Federal regulators have approved a plan to remove a damaged nuclear fuel assembly at the Palisades nuclear plant in Southwest Michigan.

The fuel assembly was damaged when it tipped over after being loaded into the nuclear reactor at Palisades. The plant stopped operating in 2022, but its owner, Holtec International, has been working to make Palisades the first nuclear plant to come back online after decommissioning.

After years of work, staff began loading fuel into the reactor this August, but had to stop after the assembly tipped. Holtec said fuel loading has been paused, but other restart activities have continued.

Palisades already has procedures in place to load and unload fuel assemblies, but Holtec said the tilted assembly had damage on the “upper tile plate,” which complicated the process.

“Visual inspections of the tilted assembly concluded that damage sustained by the fuel assembly prevents retrieval using the grapple on the refueling machine,” the company wrote in a letter to regulators.

In the letter, Holtec requested an amendment to its license to allow it to use a new procedure for removing the damaged assembly and transporting it into a spent fuel pool in another building.

Holtec requested emergency approval of the plan, without a public hearing, because it said a delay could impact the plant’s timeline for restart.

Some nearby residents and nuclear critics wrote to the NRC, urging the commission to slow down the process.

“I urge the NRC not to approve Holtec’s proposed one-time alternative fuel-handling amendment on an expedited basis without a rigorous, independently verified safety review and meaningful public scrutiny,” wrote Kraig Schultz, of Grand Haven, in a letter submitted to the NRC.

“The proposed operation is not routine. It would use a newly fabricated fuel movement device and transfer canister, lift and transport the assembly outside the normal underwater transfer route, and carry the loaded canister through the equipment hatch into the spent fuel pool building.”

But Monday, the NRC issued a letter approving the license changes, allowing Holtec to move forward with its plan.

“The Commission has concluded, based on the considerations discussed above, that: (1) there is reasonable assurance that the health and safety of the public will not be endangered by operation in the proposed manner, (2) there is reasonable assurance that such activities will be conducted in compliance with the Commission’s regulations, and (3) the issuance of the amendment will not be inimical to the common defense and security or to the health and safety of the public,” the commission wrote in a safety review attached to the letter.

The safety analysis included considerations of the possibility of an earthquake during the process, and the possibility that the canister could be dropped during transport.

The NRC is still looking into why the fuel assembly tipped over, and a spokesperson says the commission will continue to monitor the removal of the tipped fuel assembly.

People showed up before dusk, carrying flowers across the service road to the tree with fresh scars on its trunk. To the tree where the life of Mario David Coronado-Juarez came to an end, in a fiery crash after fleeing a stop by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I would like to thank you for being here tonight,” said Karla Barberi, who offered words in both Spanish and English on behalf of Coronado-Juarez’s family. “With your presence, you’re helping us give the family far away some love, embrace them, and let them know they’re not alone.”

Coronado-Juarez was living in the U.S. without authorization, working in construction. Barberi told the gathered crowd that he sent nearly all of his money back to Guatemala to support his three children and his wife so that they could build a home. A photo of the family rested in the corner of a poster on display beneath the tree. They gathered outside a small structure, with pieces of corrugated aluminum for walls.

Barberi said Coronado-Juarez came from an impoverished part of Guatemala, and was working to give his family a life of dignity.

“Yeah, he did cross the border like many of us. But that doesn’t make him a disposable person that you can chase down the street just because he looks undocumented,” Barberi said.

In a statement posted to X on Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said ICE agents originally stopped Coronado-Juarez’s vehicle because it was registered to another person “with multiple alcohol related driving offenses.”

“As officers attempted the stop to confirm the identity of the driver, the driver of the vehicle fled at a high rate of speed,” DHS wrote on its X account. “In the interest of public safety, ICE officers immediately discontinued the enforcement action.”

The statement claims officers then saw smoke nearly a half mile away from where they’d tried to stop Coronado-Juarez, then drove to the scene to attempt to help him.

The local Spanish language news outlet El Informador posted video on its Facebook account that it claimed showed the crash and the aftermath. In that video, an unmarked vehicle with flashing lights appears to stop near the crash approximately 12 seconds after it happened.

The Grand Rapids Fire Department and Grand Rapids police responded to the crash, but were unable to save Coronado-Juarez.

