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U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the Palisades nuclear power plant in Van Buren County will help power data centers while bringing down utility rates when it reopens later this year.
Wright discussed the plant during a media availability Monday in Lansing after an event with U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, which he said was largely focused on affordability.
While some environmental groups oppose the Palisades facility reopening, Wright said the United States must grow the capacity of its power grid before decommissioning facilities.
“This is a great way to add energy to the United States, to allow this reindustrialization, to allow this data center development and to push down rates,” Wright said. “We should not retire assets before their time.”
Wright said that’s also why the administration of President Donald Trump has ordered the J.H. Campbell coal power plant in west Michigan to remain open.
“Eventually, you retire old energy sources, but you’ve got to build new energy sources first,” Wright said.
The Palisades facility will be the first decommissioned nuclear power plant in U.S. history to resume operations.
Wright spoke to reporters outside the Lansing Board of Water and Light’s REO Town Depot. A proposed data center that would have been developed in partnership with the BWL fell through earlier this year after facing community pushback.
Wright compared the challenges proposed data center developments face in winning public approval to controversial disposal plans for spent fuel from nuclear reactors.
He said while some communities will push back on hosting a data center or nuclear waste, others will find the associated economic opportunity attractive.
“When you pick and you tell people, ‘It will be here,’ of course you get a political reaction to that,” Wright said. “You need to sell the benefits to communities and say, ‘Who’s interested in that?’”
Barrett said distrust of government, utility providers and data center developers alike are on the rise, which he said is only exacerbated when officials are not responsive to community feedback.
Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Twp., said a lack of transparency also makes residents more skeptical of proposed data centers.
“They’re so secretive everybody in these communities gets their guard up, and then by the time the thing is announced, the communities are very against them,” Hall said.
That’s why Wright, who described himself as a “huge fan of AI data centers,” said developers need to bring community members into the process from the start and find communities eager to host data centers.
“If we follow that with data centers, I think you will see, as I have seen around the country, enormous welcoming arms for, ‘oh my God, we’re going to get that investment in our community, it’s fantastic,’” Wright said. “But you can’t impose it on people, and never should.”
