Michigan is home to six nuclear power plants:
Fermi (1 & 2 ) Nuclear Power Plant, Newport 
(Fermi 1 closed in 1972 dues to unstable reactor core)
Big Rock Nuclear Power Plant, Charlevoix
                            (closed summer 1997)
Pallisades Nuclear Power Plant, South Haven 
         
Donald C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant (1 & 2 ), Bridgman
                             (closed September 1997)
Timeline

FERMI 2    Location: Newport, Michigan                         Utility: Detroit Edison Company  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  The Fermi-1 plant(closed 1972 - reactor problems), operated in the 1960's, is located in the building with the water tower on top (located in the lower right hand side of the photo).

Fermi 2 is located on the  shore of Lake Erie, 35 miles south of Detroit, Michigan.   The Fermi nuclear power plant was named for Enrico Fermi, the first physicist to split the atom. His research pioneered nuclear power generation.
Fermi 2 operates on uranium oxide-enriched U-235 fuel. Fuel consumption is about one ton of uranium annually.
Both towers are very visible southbound on I-75 from I-275, as well as from the Sterling State Park off exit 15 (of I-75).

The online information provided by Detroit Edison at a Uof M website  does not agree with the information provided by those interviewed to work at the plant.  The background information given to proposed employees terms the steam released by the plant as "slightly radioactive"  as opposed to the information provided to the public online.
Facility Stats Provided by the NRC

Detroit Edison Co. shut its Fermi 2 nuclear power plant after an inspection found a backup cooling-water system might not work during a severe accident.

The problem could have affected plant safety systems, said Tony Vegel, a federal inspector, although Edison officials said there was no threat to
employees or the public. Nitrogen leaked from water tanks used for cooling emergency equipment during an accident, spokesman Lewis Layton said after Wednesday's shutdown.

The utility plans to keep the plant south of Detroit idle about 10 days.

NEWS
Fermi 2 Down to Fix Fuel Rod Leaks. LCG, Oct. 3, 1997--Detroit Edison Co. idled its Fermi 2 nuclear power plant today to repair a fuel rod with two pinhole leaks that were discovered by plant operators last month. Company spokesman Scott Simmons ...
Date: 3 Oct 1997,  Size 1.2K,
  

Michigan News briefs
Detroit Edison's Fermi II nuclear power plant remained shut down Sunday as work continued on a leaky containment center valve. The plant was closed Friday when the leak was discovered by a monitor. Date: 26 Nov 1998

PALISADES     Location: South Haven, Michigan                                Utility: Consumers Power Company  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  spent fuel storage

The Palisades nuclear plant is located on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Palisades supplies 15 percent of the electrical power that Consumers Power provides to 3.5 million residential and business customers in southwestern Michigan.
 
 

DONALD C. COOK 1 & 2   Location: Bridgman,Michigan                            Utility: Indiana/Michigan Power Company      shutdown September 1997 due to safety system damages

Reactor Supplier: Westinghouse Corporation 
Capacity: 1000 net MWe
Reactor Type: Pressurized water reactor
Date of Operation: October  1974
License Expiration date: 10/25/2014
Electricity Produced in 1998: 0.0 billion kWh
1998 Average Capacity Factor: 0.0%

The Donald C. Cook power plant is located eleven miles south of Benton Harbor,  Michigan. CLOSED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reactor Supplier: Westinghouse Corporation 
Capacity: 1060 net MWe
Reactor Type: Pressurized water reactor
Date of Operation: October  1977
License Expiration date: 12/23/2017
Electricity Produced in 1998: 0.0 billion kWh
1998 Average Capacity Factor: 0.0%
 

Big Rock Point       Location:  Charlevoix, Michigan                                   Utility: Consumers Power Company  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  closed Aug 97 due to waste storage limiations/ dry cask in situ storage

