Holtec, the top U.S. manufacturer of storage equipment for nuclear waste, is driving the nuclear revolution in the U.S. by reopening cold reactors and investing in small modular reactors (SMRs).
A business by the name of Holtec has emerged as the spokesperson for bringing nuclear power back to the United States.
A firm that is currently the “top US manufacturer of storage equipment for nuclear waste” is pushing for the restart of cold reactors across the nation as it becomes evident that the country’s electricity needs are greatly unfulfilled and will undoubtedly be in the future with the adoption of AI.
The company’s goals have increased recently. According to Bloomberg, it has purchased four closed nuclear reactors since 2019 with the initial plan to decommission them: Indian Point (NY), Oyster Creek (NJ), Pilgrim (MA), and Palisades (MI).
Because of the large trust funds associated with cleanup costs, demolishing outdated reactors offered significant profits. Before long, Holtec was the top nuclear decommissioning company in the country.
Furthermore, as the paper points out, Holtec now plans to restart the reactor with a $1.5 billion loan from the DOE, marking the first time a cold reactor would be reactivated in the United States, despite first purchasing Palisades to dismantle it. Nevertheless, Holtec is inexperienced in managing nuclear power facilities.
While some people are alarmed by Holtec’s safety transgressions throughout the previous four years of decommissioning, others view these violations as typical in this strictly regulated sector. Nevertheless, Holtec hopes to restart Palisades shortly and start producing its own small modular reactors (SMRs) before the end of the decade, as nuclear power is increasingly recognized as a crucial component in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
SMRs, or factory-built reactors that can be installed on-site, are an extremely difficult and mostly untested project for Holtec and the industry, but we have written a great deal about it because it is the logical next step. We mentioned Sam Altman’s nuclear SPAC yesterday; it is currently trading under ALCC and will move to OKLO at the end of this week.
Holtec’s headquarters are located in Jupiter, Florida, but its manufacturing and campus in Camden, New Jersey serve as the company’s commercial center. After immigrating from India, founder and CEO Krishna Singh obtained a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. His office faces the Delaware River and Philadelphia.
According to Bloomberg, Holtec gained notoriety in the mid-1980s by developing a method for storing used uranium fuel rods, which solved the issue of packed interior cooling pools. Singh came up with a novel idea: a sturdy rack that reduced the movement of fuel rods during earthquakes so that plants could keep more rods in the pools. He established Holtec with this unique design, and his racks quickly took the lead in the market.
Reactors were traditionally shut down for decades before being decommissioned. The procedure, which is financed by a trust established through donations from utility ratepayers, is granted operators up to 60 years by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Palisades, for example, had $552 million in its trust fund at the time of closure. The extended period for money to increase and radioactivity to decrease.
However, Holtec, EnergySolutions Inc., and NorthStar Group Services Inc. have taken a different tack and begun decommissioning considerably earlier. They finish the project in years rather than decades by utilizing their experience with radioactive materials, and they keep a portion of any money left over from the trust fund.
“Not only does Holtec intend to bring Palisades back online, it also plans by the end of the decade to have its own small modular reactors up and running,” according to Bloomberg.
Many of the reactors in the United States may end up being brought back online, as we had previously stated back in April. “There are a couple of nuclear power plants that we probably should, and can, turn back on,” Jigar Shah, director of the US Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, told Bloomberg in an interview.
A loan to Holtec International Corp. to revive the Palisades nuclear reactor in Michigan was approved by Shah’s office in March. It was the first nuclear power plant to be reactivated in the United States, marking a historic turning point and paving the way for atomic energy to return triumphantly. The project might start generating electricity in the second part of 2025.
President Joe Biden officially declared an energy emergency in 2022, attributing it to Russia and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As reported by GreatGameIndia earlier, this crisis underscores the need for energy solutions that can address current and future demands. Given these conditions, nuclear power, the largest source of carbon-free electricity, becomes increasingly vital.
The biggest source of carbon-free electricity is nuclear power. In addition, as we’ve mentioned in “The Next AI Trade,” the expansion of AI data centers would overload the country’s power grids unless a major upgrade is implemented. These factors include onshoring tendencies, the electrification of buildings and transportation, and more.
We presented readers with a simple investing thesis over 3.5 years ago: “Buy Uranium: Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze” It became plain to us then that the nuclear power business was about to come back.
And the tendency is only getting stronger because some of the biggest uranium producers, like Cameco, will continue to profit from the resuscitation of nuclear power facilities. We advised readers to purchase uranium equities at $10 or less, while Cameco is currently trading at $50 per share.