Environment

Michigan nuclear plant shows the challenges the U.S. will face in safely restarting old reactors

Published

3 months ago

March 22, 2025

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The Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, Feb. 24, 2025.

Spencer Kimball | CNBC

COVERT, Mich. — A nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan is aiming to make history this fall by becoming the first reactor in the U.S. to restart operations after shutting down to be eventually dismantled.

The effort to restart the Palisades plant near South Haven, which shut down three years ago, is a precedent-setting event that could pave a path for other shuttered reactors to come back online.

But Palisades needs major repairs to restart safely, highlighting the challenges the industry will face in bringing aging plants back to life.

Palisades began commercial operations in 1971 during the early wave of reactor construction in the U.S. The plant permanently ceased operations in 2022, one of a dozen reactors to close in recent years as nuclear energy has struggled to compete against cheaper natural gas and renewables.

The owner of the plant, Holtec International, has said it hopes to restart Palisades this fall, subject to approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The restart project is backed by a $1.5 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, $1.3 billion from the Department of Agriculture, and $300 million in grants from the state of Michigan.

The Energy Department on Monday approved the release of nearly $57 million from the loan, a sign that the Trump administration supports the project amid the turmoil and uncertainty in Washington over federal funding for projects started under the Biden administration.

But Holtec is facing major repairs to Palisades’ aging steam generators that could delay a schedule the NRC has called demanding. Holtec has disclosed to regulators that its inspections have found damaged tubes in the plant’s two generators, which were installed in 1990.

Inside the control room at the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, Feb. 24, 2025.

Spencer Kimball | CNBC

Those tubes are crucial components that protect public health. If a tube ruptures at a nuclear plant, there is a risk that radioactive material will be released into the environment, according to the NRC. Plant owners are required to demonstrate to the NRC that if a tube does fail, any radiological release beyond the plant’s perimeter would remain below what the regulator describes as its “conservative limits.”

“The NRC is scared to death of steam generator tube ruptures. It’s a very real accident. It’s not a hypothetical,” said Alan Blind, who served as engineering director at Palisades from 2006 to 2013 under previous plant owner Entergy. Blind, who is now retired, said he supports nuclear power but is concerned about the condition of the Palisades plant based on decades of experience in the industry.

Palisades is currently in a safe condition, NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell said, as the steam generators are not in use because the plant is shut down and defueled.

Holtec President Kelly Trice told CNBC the company has done a “complete characterization” of the generators and “they are fully repairable.” The company has asked the NRC to complete its review of the repair plan by Aug. 15, but federal regulators are skeptical of the company’s timetable.

NRC Branch Chief Steve Bloom warned Holtec during a Jan. 14 public meeting that the work required to review the plan will “add to a schedule that is already very aggressive.” Eric Reichelt, a senior materials engineer at the NRC, called the schedule “very demanding,” telling Holtec at the meeting that only a few people are available at the regulatory body to do the necessary review work.

Steam generator repairs

In nuclear plants such as Palisades, water heated by the reactor passes through tubes in the generators, causing water outside the tubes to boil into steam that drives the turbines to produce electricity for the grid.

The radioactive water that circulates through the reactor and the clean water that boils in the generators do not come into contact with each other. If a tube ruptures, however, the contaminated water mixes with the clean water and radioactive material could be released into the environment through valves that discharge steam, according to the NRC.

Holtec’s inspections found more than 1,400 indications of corrosion cracking across more than 1,000 steam generator tubes at Palisades, according to a company filing with the NRC in October 2024. The tubes have not failed, Holtec CEO Krishna Singh told CNBC in February. Several had corrosion cracking with more than 70% penetration, according to the filing.

Due to the plant’s age, Palisades steam generator tubes are made of an alloy that the industry has since learned is prone to corrosion cracking, according to NRC. Holtec said it is using a technique to repair the tubes called “sleeving” in which a higher quality alloy is inserted and expanded to seal the damage.

Inside the control room at the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, Feb. 24, 2025.

Spencer Kimball | CNBC

“The techniques of repair which we’re using, which is called sleeving, has been done in about 10 plants across the world and in some plants is done every outage, so this is not new, exotic technology,” Trice said. “It is a common repair technique, and we expect it to be done on time and on schedule.”

Holtec’s repair plan is scheduled to start this summer following inspection and testing, spokesperson Nick Culp told CNBC. Holtec can go ahead with the tube repairs on its schedule, but the company does so at its own risk as the NRC will decide whether the repairs meet requirements in the end, Burnell said.

