Holtec International, a nuclear energy company that’s on the verge of reopening a shuttered reactor in Michigan, has filed confidentially with the SEC to go public. It could be one of the biggest IPOs in the nuclear industry in years, likely valued at over $10 billion.
Florida-based Holtec makes equipment to store nuclear waste and decommissions existing nuclear plants. Its annual income is over $500 million, a person familiar with its finances said last year. The news about the IPO was reported earlier by Axios.
Barron’s reported last year that CEO Krishna Singh planned to take the company public this year. Singh said at the time that he was aiming to sell about 20% of the company’s shares to the public.
Now Holtec is adding a new business line on top of its decommissioning and nuclear waste operations: It plans to build and potentially operate its own plants, starting with the reactor in Michigan.
That plant is known as Palisades and sits just off Lake Michigan. It was shut down in 2022 and sold to Holtec, which was expected to deconstruct the buildings and store the nuclear waste. But state and federal officials asked Holtec to get the reactor up and running again, because they wanted the plant’s reliable carbon-free power.
Holtec is now on the verge of reopening Palisades, with financial support from the state and federal governments. A company representative said the plant is likely to open in the first half of the year.
Holtec also has a design for its own small nuclear reactor, and is attempting to get approval to place two of the small reactors at the Palisades site. The Trump administration selected Holtec for a grant to build those reactors. There are no small reactors yet in the U.S., but dozens of companies are trying to get them approved and sited.
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