As darkness fell Thursday night, the crowd swelled from a few dozen to perhaps more than 100, spilling onto Century Avenue. Community members who spoke called for justice, for a change in immigration policies, for the city of Grand Rapids to enact new protections against immigration enforcement within the city. And for Mario to be remembered.

“May his story be known,” said Barberi. “May justice be served.”

Grand Rapids police said a person killed in a car crash Sunday was fleeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The crash happened Sunday morning on the city’s Southwest side, at Century Ave SW and McKendrick Street SW. GRPD said the vehicle ran into a tree and caught fire. The driver died.

Tuesday afternoon, the police department released another statement about the crash, adding that the driver fled after immigration officials attempted to stop the vehicle.

“GRPD's traffic unit investigators are limited in their ability to gather information from federal agents about events preceding the crash,” the department said in its statement. “GRPD had no involvement in, and no knowledge of, this situation prior to being called to the crash site.”

GRPD Chief Joe Trigg asked the Michigan State Police to assist with the investigation. MSP confirmed to Michigan Public that it is assisting.

Michigan Public has requested additional information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This is a developing story.

Is it weird to you too?

How, in Michigan, we vote for the people who oversee three of our public universities, and each university uses a different word for the same role? Regents for the University of Michigan (U of M), Trustees for Michigan State University (MSU), and Governors for Wayne State University (WSU).

When you vote this November, you’ll be asked to vote on two candidates for each of these three university boards.

Are we the only state to do this?

MSU Extension confirms in an article about Michigan’s university governance systems that Michigan is, in fact, “the only state to elect its boards for public universities via a statewide citizen vote.”

Three other states do have public elections for university boards, but MSU Extension notes the elections in those states are regional, not statewide.

But the weirdness to me is not just that we do this in Michigan, it’s that we only do it for three universities: U of M (including the Dearborn and Flint campuses), MSU and WSU.

Governing boards for the other 10 public universities in Michigan are appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the state Senate. This is a more common method in other states.

Ok, so why do we do it this way?

The history of university boards on our ballot.

Simple answer: We do it this way because it’s in the state Constitution.

Longer answer: It’s in the state Constitution because of something called Jacksonian democracy, at least according to Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens Research Council, who wrote about Michigan’s unique way of choosing university boards in 2018.

“Michigan’s propensity to rely on elections instead of appointment is lodged in Jacksonian democracy, which advanced the concept that the problem with government was the appointive status of government officials,” Lupher wrote. “It was hoped that the fragmentation of power and frequent turnover of officials would prevent the formation of a government aristocracy.”

Okay, fine, but why just three universities?

I honestly had trouble finding the answer to this question. Lupher called these three the “flagship” universities of the state, and I think most of us would accept U of M and MSU in that category. As for WSU, it does rank third in total student enrollment. But there have been times when Western Michigan University and Grand Valley State University ranked higher. And in terms of research status, Michigan Technological University is ranked as highly as WSU.

The real answer why WSU is included, as far as I can tell, is just that voters decided it should be. WSU originally formed as a municipal university, run by the Detroit Board of Education. It became a state university in 1956 and in 1959 voters passed a constitutional amendment to allow its board to be elected by popular vote.

Power to the people: Is it working?

Okay, so if the original reason why we had statewide elections for these boards is to keep the power close to the people, and prevent a government aristocracy, how is it going, really?

Well, not great, according to Lupher’s analysis:

“Candidates to the flagship university boards do not have to appeal to statewide electors to get on the ballot,” he continued. “Major political party candidates for U (of) M’s, MSU’s, and WSU’s governing boards are nominated at those parties’ conventions. The conventions are not open to the public. The candidates are often well connected party insiders that often have an affiliation with the universities and their major backers.”

Each party gets to decide who to put forward for the university boards, so if you don’t go to the party convention, you don’t get a say in who is nominated. You just get to choose on your ballot which party’s people you want to support.

Could this process ever change?

If you don’t like how Michigan handles university boards, you have a couple of options. The first option is to vote to change the state Constitution. Voters are being asked this year whether to call a constitutional convention, so if you’re really motivated, there’s one chance right there.

The second chance would be an amendment. This summer, two state legislators introduced a resolution that would have put an amendment before voters to change the process, and have all university boards appointed by the governor. It also called for primary elections for secretary of state and attorney general candidates. The resolution didn’t get enough support to appear on this year’s ballot, but the idea could come back if more people support it. If this is something you really care about, you could contact your state representative and see where they stand.

