A new heat exchanger set designed to meet projected increases in the temperature of Lake Michigan will be installed within the next 12 months to support the repowering of the Michigan plant.
Palisades draws its cooling water from the lake, but global warming means that the lake’s bulk temperature has been increasing, and is expected to continue rising in the coming decades during its projected service life.
To meet the projected water temperature increase, the new unit needed to be more than twice as large in heat transfer surface area as the existing unit, but had to fit in the same space, which presented challenges for the system’s developers.
The innovative design means the cooling system upgrade will require very little civil/structural work, which may reduce the project cost by more than 50% compared with the initial projection. The heat exchanger system is being manufactured at Holtec’s fabrication plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Holtec is now working to bring the 800 MWe pressurised water reactor back into service, aiming to repower it by the end of 2025.