But during the Jan. 14 meeting, NRC branch chief Bloom pushed back on Holtec’s statements that the company’s repair plan is following industry precedent.

“Even though you’re quote, unquote, following a precedent, it’s not exactly, because it’s a different material, different type of sleeving,” Bloom said at the January meeting. The sleeve design that Holtec is proposing for the repairs has not been installed in steam generators before, though it has been used in other heat exchangers at nuclear plants, according to a company filing.

The sleeves are made of an alloy that has not shown signs of cracking in U.S. or international plants, according to the filing. The component has a service life of no more than 10 years, the filing said. Culp said testing and analysis of the sleeves “support the expectation of longer-term performance.”

The issues with the tubes raise the question of whether the aging steam generators should be replaced, an expensive project that Palisades’ previous owners knew would be necessary at some point but never tackled.

Inside the control room at the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, Feb. 24, 2025.

Spencer Kimball | CNBC

Consumers Energy, for example, sold the Palisades to Entergy in 2007 for $380 million in part due to “significant capital expenditures that are required for the plant,” including the replacement of the steam generators, according to a filing with the Michigan Public Service Commission.

Consumers Energy assumed that the generators needed to be replaced in 2016, according to the filing. Entergy, however, did not replace them after purchasing Palisades. The utility found that purchasing new generators would make the plant economically unfeasible, said Blind, who was engineering director at Palisades during that time.

“They felt that with their expertise that they could prolong the remaining life, which is exactly what they did up until they shut it down,” Blind said.

Entergy closed Palisades in May 2022 and sold the plant to Holtec to take over its dismantling. But Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in a letter to the Department of Energy pushed to keep Palisades open, citing the jobs supported by the plant and the need for reliable, carbon-free power. Backed by the governor’s office, Holtec first applied for federal support to restart Palisades two months after it closed.

Indian Point leak

A steam generator tube rupture at the Indian Point nuclear plant — located 24 miles north of New York City in Westchester County, New York — demonstrates the potential risks such incidents pose to public health and the finances of utility companies.

On Feb. 15, 2000, operators at Indian Point Unit 2 received a notification that a steam generator tube had failed, according to the NRC’s report on the incident. Consolidated Edison issued an alert and shut the plant down, the regulator said. It would stay closed for 11 months while the cause of the rupture was investigated and the condition of the four steam generators was analyzed.

The rupture resulted in “a minor radiological release to the environment that was well within regulatory limits,” according to an NRC task force report. The incident “did not impact the public health and safety,” according to the report. Still, the NRC slapped Con Edison with a red citation, the most serious violation, after determining the leak was of “high safety significance.”

The leak was contained and there was no evacuation of neighboring communities, but authorities in Westchester County at the time were deeply worried about the risk to the public, said Blind, who was Con Edison’s vice president of nuclear power at Indian Point during the incident.

Inside the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, Feb. 24, 2025.

Spencer Kimball | CNBC

“We had contained all of the radioactive water, but they were so scared that they were very close to closing all the schools,” said Blind. “They weren’t going to let the children come to school in the morning until they saw how this all played out. It’s all very serious.”

The leak proved costly for Con Edison. The utility replaced the four steam generators at an estimated cost of up to $150 million, according to company filings from the time. The bill would have been higher had Con Edison not had replacement steam generators already on hand. The utility had owned replacement generators since 1988 but had not installed them. Con Edison also paid more than $130 million in charges associated with the 11-month outage at the plant.

Blind said Con Edison decided to replace the steam generators at Indian Point to reduce the risk that there would be another tube rupture when the plant restarted.

“We were a publicly traded company,” Blind said. “And it came down from the board, it said we can’t live with this uncertainty.”

The utility sold Indian Point Units 1 and 2 to Entergy for $502 million in 2001 under a deal that also included gas turbine assets. The sale was under consideration before the tube rupture. Con Edison estimated an after-tax loss of $170 million from the Indian Point sale, according to filings from the time.

Blind said the stakes of the planned Palisades restart are high for the entire nuclear industry. Demand for nuclear power is growing again in the U.S. as states, utilities and the tech sector seek more reliable, carbon-free power. The renewed interest has been referred to as a “nuclear renaissance” after years of reactor shutdowns in the U.S.

Constellation Energy, for example, is planning to restart its Three Mile Island plant in 2028 subject to NRC approval. Constellation has said the steam generators at the plant have undergone inspection and maintenance and are in good condition. NextEra Energy announced in July 2024 that it is evaluating whether restarting its Duane Arnold plant in Iowa is feasible.

