition to Energy Secretary Granholm:Yet Again Reject Massive Bailout Scheme at Palisades Atomic Reactor
Restarting Dangerously Age-Degraded Nuke Would Violate Law,
and Risk Health, Safety, Environment, and Pocketbooks, Watchdogs Warn
A coalition of 185 organizations, and 191 individuals, today sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. They urged her, for the third time, to yet again reject Holtec International’s requested $1.2 billion dollar federal bailout, for restarting the closed-for-good Palisades atomic reactor on the southwest Michigan shoreline of Lake Michigan, near South Haven in Van Buren County.
The coalition includes the 75-member group Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, across Lake Michigan — source of drinking water for many millions in four states — from the Palisades atomic reactor. It also includes the five-member group Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE) in New Mexico, concerned about past, present, and future impacts of uranium mining on Indigenous Peoples’ lands — such as that needed to fuel Palisades’ proposed resumed operations out to 2031, or even beyond that.
The coalition letter points out that Palisades does not qualify for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Civil Nuclear Credit (CNC) program, because it violates a number of required criteria for eligibility, as clearly spelled out in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This includes the fact that Palisades is no longer operational, does not compete in a competitive marketplace, and does not meet numerous additional requirements.
Perhaps most significantly, in terms of health, safety, security, and the environment, is Palisades’ inability to operate safely, due to a litany of chronic and acute problems associated with age-related degradation and neglected maintenance on safety-significant systems, structures, and components. This includes the worst neutron-embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the country and perhaps the world, at risk of pressurized thermal shock through-wall fracture, which would lead to reactor core meltdown. But additional pathways to catastrophic meltdown include a reactor lid, as well as steam generators, that have needed replacement for 17 years or longer. Palisades’ control rod drive mechanism seal leaks have been uniquely bad in all of industry, for more than a half-century. Now added to this long list is Holtec’s neglect of vital maintenance, such as of the turbo-generator, bending under its own immense weight, as well as the steam generators, to name but two examples.
“DOE’s recently issued amended ‘Guidance,’ which was specifically rewritten to enable Holtec to apply for $1.2 billion of federal taxpayer funds, is not legal under the IIJA,” said Terry Lodge, Toledo, Ohio-based attorney and legal counsel for lead groups of the coalition, Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan.
In addition, Holtec recently applied to DOE for a billion dollar federal taxpayer-backed nuclear loan guarantee under the Inflation Reduction Act, which it would use to promote the reactor restart scheme, hoping to pay it back over time with the CNC program bailout. Holtec is also seeking a more than billion dollar subsidy from the State of Michigan, as well as yet another lucrative, above market rate Power Purchase Agreement with an unnamed utility company in the area. Also, Holtec has applied to DOE for $7.4 billion in federal nuclear loan guarantees, authorized under the 2005 Energy Policy Act and congressionally appropriated on December 23, 2007, for the design certification, construction, and operation of four Small Modular (Nuclear) Reactors, more than one of which would also be located at the Palisades site.
“This more than $10 billion in ratepayer and taxpayer robbery would merely fund an insanely high-risk game of radioactive Russian roulette on the Lake Michigan shoreline,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, and board member of Don’t Waste Michigan, representing his hometown Kalamazoo chapter.
“Both extremes of the risk spectrum would be co-located at the Palisades site, if Holtec gets its way,” Kamps explained. “The ever worsening breakdown phase risks at the old reactor would exist alongside the break-in phase risks of the new reactors, risking a Chornobyl-scale catastrophe, with the potential for Fukushima-style, domino-effect, multiple meltdowns,” Kamps added.
Similar coalition letters were sent to Energy Secretary Granholm, a former Michigan governor as well as attorney general, on January 23, 2023, and September 22, 2022. (Similarly, the coalition wrote to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on June 8, 2022, urging her to "cease and desist" from her wasteful, unwise, and dangerous "zombie reactor" bailout and restart scheme at Palisades.) Both previous coalition letters to DOE also expressed opposition to Holtec’s first bailout application, filed secretly on July 5, 2022, little more than a week after Holtec took ownership of Palisades, under the false pretense of decommissioning it. Holtec, as well as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, first publicly announced their joint bailout and restart scheme on September 9, 2022, although Whitmer had been advocating for it since April 2022. However, DOE rejected Holtec’s first Palisades bailout bid on November 18, 2022, as announced by Holtec that day.
