COVERT, Michigan — The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, long synonymous with safety lapses and regulatory oversight, is poised for an unprecedented comeback under Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s plan to reopen the shuttered plant by 2025 — the first attempt of its kind in U.S. history.

However, in this robust agricultural region, there are fears about how reopening a problematic plant could impact area farmers and the food they produce.

Approximately 6,362 farms are within 50 miles of Palisades. In Van Buren County alone, where the plant is located, there are 838 farms. Michigan’s southwestern corner, home to 80% of the state’s farms, is often called the “blueberry capital of the world.” 

“A leak (and) this 150-year-old farm is done,” said Bill Adams, who runs Adams Blueberry Farms in Hartford, Michigan, 16 miles south of the plant. “Why would they restart something that old and sitting this long?”

Opened in 1971, Palisades, which is located along Lake Michigan, once generated 5% of Michigan’s electricity, enough to power 800,000 homes. But a litany of mechanical issues plagued its operations for decades.

In 2013, the plant leaked 79 gallons of diluted radioactive water into Lake Michigan, forcing a five-week shutdown — its ninth closure in just two years. 

Federal regulators repeatedly flagged the plant for safety concerns, from undetected radiation exposure among employees in 2008 to persistent cracks in its 300,000-gallon storage tank that leaked for over a decade. In 2012, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) described Palisades as having some of the worst cases of nuclear fuel container weakening in the nation.

The plant was permanently shut down on May 31, 2022, with its owners citing financial and safety concerns. But just months later, Whitmer announced a plan to revive Palisades, reigniting debates over the risks and benefits of nuclear energy in a state still grappling with its troubled legacy.

Typically, after 40 years, a nuclear power plant is closed and undergoes a complex decommissioning process that can take up to 30 years to complete. Globally, the only plants that have reopened are in Japan. 

Holtec Decommissioning International bought Palisades in 2022 with the goal of dismantling it. Now, with Whitmer’s support, they have since decided to reopen the plant, something Holtec has never done. 

Neither Holtec nor Whitmer’s office responded to multiple requests for comment. 

Restarting a plant includes retraining staff and examining components to ensure they have not degraded. The process also involves restarting all maintenance programs and buying new fuel. The NRC ultimately decides if a once-closed plant should have a license to operate again. 

Reopening the Palisades plant could create hundreds of jobs and be a cleaner energy source that doesn’t create the greenhouse gas emissions of a coal or natural gas power plant. 

But Kevin Kamps, the radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit based in Maryland that educates the public about safety concerns with nuclear power, said potential health impacts should be considered before reopening the plant. 

“Any exposure carries a health risk,” Kamps said. 

Critics of the plant’s reopening also cite area cancer rates and studies of radiation in crops, along with the catastrophic impact on local farms if a major accident were to occur. 

Despite those safety concerns, many see the reopening of Palisades as an economic opportunity too great to pass up. 

Reopening Palisades would “provide large amounts of zero-emission electricity at a time when demand for energy is rising across the country again,” said Todd Allen, chair of the University of Michigan’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences. Allen also believes reopening the plant would create hundreds of jobs. 

A 2023 University of Michigan report found that the closure of Palisades caused a $259 million loss in employment services such as food, retail, healthcare and truck transportation. 

In October 2024, during a community meeting with the NRC, South Haven Mayor Annie Brown backed the reopening and said the rural community’s population, which is 2,499, is already starting to grow because of jobs at Palisades. 

“The reopening of Palisades is one way to fight poverty,” Brown said.

Approximately 32.4% of people live below the poverty line in Covert. 

Impact on farmers

Twenty-nine miles north of Palisades, in Fennville, Joan Donaldson operates Pleasant Hill Blueberry Farm, where she began growing blueberries on 40 acres in the mid-1970s with her husband.

Donaldson doesn’t know how much reopening the plant will directly affect her farm, but she worries about its impact on nearby water sources.

Power plants pull water from nearby lakes and rivers to cool their reactors. When the water is returned, it is much warmer. Called thermal pollution, the warmer water can alter crop seasons. 

“Any change in the water temperature of Lake Michigan will affect fruit farmers,” Donaldson said. “We rely upon the Mediterranean effect of the cool water in the spring to hold back fruiting buds so they do not bloom too soon like they did in 2012. And in the fall, the warm water lengthens our growing season.” 

The plant’s large water use can also strain local access, said Jim Walsh from Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit organization that advocates for food, water and climate protections. 

“Day to day, nuclear power plants are massive water abusers, posing a present and immediate threat to ongoing water scarcity concerns and potentially impacting the cost of water to area residents and businesses, including farmers,” Walsh said. 

Since 2023, southwestern Michigan has been in a moderate drought. 

However, the main concern for many is whether radiation from the plant could contaminate crops.

Even now, while Palisades is closed, a radioactive plume made of gases, particles and vapors hovers over the plant. 

The NRC has said the plume is safe as it hasn’t moved beyond the plant’s boundary. 

“The results of continual monitoring have demonstrated that (the) nuclear power plant operation does not cause additional radioactivity that could impact crops or livestock,” an NRC spokesperson wrote in an email to Investigate Midwest.

The NRC spokesperson also said that each nuclear power plant has a Radiological Environmental Monitoring Program (REMP) that tracks radioactivity. 