An incident at Palisades “would be devastating for the entire industry,” Blind said. “There would be calls for rethinking this renaissance idea,” he said.

Holtec’s Culp said the sleeves used to repair the steam generators at Palisades will be continuously monitored, inspected and subject to regulatory oversight while they are in service. The plant employs multiple layers of defense “to protect our workforce, community, and environment,” he said.

NRC inspectors will observe Holtec’s repair activities as they are implemented and will ensure the steam generators meet all the requirements for safe operation, Burnell said. “This includes making sure that the public and the environment are protected from radiological concerns,” the NRC spokesman said.

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Environment

‘Bitcoin Family’ hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings

Published

1 day ago

June 7, 2025

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'Bitcoin Family' hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings

The Taihuttus on a ski trip to Sierra Nevada in southern Spain. They sold everything they owned in 2017 to bet on bitcoin — and now travel full-time as a family of five.

Didi Taihuttu

A wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives has rattled the industry — and prompted a quiet security revolution among some of its most visible evangelists.

Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called “Bitcoin Family,” said he overhauled the family’s entire security setup after a string of threats.

The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all-in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked.

Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split, and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents.

“We have changed everything,” Taihuttu told CNBC on a call from Phuket, Thailand. “Even if someone held me at gunpoint, I can’t give them more than what’s on my wallet on my phone. And that’s not a lot.”

CNBC first reported on the family’s unconventional storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described hiding hardware wallets across multiple continents — in places ranging from rental apartments in Europe to self-storage units in South America.

The Taihuttu family dressed up for Halloween in Phuket, Thailand, where they recently moved homes after receiving disturbing messages pinpointing their location from YouTube videos.

Didi Taihuttu

As physical attacks on crypto holders become more frequent, even they are rethinking their exposure.

This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old suspected of orchestrating a series of brutal kidnappings targeting crypto executives.

One victim, the father of a crypto millionaire, was allegedly held for days in a house south of Paris — and reportedly had a finger severed during the ordeal.

In a separate case earlier this year, a co-founder of French wallet firm Ledger and his wife were abducted from their home in central France in a ransom scheme that also targeted another Ledger executive.

Last month in New York, authorities said, a 28-year-old Italian tourist was kidnapped and tortured for 17 days in a Manhattan apartment by attackers trying to extract his bitcoin password — shocking him with wires, beating him with a gun, and strapping an Apple AirTag around his neck to track his movements.

The common thread: The pursuit of crypto credentials that enable instant, irreversible transfers of virtual assets.

Exodus CEO: U.S. buying bitcoin would be a global signal — but taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill

“It is definitely frightening to see a lot of these kidnappings happen,” said JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet company Exodus. He urged users to take security into their own hands by choosing self-custody, storing larger sums on hardware wallets, and — for those holding significant assets — exploring multi-signature wallets, a setup typically used by institutions.

Richardson also recommended spreading funds across different wallet types and avoiding large balances in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility.

That rising sense of vulnerability is fueling a new demand for physical protection with insurance firms now racing to offer kidnap and ransom (K&R) policies tailored to crypto holders.

But Taihuttu isn’t waiting for corporate solutions. He’s opted for complete decentralization — of not just his finances, but his personal risk profile.

As the family prepares to return to Europe from Thailand, safety has become a constant topic of conversation.

“We’ve been talking about it a lot as a family,” Taihuttu said. “My kids read the news, too — especially that story in France, where the daughter of a CEO was almost kidnapped on the street.”

Now, he said, his daughters are asking difficult questions: What if someone tries to kidnap us? What’s the plan?

One of the steel plates the Taihuttu family uses to store part of their bitcoin seed phrase. Didi etched it by hand using a hammer and letter punch — part of a decentralized storage system spread across four continents.

Didi Taihuttu

Though the girls carry only small amounts of crypto in their personal wallets, the family has decided to avoid France entirely.

“We got a little bit famous in a niche market — but that niche is becoming a really big market now,” Taihuttu said. “And I think we’ll see more and more of these robberies. So yeah, we’re definitely going to skip France.”

Even in Thailand, Taihuttu recently stopped posting travel updates and filming at home after receiving disturbing messages from strangers who claimed to have identified his location from YouTube vlogs.

“We stayed in a very beautiful house for six months — then I started getting emails from people who figured out which house it was. They warned me to be careful, told me not to leave my kids alone,” he said. “So we moved. And now we don’t film anything at all.”