But, on December 19, 2022, Holtec announced it would again seek the DOE CNC bailout during a second round of funding allocations. DOE’s revised CNC guidance, issued in early March 2023, clearly seems tailored to shoe-horn Palisades for bailout approval, despite its glaring violation of numerous required IIJA eligibility criteria.
Of the $6 billion in this old reactor CNC program bailout funding, $4.9 billion currently remains. Just days after DOE rejected Holtec’s application for Palisades last November, the agency awarded a $1.1 billion bailout to Pacific Gas & Electric, in order to operate Diablo Canyon Units 1 and 2 in California past their current 2024 and 2025 license expirations. In addition, last year the governor and state legislature in California controversially granted PG&E another $1.3 billion in state-level bailouts for the extended operations. Similarly, Holtec has demanded state-level bailouts from Michigan for Palisades’ restart, for an amount rumored to be more than a billion dollars.
Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.
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'They Were All I Had': Lebanese Father Buries Parents, 4 Daughters Killed by Israeli Bombing
One journalist said that "the massacres are multiplying" as IDF bombing kills hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, and US-Israeli strikes kill and wound thousands of Iranians.
Mar 13, 2026
A grieving Lebanese father said he buried his parents, four young daughters, and other relatives on Friday after they were killed by an Israeli airstrike—one of many that have wiped out families in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.
"I lost four of my children, four daughters, they were all I had," the unidentified man—whose face and head were visibly injured from what he said was the same Israeli strike—told Al Jadeed TV, an independent Lebanese outlet. "Four daughters: Zainab, Zahraa, Maleeka, and Yasmine."
"And my mother and father," he added. "Praise be to God. God's greatness is abundant."
According to Al Jazeera, the man's brother-in-law and nephew were also killed in the strike.
"The Israeli enemy says every day that it is targeting infrastructure," he told the Qatar-based news network. "Is this the infrastructure?"
It was a heartbreaking scene repeated in other parts of Lebanon, including the south, were a distraught mother on Friday reportedly buried five sons killed by Israeli bombing, and in the Ghobeiry neighborhood of central Beirut earlier this week, when an Israeli airstrike destroyed the home of the Hamdan family, reportedly killing father Ahmad Hamdan, his three daughters, and two grandchildren. As of Tuesday, Hamdan's wife was missing beneath the rubble of their bombed-out home.
As in Gaza—where officials say that more than 2,700 families have been erased from the civil registry during Israel's ongoing genocide and around 6,000 other families have only a single surviving member—entire Lebanese families have been wiped out by Israeli strikes since October 2023.
In one such strike on the Maronite Christian village of Aitou in October 2024, members of four generations of one family were killed, with 22 victims ranging in age from a 4-month-old infant to a 95-year-old great-grandmother.
More than 800,000 Lebanese have also been forcibly displaced by Israel's assault and attendant evacuation orders. On Friday, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders in English, issued a statement highlighting the war's impact on families.
“We are seeing a similarity to what we saw in the past two and a half years in Gaza: broad evacuation orders, constant displacement of thousands of families, and systematic bombing on densely populated areas,” said MSF Lebanon coordinator Lou Cormack. “After 15 months of a fragile ceasefire that failed to stop the violence in Lebanon, families are once again trapped between fleeing or facing bombs.”
Israel says it is attacking Lebanon to stop Hezbollah rocket and other attacks, which have killed dozens of Israeli civilians and wounded even more.
Journalist Lylla Younes told Democracy Now! on Friday that "the massacres are multiplying" in Lebanon, pointing to an Israeli airstrike on a Sidon home that reportedly killed at least 8 people and wounded at least 9 others.
"We saw Syrian refugees, displaced, already killed; 7 killed in a massacre in Tamnin in the Beqaa Valley; a massive massacre in Nabi Chit, also in the Beqaa Valley, when the Israelis tried to do a nighttime incursion by helicopter," Younes said.
Lebanese officials said Friday that 773 people—including 103 children—have been killed by Israeli forces since March 2. This, in addition to Israel’s 2023-25 attacks on Lebanon that killed more than 4,000 people, including nearly 800 women and over 300 children.
In Iran, authorities said more than 1,300 civilians have been killed and over 10,000 others injured by US and Israeli bombing since February 28. More than 200 women and over 200 children have reportedly been killed.
Most of the 175 or more Iranians killed in a February 28 cruise missile strike on a girls' school in Minab—an attack that was almost certainly carried out by the United States—were children, according to Iranian government and medical officials and international investigations.