But Kamps said that radioactive isotopes and waste products like cesium, strontium and tritium, which are byproducts of nuclear reactors, have been linked to cancer and have a lifespan of 300 years. “That’s how long you should worry about it in the food chain,” he said.

Nuclear byproducts and their impacts

Cesium

A radioactive byproduct of nuclear reactors, cesium poses risks like burns, radiation sickness, cancer, and death. It bioaccumulates in the food chain, passing from soil to plants, animals, and humans, where it deposits in muscle and bone. Cesium persists in clay soils, transferring through plant roots and contaminating ecosystems.

Strontium

Strontium, linked to bone cancer and skin and eye burns, contaminates soil near nuclear plants and enters the body through food and water. While levels near plants are often low, its presence raises concerns about long-term health risks.

Tritium

Released as steam or through leaks into soil and groundwater, tritium contaminates waterways and is tied to cancer, genetic mutations, and birth defects. Concentrated releases from nuclear plants amplify risks despite its natural presence in small amounts.

Bruce Davis, whose family has lived in the area since the 1880s, believes he’s seen firsthand how power plants can cause cancer. 

Davis’ wife, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law were all diagnosed with thyroid cancer within a six-month period in 2003 and 2004. Their only common link was spending summers at Palisades Park, a community of 205 cottages built in 1905. 

Now, Davis and his wife live directly next to the plant. When the plant shut down, they moved there full-time. He called news of the plant’s reopening “devastating.” 

Before the power plant went online, the county’s cancer death rate was more than one-third lower than the national average. Between 2003 and 2020, when the plant was operating, the county rate jumped to 50% higher than the national average, according to a 2023 study reviewing Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data. 

Even though cancer rates in the region are increasing, scientists have a difficult time connecting cancer clusters to environmental factors. The CDC has noted that since cancer can be caused by genetics and lifestyle choices, it’s difficult to pinpoint the absolute cause. 

However, Mike Carberry, co-founder of Bright Iowa Future, an organization that educates Iowans on renewable energy, believes the connection should be obvious. 

“When you see a whole neighborhood and a whole bunch of kids who got childhood cancers, and they live within just a couple of miles of a nuclear power plant, there’s a linkage,” Carberry said. 

How a meltdown could impact local agriculture and beyond

An accident at the plant could create the most problems for area farmers, said Kamps, the radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear.

“Nuclear disasters have been radioactive, agricultural catastrophes,” Kamps said.

A nuclear meltdown could make the air unsafe to breathe within a 10-mile radius, while food and water supplies may be dangerous within 50 miles, according to the NRC. The risk of a nuclear meltdown would also be significant for livestock, as animals can ingest radiation through water and soil. 

Following the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster, which blew a radiation cloud across much of Europe, sheep farms in Scotland had to shut down for 30 years. In 2018, a study found that cow milk in Ukraine still had radioactive levels that were five times over the safety limit. 

“Chernobyl was a catastrophe for Ukrainian agriculture,” Kamps said. “A big area of that region was contaminated, so those agricultural fields were no longer usable, at least for 300 years. And we’re less than 40 years into the catastrophe.”

In 2021, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan experienced a meltdown, which was near an agriculturally productive region. The mushrooms of Fukushima, which used to attract tourists to the area, still contain radioactivity. 

Beyond actual contamination is the stigma that comes along with radiation. The Japanese government has stated that Fukushima food is safe to eat. Nevertheless, China banned the importation of fish from Japan in 2023, and more than 90% of South Koreans stated they would stop eating fish from the country due to Fukushima’s water contamination, according to Consumers Korea, an organization that works to build a safe and fair market. 

“If they have the worst happen at Palisades, they could take out one of the most agriculturally productive regions of Michigan,” Kamps said. The federal or state government would have to convince the public that the food was safe to eat, he added. 

However, Ed Rivet, the executive director of the Michigan Conservative Energy Forum (MICEF), who works on energy policy, said design improvements have significantly reduced risks at Palisades.

“Because of the retrofitting that is happening, the plant will likely be even safer when it reopens than it was when it closed,” Rivet said.

Since the announcement of Palisades’ reopening, other nuclear advocates have proposed restarting 13 other reactors that closed in the last decade. One of those is Three Mile Island, which was the site of the U.S.’s worst nuclear accident in 1979.

If Palisades does reopen, some have recommended the facility undergo significant upgrades, including reinforcements to the concrete pads below the casks that store used reactor fuel. 

There should also be “additional barriers/sea walls to isolate the plant from rising water levels,” said Allen, the chair of the University of Michigan’s department of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences.

The casks sit on a concrete pad 3 feet thick and are reinforced 150 yards from Lake Michigan. However, the concrete pad floats on 55 feet of loose sand beneath it. “It’s not anchored to anything. It’s just floating on the sand dune,” Kamps said. 

According to the NRC, the casks are stable and haven’t released radiation since 1986. 

But for an agriculture-rich region that provides food not just for much of the upper Midwest, many still believe reopening Palisades is a risky gamble.

“(Radiation) doesn’t disappear into nothingness. It actually bioaccumulates in the food chain,” Kamps said. “And you know, humans are at the top of the food chain. So, those so-called small doses of radiation, those small exposures are gonna build up over a lifetime. No exposure to radiation is harmless.”

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