“It’s a strange world at the moment,” he said. “So we’re taking our own precautions — and when it comes to wallets, we’re now completely hardware wallet-less. We don’t use any hardware wallets anymore.”

To throw off would-be attackers, Didi Taihuttu encrypts select words from each 24-word seed phrase — then splits the phrases into four sets of six and hides them around the world.

Didi Taihuttu

The family’s new system involves splitting a single 24-word bitcoin seed phrase — the cryptographic key that unlocks access to their crypto holdings — into four sets of six words, each stored in a different geographic location. Some are kept digitally through blockchain-based encryption platforms, while others are etched by hand into fireproof steel plates using a hammer and letter punch, then hidden in physical locations across four continents.

“Even if someone finds 18 of the 24 words, they can’t do anything,” Taihuttu explained.

On top of that, he’s added a layer of personal encryption, swapping out select words to throw off would-be attackers. The method is simple, but effective.

“You only need to remember which ones you changed,” he said.

Part of the reason for ditching hardware wallets, Taihuttu said, was a growing mistrust of third-party devices. Concerns about backdoors and remote access features — including a controversial update by Ledger in 2023 — prompted the family to abandon physical hardware altogether in favor of encrypted paper and steel backups.

While the family still holds some crypto in “hot” wallets — for daily spending or to run their algorithmic trading strategy — those funds are protected by multi-signature approvals, which require multiple parties to sign off before a transaction can be executed.

The Taihuttus use Safe — formerly Gnosis Safe — for ether and other altcoins, and similarly layered setups for bitcoin stored on centralized platforms like Bybit.

Didi Taihuttu during a recent visit to Sierra Nevada, Spain. The family’s lifestyle — unbanked, nomadic, and all-in on bitcoin — makes them outliers even in the crypto world.

Didi Taihuttu

About 65% of the family’s crypto is locked in cold storage across four continents — a decentralized system Taihuttu prefers to centralized vaults like the Swiss Alps bunker used by Coinbase-owned Xapo. Those facilities may offer physical protection and inheritance services, but Taihuttu said they require too much trust.

“What happens if one of those companies goes bankrupt? Will I still have access?” he said. “You’re putting your capital back in someone else’s hands.”

Instead, Taihuttu holds his own keys — hidden across the globe. He can top up the wallets remotely with new deposits, but accessing them would require at least one international trip, depending on which fragments of the seed phrase are needed. The funds, he added, are intended as a long-term pension to be accessed only if bitcoin hits $1 million — a milestone he’s targeting for 2033.

The shift toward multiparty protections extends beyond just multi-signature. Multi-party computation, or MPC, is gaining traction as a more advanced security model.

Didi, Romaine, and their three daughters live largely off-grid, managing crypto through decentralized exchanges, algorithmic trading bots, and a globally distributed cold storage system.

Didi Taihuttu

Instead of storing private keys in one place — a vulnerability known as a “single point of compromise” — MPC splits a key into encrypted shares distributed across multiple parties. Transactions can only go through when a threshold number of those parties approve, sharply reducing the risk of theft or unauthorized access.

Multi-signature wallets require several parties to approve a transaction. MPC takes that further by cryptographically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single individual ever holds the full key — not even their own complete share.

The shift comes amid renewed scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase, which recently disclosed a data breach affecting tens of thousands of customers.

Taihuttu, for his part, says 80% of his trading now happens on decentralized exchanges like Apex — a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to set buy and sell orders without relinquishing custody of their funds, marking a return to crypto’s original ethos.

While he declined to reveal his total holdings, Taihuttu did share his goal for the current bull cycle: a $100 million net worth, with 60% still held in bitcoin. The rest is a mix of ether, layer-1 tokens like solana, link, sui, and a growing number of AI and education-focused startups — including his own platform offering blockchain and life-skills courses for kids.

Lately, he’s also considering stepping back from the spotlight.

“It’s really my passion to create content. It’s really what I love to do every day,” he said. “But if it’s not safe anymore for my daughters … I really need to think about them.”

WATCH: ‘Bitcoin Family’ tracks moon cycles to make crypto investment decisions

Environment

Morgan Stanley upgrades this mining stock as best pick to play rare earths

Published

1 day ago

June 7, 2025

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Morgan Stanley upgrades this mining stock as best pick to play rare earths

A wheel loader operator fills a truck with ore at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, January 30, 2020.