Israeli attacks on Iran during last year’s 12-Day War also killed more than 1,000 Iranians, including 436 civilians, while Iranian counterstrikes killed 28 people in Israel.
In Gaza, 28 months of Israel's assault—for which the country is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and its prime minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity—have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
US-led wars in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa have resulted in the deaths of more than 900,000 people—including over 400,000 civilians—since 2001, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Stories from families devastated by Israel's war on Lebanon are as common as they are heartbreaking.
"I was sleeping when the Israeli jet bombed the area," one Lebanese teenager told [comra]. "My father, my mother, my sister-in-law, and her children were killed."
"I saw my father torn to pieces," he added. "I wish I had died instead of seeing my father like that."
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Warren Slams Trump for Iran War Costing 'American Taxpayers $11,500 Per Second'
According to more recent Pentagon figures, it's actually even worse.
Mar 13, 2026
Sen. Elizabeth Warren took President Donald Trump to task on Friday for making life "more expensive" with his war in Iran.
"It's costing American taxpayers $1 billion a day to fund this war," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a video posted to her social media accounts. "That is $11,500 every single second."
This is, of course, not an exact amount. The figure is based on a preliminary estimate provided by Pentagon officials to Congress last week, estimating that the war would cost about $1 billion per day.
And so far, the war has actually been even more expensive than Warren initially claimed.
On Tuesday, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon gave a more comprehensive briefing, telling Congress that just the first six days of the war had exceeded $11.3 billion in cost, which puts the price tag at about $1.88 billion per day. That's nearly $21,800 per second.
The Times noted that this was a low-end estimate and that the pricetag did not include many other costs, including those associated with the buildup of military hardware in the region before the war.
Using just these conservative estimates, a live ticker shows that as of Friday afternoon, the estimated cost of the war that began on February 28 is already fast approaching $19 billion, less than two weeks later.
"If we took the money that Donald Trump is demanding to fund the war with Iran and used that money here at home, instead, we could help cover healthcare costs for millions more Americans all across this country," Warren said.
Indeed, an analysis published last week by the Institute for Policy Studies' National Priorities Project (NPP), based on the $1 billion-per-day figure, found that on an annual basis, the cost of the war is “higher than the appropriated budget of any federal agency except the Pentagon itself."
If all that money were spent domestically, it found, it would be enough to cover the daily costs of federal nutrition assistance for more than 40 million Americans, as well as daily Medicaid costs for the roughly 16 million people expected to lose health coverage due to the Republican budget package that Trump signed into law last year.
As Warren pointed out, calculations of military spending do not even take into account the sharp hikes in gas prices Americans are facing as a result of the war, which has led Iran to retaliate by closing one of the world's largest oil shipment routes, the Strait of Hormuz.
According to the American Automobile Association's (AAA) gas price tracker, US gas prices have leaped to $3.63 per gallon on average as of Friday, up from $2.94 a month ago.
"We haven't seen gas prices jump this much since Russia invaded Ukraine," Warren said. "Some cities in Indiana and Ohio have already seen a jump of over 50 cents a gallon. In Texas and Virginia, prices are up by more than 65 cents."
Citing an image of a Chevron station in Los Angeles posted by a user on TikTok, Warren said: "California is seeing gas prices above $8." According to AAA, the average cost of gas in the state is $5.42.
Despite rising anger from voters—more than 7 in 10 of whom said in a recent Quinnipiac poll that they fear higher oil and gas costs as a result of the war—Trump has said carrying out his objectives in Iran "is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit."
In a post to Truth Social on Thursday, the president framed higher prices as a positive: "The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money," he wrote.
While this may be true for Americans who own oil and gas companies, most do not. For the average American, higher gas prices can raise the cost of transportation sometimes by thousands of dollars per year, cutting into spending on food, rent, medicine, and other essentials.
"For someone who campaigned on lowering costs on day one, Donald Trump is constantly raising the bar for how expensive he can make it to live in this country," Warren said.
Referencing Republican opposition to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that lowered healthcare premiums for more than 20 million Americans, Warren implored viewers to "never forget that Donald Trump said we just can't afford to lower health care costs this year."
"These are about choices," she said, "and Donald Trump is making the wrong ones."
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Trump EPA Risks Health of Millions With Giveaway to Corporate Polluters That Use Cancer-Causing Gas
"Walking back key regulations for ethylene oxide sterilizer facilities is essentially giving a highly polluting industry a get-out-of-jail-free card," said one campaigner.
