What Does It Take to Reopen a Nuclear Power Plant?
Meets Six Sweeping Demands Felicity Bradstock is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City.
She writes for energy websites and covers several other industries, as well as writing… In the United States, President Trump aims to expand the country’s nuclear power capacity by developing new projects and restoring old reactors.
However, restarting disused reactors is not as simple as just turning them back on, as rigorous safety standards must be considered.
In May 2025, President Trump published an executive orderentitled“Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base”, in which he outlined plans to start construction of 10 new large reactors and add 5 GW of power to existing nuclear reactors by 2030.
reactors were shut down in previous decades as confidence in nuclear power fell to an all-time low followingthree prominent nuclear disasters– Chornobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island.
However, the public perception of nuclear power has significantlyimprovedin recent years.
Last year, Trump announced plans to recommence operations at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, a 789-MWe plant owned by Holtec International that shut down in 2022; the Constellation Energy 835-MWe Crane Clean Energy Centre on the Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania; and NextEra’s 615-MWe Duane Arnold in Iowa.
After a year of fast-tracked efforts to rejuvenate nuclear operations, on Friday, 24thJuly, the Trump Administrationannouncedit had achieved the goal of bringing three new advanced test reactors to criticality – the stable state where a self-sustaining chain reaction is achieved – by July 4, 2026.
When the reactor was shut down at Michigan’s Palisades Power Plant in 2022, it was expected to be permanent.
However, the firm Holtec International decided to change plans for the plant by developing a strategy to restart the shuttered nuclear reactor, something that had not previously been seen.
Holtec said it expected the recommissioning to take around two years, although this estimate was not accurate.
It proved much more difficult to restart a nuclear reactor than previously anticipated due to unexpected challenges and high costs.
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