In the meantime, we’ll be voting on the candidates this year to fill two board seats each at U of M, MSU and WSU.

Do you need to vote for university regents or trustees?

Thanks to Jean for this question. I can't tell you whether you should vote or not, but I can tell you more about researching candidates for these seats. It would have been hard to do a few weeks ago, but now that the parties have held their conventions, we can at least see who they’ve nominated for the boards.

You can find the candidates if you scroll to the bottom of this page. And here’s our guide to tracking political donations, which may help you find out more about each candidate.

The U of M Faculty Senate is hosting a candidate forum September 24 to learn more about Regents candidates. If you hear of other forums for MSU or WSU, let us know about them!

We also got a question about how to recall people from a university governing board. These board members are subject to Michigan’s recall law, so recalling them is the same as any other recall effort in Michigan. The Michigan Secretary of State’s office has a lengthy guide to the recall process here.

We’ll be back next week with your guide to mail-in (or absentee) ballots.

See you then,

Dustin Dwyer, Reporter

_______________________________

Today’s newsletter was written by Dustin Dwyer, produced by Kalloli Bhatt, and edited by Michelle Keller.

_______________________________

Hello, fellow kids,

Despite decades of work to increase turnout among young voters, the U.S. Census reports less than half of people 18 to 24 years old voted in 2024. Midterm elections have been even worse, hovering between a low of 16% voter turnout in the 2014 midterms to 30% in 2018, according to the census.

So what might get more young people to vote in the midterms?

Michigan Public went to Western Michigan University’s Bronco Bash to ask some of the young folks there.

What we heard was pretty positive: Almost everyone we talked to said they were looking forward to voting this year. But that also wasn’t really a surprise. Because it turns out, Michigan does a better job than other states when it comes to getting young people to the polls.

The Michigan Difference

Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) looks at voters aged 18-29. Its research found that 58% of those young people cast ballots in Michigan in 2024, beating the national average. Compared to 2020, Michigan had the biggest increase in turnout for young voters of any state in the country.

That’s after leading the country in youth voter turnout in the 2022 midterms, according to CIRCLE data.

How did we pull it off?

The Michigan Secretary of State’s office credits a state law that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote when they get their driver’s license. To find out how to preregister, you can go to the SOS website here. CIRCLE’s analysis mentions preregistration as well, and includes the state’s absentee voting rules as another reason why turnout is up among young people.

So essentially, Michigan has policies that make it easier for young people to vote. And those policies seem to be working.

But other research points to a second reason: Michigan has become a politically competitive state, and young people are more likely to turn out when they believe their vote matters. A CIRCLE poll of Gen Z’s political attitudes found that 61% of Gen Z voters who voted in 2024 believed their vote matters, while only 41% of non-voters did.

“I think Gen Z will definitely have a big impact,” said Luis Varca, a student we met who says he votes.

He’s not alone.

CIRCLE also ran an analysis to see which local races could be most impacted by young voters. The methodology here is a little complicated, but basically CIRCLE looks at things like how many young people live in an area, how many are in college, what turnout has been in the past and how competitive the races appear. Then CIRCLE calculates an index, and ranks where young people can have the biggest influence in swaying an election.

And Michigan simply cleans up in these rankings. We’re second for governor’s races, fourth for the U.S. Senate race, and we had the No. 1 ranked Congressional race that could be decided by young voters.

So Michigan’s young voters have plenty of reasons to believe their vote could make a difference.

Gen Z and politics

While Michigan has stood out for improving turnout among young voters, the truth is Gen Z is starting to show up in a way that previous generations haven’t.

CIRCLE reports that Gen Z actually had higher voter turnout in its first election cycle than previous generations, suggesting that today’s younger generation is actually more politically motivated than in the past.

And that could make a difference in this year’s midterms, nationally and locally.

A poll released by CIRCLE found 56% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they are “extremely likely” to vote in the midterms nationwide.

This lines up with what we heard from WMU students last week. Most everyone my producer, Kalloli, and I stopped to talk with said they were planning to vote in the midterm elections.

Will the youth show up?

Saying you’re going to vote is not the same as voting. So how can people make sure as many young voters as possible show up for the election?