Mar 13, 2026
While US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Friday presented a proposed policy change as a demonstration of the Trump administration's commitment to "ensuring lifesaving medical devices remain available," public health advocates warned that relaxing rules on emissions of the cancer-causing gas ethylene oxide puts millions of Americans at risk.
As The New York Times explained: "The move revived a long-running debate about the paradoxical effects of ethylene oxide on public health. While it plays a crucial role in sterilizing lifesaving medical devices like pacemakers and syringes, long-term exposure can cause leukemia and other types of cancer among people who work in or live near medical sterilization facilities."
The EPA proposal would amend the Biden administration's 2024 National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for facilities that use ethylene oxide, which the agency estimated would have eliminated over 90% of dangerous pollution from the gas. The previous policy was cheered by organizations including Earthjustice, which sounded the alarm on Friday.
"The 2024 standards would have delivered enormous public health benefits. EPA knows that ethylene oxide is carcinogenic and determined that sterilizers can install effective and affordable pollution controls," said Earthjustice senior attorney Deena Tumeh. "EPA has no basis to repeal this well-supported rule. By rolling back the rule, the Trump EPA is bending the knee to the sterilizer industry at the expense of millions of people's health."
Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) Center for Science and Democracy, similarly stressed that "this dangerous decision puts people across the United States and in Puerto Rico at a higher risk of breathing dangerous fumes known to cause respiratory irritation, nausea, blurred vision, headaches, and various cancers. Children are especially vulnerable to the cancer-causing harms of ethylene oxide exposure."
As Minovi detailed:
According to UCS analysis, nearly 14 million people in the United States live within five miles of at least one commercial sterilization facility, and more than 10,000 schools and childcare facilities fall within those areas. These communities are disproportionately made up of people of color or those who do not speak English as a first language...
This decision is a reckless and self-serving handout to big industry, which asked for this rule to be rolled back. This process sidestepped community input from the start and is an affront to communities that have unknowingly lived with ethylene oxide exposure for decades. These actions show, yet again, that this administration has little to no regard for the health and welfare of working people or any interest in protecting children from exposure to toxic chemicals.
Minovi declared that "ethylene oxide emissions controls need to be strengthened—not dismantled," an argument echoed by Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics and chair of the Sierra Club National Clean Air Team.
"Walking back key regulations for ethylene oxide sterilizer facilities is essentially giving a highly polluting industry a get-out-of-jail-free card. Sterilizers are some of the largest, most toxic chemical manufacturing facilities in the country,” said Williams. "Rather than regressing on key protections, these facilities need even more controls in place to ensure the safety of workers and nearby communities."
People who live near sterilizer facilities also spoke out against the proposed rule, which now faces a 45-day public comment period.
"We understand that industry applied heavy pressure to weaken the previously finalized rule. We also understand that industry remains more concerned with their profits than the lives of those who live near sterilizer facilities, like my community in Laredo," said Tricia Cortez, executive director of Rio Grande International Study Center in Texas.
"Sterilizer facilities like Midwest must be held accountable for their dangerous, cancer-causing emissions," she said. "We need an EPA that works to protect us, the people, not financial interests and corporations that continue to cause so much harm to so many."
Victor Alvarado, founder and coordinator for Comité Diálogo Ambiental, said that "I remember the EPA informing us that Steri-Tech's ethylene oxide emissions in my hometown of Salinas, Puerto Rico, were so high that we had one of the highest rates of toxic air cancer risk in the United States... Eliminating the new protections against ethylene oxide emissions is unjust."
The EPA proposal comes after President Donald Trump in July signed a series of proclamations easing pollution rules for over 100 facilities focused on energy, chemical manufacturing, iron ore processing, and sterile medical equipment. His "regulatory relief," as the Republican called it, applied to dozens of sterilization plants.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and Natural Resources Defense Council responded by filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of CleanAIRE NC, Sustainable Newton, Savannah Riverkeeper, and Virginia Interfaith Power & Light.
"We always knew the presidential exemptions issued last year were part a broader plan to put the interests of corporate polluters above the health and well-being of American families," Sustainable Newton president Maurice Carter said Friday. "But we won't stop fighting to protect our community by demanding commonsense, reasonable measures that even the EPA has said would reduce harmful emissions by 90% and lower cancer risks by 92%."
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