Steve Marcus | Reuters

The rare-earth miner MP Materials will enjoy growing strategic value to the U.S., as geopolitical tensions with China make the supply of critical minerals more uncertain, according to Morgan Stanley.

The investment bank upgraded MP Materials to the equivalent of a buy rating with a stock price target of $34 per share, implying 32% upside from Friday’s close.

MP Materials owns the only operating rare earth mine in the U.S. at Mountain Pass, California. China dominates the global market for rare earth refining and processing, according to Morgan Stanley.

“Geopolitical and trade tensions are finally pushing critical mineral supply chains to top of mind,” analysts led by Carlos De Alba told clients in a Thursday note. “MP is the most vertically integrated rare earths company ex-China.”

Beijing imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements in April in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. It has kept those restrictions in place despite trade talks with U.S.

Trump removed some restrictions Wednesday on the Defense Production Act, which could allow the federal government to offer an above market price for rare earths. MP Materials is the best positioned company to benefit from this, according to Morgan Stanley. Its shares rose more than 5% on Thursday.

MP Materials is developing fully domestic rare earth supply chain in the U.S. and plans to begin commercial production of magnets used in most electric vehicle motors, offshore wind wind turbines, and the future market for humanoid robots, according to Morgan Stanley.

The investment bank expects MP Materials to post negative free cash flow this year and in 2026, but the company has a strong balance sheet should accelerate positive free cash flow from 2027 onward.

Environment

Tesla’s head of Optimus humanoid robot leaves the ‘$25 trillion’ product behind

Published

2 days ago

June 7, 2025

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Tesla's head of Optimus humanoid robot leaves the ' trillion' product behind

Tesla’s head of Optimus humanoid robot, Milan Kovac, announced that he is leaving the automaker after 9 years.

It leaves just as CEO Elon Musk claimed that the humanoid robot is going to make Tesla a”$25 trillion company.”

Electrek first reported on Tesla hiring Kovac back in 2016 to work on the early Autopilot program. At the time, we noted that the young engineer had an interesting background in machine learning.

He quickly rose through the ranks and ended up leading Autopilot software engineering from 2019 to 2022.

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In 2022, he started working on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot program.

Late last year, he was promoted to Vice President in charge of the complete Optimus program, as CEO Elon Musk began to tout the program as critical to Tesla’s future.

Musk claimed that Optimus could generate $10 trillion in revenue per year and make Tesla a $25 trillion company. These claims are largely unsubstantiated as the humanoid robot market is still in its infancy.

Most market research firms currently estimate the size of the humanoid robot market to be in the low single-digit billions of dollars, with growth projections through 2032 ranging from $15 billion to $80 billion.

That would represent impressive growth, but nowhere near what Musk is touting to investors.

Today, Kovac announced that he is leaving Tesla for personal reasons:

This week, I’ve had to make the most difficult decision of my life and will be moving out of my position. I’ve been far away from home for too long, and will need to spend more time with family abroad. I want to make it clear that this is the only reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else. My support for Elon Musk and the team is ironclad – Tesla team forever.

Kovac has been regarded as one of the top new technical executives at Tesla, which has seen a significant talent exodus of top engineers.

The company has made progress with the Optimus program over the last year. Still, many have been skeptical, as Tesla has been less than forthcoming about using teleoperation in previous demonstrations.

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Kovac is not the only Optimus engineer to leave Tesla recently.

Figure, another company developing humanoid robots, has recently poached Zackary Bernholtz, a 7-year veteran at Tesla and most recently a Staff Technical Program Manager.

Electrek’s Take

This is a significant loss for Tesla. Kovac was one of Musk’s top technical guys and literally the head of the program he claimed would bring Tesla to the next level – although I think most people have been understandably skeptical about these claims.

I’ve been bullish on humanoid robots, and I could see Tesla being a player in the field, but it’s nowhere near the opportunity that Musk is claiming, and there’s also plenty of competition with no clear evidence that Tesla has any significant lead, if any.

In China, Unitree has been making impressive progress, and it is already selling a humanoid robot.

In the US, Figure has also been making a lot of progress lately:

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I think it’s a smart space to invest in for manufacturing companies like Tesla, but there’s going to be a lot of competition.

It’s too early to say who will come out on top.

As for Kovac leaving, I’m sure his personal reason is correct. However, we often see people claim that and then they quickly turn up at another company.

If he believed that his product would soon become a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity, I doubt he would be leaving, but you never know. 9 years at Tesla is some hard work and it’s impressive for anyone. Congrats.

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