When we asked the students at WMU, several of them told us information is the key.

“I feel like some people don’t vote because they don’t understand what’s going on fully,” said Courtney Pruitt. “With this new generation, social media is everything.” She told us she first decided to vote in 2024 after finding a person on TikTok who talked about the importance of the election.

Another student, Kent Anderson, told us he believes some young people don’t vote because they might find themselves on opposite sides of an issue from their friends and family.

“I think a lot of people don’t want to vote the opposite of their parents. They think their parents won’t like them anymore,” Anderson told me. “That’s how it was for me, but it’s not true. Your parents will still love you if you vote the opposite of them.”

Research has shown that, sometimes, the barriers to voting for young people are often psychological.

In 2025, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania published a study recommending a series of steps to address those psychological barriers, such as:

• Help young people make a plan.
• Focus on their values.
• Give them a reason to hope.
• Make voting normal.
• Talk about civic duty.
• Get their friends involved.

We did find one student at WMU who said she wasn’t sure if she would vote this year.

“There’s rights and wrongs on both sides,” said Brooklyn Angel, who said she still has research to do before she can decide how, or even if, she’ll vote this year. “Right now at least, I don’t think I’m going to vote, but I don’t know. If I do end up voting, I need to research both sides.”

But her friend Sophia Koches said she’s still trying to convince Brooklyn to vote. “I think it’s important to use your voice, and do at least something.”

For as long as I can remember, people have been talking about the problem of getting young people to vote. It’s clear the problem hasn’t been solved, but all the data, and all the students we talked to, give reason to believe that this generation really is stepping up — especially in Michigan.

Rooting for the youth,

Dustin Dwyer, Reporter

_______________________________

Today’s newsletter was written by Dustin Dwyer, produced by Kalloli Bhatt, and edited by Michelle Keller.

_______________________________

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the Palisades nuclear plant failed to implement a radiation protection program for workers at the plant during an incident in February.

Workers have been trying to get ready to restart Palisades after it went into decommissioning in 2022.

Federal regulators recently released the results of an inspection this week that found two violations.

The NRC says on two days in February, sensors picked up elevated airborne radiation in one work area. Palisades staff took some precautions to limit exposure, but it did not take all steps required by regulations. In addition, it said workers didn’t alert a Radiation Protection Manager, as required.

“On multiple occasions these communications were not made, and condition reports were not generated for instances in which stop work criteria were met,” the inspection report said.

Palisades also failed to follow regulations on monitoring airborne radiation exposure on the workers themselves. It said that monitors worn on worker lapels showed elevated airborne radiation levels, but plant staff reported the results as “cross-contaminated.”

The NRC says staff didn’t do enough to validate that conclusion, writing “there was no evaluation of the data, and the process is not described in site procedures.”

The violations come after some nearby residents pushed back on the plans to re-open Palisades, arguing the plant is too old to be operated safely. The restart plans are running nearly a year behind the initial timeline, though Holtec International, Palisades’ owner, said workers began installing fuel into the plant’s reactor at the start of this month.

A Palisades spokesman said the company has taken steps to address both violations in the NRC inspection report.

“The performance did not meet our standards, and we take this issue very seriously,” wrote spokesman Nick Culp. “Palisades completed a comprehensive root-cause evaluation and implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence, including strengthened radiological controls, procedures, oversight, and staffing.”

Culp added that while some workers were exposed to “greater-than-expected” doses of radiation, “[a]t no time did any worker approach federal occupational radiation dose limits.”

The NRC inspection says the violations were of “very low safety significance,” and did not issue any penalties.

A Southwest Michigan nuclear power plant is one step closer to coming back online.

Palisades shut down in 2022, originally to be decommissioned.

But its owner, Holtec International, has been working on a restart plan. The plan was to start generating power at the end of last year. A series of maintenance issues, including thousands of cracked steam generator tubes, set that timeline back.

Some nearby residents have been trying to halt the restart, arguing Palisades was outdated and unreliable even before it shut down in 2022.

Earlier this week, workers at Palisades started loading fuel rods into the reactor core's 204 fuel assemblies.

Palisades has the capability to generate electricity for about 800,000 homes at full power.

A company spokesperson said Palisades will start generating power again “once its Technical Specifications are met along with all applicable federal regulations and industry standards.”