Photo Credit - EnergySolutions
On January 15, 2026, EnergySolutions submitted a formal Notice of Intent to file for major licensing by June 2028 with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to pursue new nuclear power generation at the shuttered Kewaunee Power Station site in Wisconsin.
Seehafer News reached out to Mark Walker, VP Marketing and Communications at Energy Solutions. He confirmed the filing to explore the activation at the Kewaunee Power Station site and added, “The plan is to finish decommissioning the existing Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant, which still has 3-5 years to complete.”
Rather than a simple “restart” of the old 1974-era reactor, the companies are exploring building new advanced nuclear generation. Walker said, “A decision as to what type of nuclear power plant will be built on the site is to be determined.”
Many experts in the Nuclear industry are pointing toward the Integral Molten Salt Reactors or Small Modular Reactors. The Integral Molten Salt Reactor or IMSR, uses liquid salt that acts as both the fuel and the coolant. Because liquids don’t “melt down” the way solids do, this design is inherently safer. The IMSR uses Standard-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium, the same fuel used by the current global nuclear fleet. This makes it much easier to get the reactor approved and fueled using the existing supply chain.
Hundreds of gigawatts of newly built reactors will be needed to triple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050, a goal set by the Biden administration in December of 2023. Walker said there’s another factor driving the Kewaunee Power Station revival: “The demand for energy to support AI and Data Centers is a major reason for new nuclear power generation.”
EnergySolutions and WEC Energy Group are expanding the Kewaunee Power Station boundary to facilitate a new, large-scale nuclear facility, with potential for collocated data centers, aiming for a 2038 operation date to meet rising demand. The project involves acquiring adjacent property for this new “energy center”.
