Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, Michigan

The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant is located in Covert, Michigan, adjacent to Lake Michigan, the source of its cooling water. It is home to a single pressurized water reactor with an output capacity of 805MW. Its operating license was issued in 1971, and it is owned and operated by Entergy Corporation. Palisades was the first nuclear power plant in the U.S., to be allowed by the NRC to establish a dry cask storage system under the terms of its general operating license, something which most of the other 100 or so nuclear power plants in the USA are now doing too. Consequently, the site hosts over twenty 16-foot-tall casks in which radioactive spent fuel rods are stored, each of which can weigh over 100 tons when fully loaded. This is considered to be a temporary solution, however, until such time as the federal government is able to provide a more permanent resting place. Since the work on the proposed national repository for commercial nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has been suspended indefinitely, no one knows when or where it will go.