 News:
Nuclear power's promise dims in Michigan and U.S.
July 7, 1998
By Jeremy Pearce /
The Detroit News
CHARLEVOIX --  When it sprouted on Lake Michigan's shore 35 years ago, the  huge green dome at Big Rock Point near Charlevoix seemed to hold a mysterious genie that promised to  power the modern age.   Michigan's first commercial nuclear reactor kindled enough energy to light a small city before its owners abruptly pushed the genie back into its bottle last year, partly because space to store toxic waste became tight.
  "The shores of Lake Michigan are not the ideal place to store nuclear waste," said Tim Petrosky of Consumers Energy, the utility that shut Big Rock down.
    In Michigan and across the country, highly radioactive waste and lack of space to store it threaten the future of the American nuclear industry.
As more reactors reach the end of their 40-year federal license spans, the problem of keeping toxic waste may force them to consider switching off, a process called decommissioning.
   The decline in nuclear power plants is sure to make utilities rely even more on coal and fossil fuels, raising questions about energy costs to consumers and heavier air pollution in the environment.
   For consumers, energy bills will remain an uncertainty. Power supply shouldn't affect homeowners -- they won't be able to tell the difference when they plug in their computer or crank up the stereo. But bills could rise if reserves of fossil fuels dwindle. On the flip side, rate payers are off the hook for burdensome costs of storing nuclear waste.
    "Whatever became of the 'nuclear miracle'?" asked Mary Sinclair, a Midland resident concerned about possible environmental damages from nuclear reactors.
     "We woke up to its legacy," Sinclair said, answering her own question. "We woke up to the fact that we don't really know how to handle nuclear waste that remains highly toxic for thousands of years."
     Decommissioning also brings monumental economic questions. ....
Many face closing Federal records show that more than 40 percent of the country's 105 commercial reactors will face closing in the next two decades.
      No new commercial nuclear reactors -- once  hailed by scientists as the supreme solution to the nation's energy woes -- are being built in Michigan or anywhere else in the United States.
    "The path this country is traveling is toward the complete shutdown of our nuclear industry," said Robert Fenech, a Consumers Energy vice-president evaluating the future of Pallisades. Big Rock and Pallisades are owned by Consumers Energy.
                     Michigan has six commercial reactors. Only two
                 still produce power:
                    * Fermi II, run by Detroit Edison in Monroe, is
                 working and licensed to continue until 2025. Fermi
                 I, on the same site, was shuttered after operational
                 problems in 1972.
                    * The two reactors at the D.C. Cook facility in
                 Bridgman were shut indefinitely last September
                 after inspectors spotted damages to the plant's
                 emergency safety system.
                    * The Pallisades reactor in South Haven is
                 operational. Its federal license expires in nine years......

 Anatomy of power
 Nuclear power is made when atoms within uranium pellets are split, releasing heat.
   That heat is used to boil water, build steam and crank turbines, which generate electricity. The  process also creates powerful wastes that can kill, cause cancer and severely damage human genes.
    With the exception of Fermi I, all of Michigan's  plants are forced to store waste in what limited safe space they can find. A 1998 federal deadline to create a single dump to collect the nation's high-level waste has now come and gone.
     U.S. Department of Energy scientists say it will be another decade before the dump planned for a barren spot called Yucca Mountain, Nev., is ready to accept waste, if at all.
     To make matters cloudier, the same scientists  still aren't sure if Yucca Mountain's geology and water aquifer are stable enough to hold waste underground without leaks or mishaps. The mountain sits just 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
        "The biggest obstacle we face as an industry has to do with our failure to find a place to deposit our high-level radioactive waste," said Leigh Ann Marshall of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobbying group based in Washington, D.C., that is funded by utilities.
      In 1998 alone, the Nevada project will cost $296 million -- money raised from special surcharges on rate payers nationwide.
    Yet before Yucca Mountain is complete, it will have cost a staggering $18 billion, according to federal estimates. A report on the dump's progress is due before Congress later this year. The project may still be scrapped.
     At Big Rock, lack of space for spent uranium fuel rods proved to be a major factor in the decision to shut down the reactor last August.
     Big Rock's decommissioning is being studied by other utilities because it was the nation's longest-running commercial reactor. Opened in 1962, it was also Michigan's first.
     "It's no secret that we'd like to ship all of Big Rock's waste to Nevada as soon as possible," said  Petrosky, of Consumers Energy. "But when will  that be?"
 
                    Three options
While U.S. Department of Energy officials ponder the question, utilities hoping to close  reactors can choose one of three paths.
  They can dismantle and bury the reactors; lock  their doors for 50 years or more to allow some radioactive dangers to pass; or encase reactors in concrete to wait for better solutions in the far  future.
      All three methods assume nuclear fuel stays at  the reactor. Old fuel rods are usually kept in deep pools of water -- not unlike swimming pools -- right beside the reactor. The water blocks radioactivity and keeps rods from overheating.
      A second and controversial way of storing waste-- called dry casking -- involves shifting fuel rods from pools to cylinders made of steel and concrete.
      The two-story casks sit like chess pieces on paved outdoor pads, where they await a better storage solution.
                     ...............
 
         In Michigan, Pallisades is already using dry  casks as a way to extend cramped storage in pools -- and therefore to prolong their reactor's operations.
        By next year, plant operators will add five more casks to the 13 casks already sitting within a long stone's throw of Lake Michigan. In 1994, one cask was found to have defective seams, but utility officials say it poses no danger.
       Although closed, Big Rock intends to do the same thing with its waste to allow its reactor to be demolished and shipped away.
       Critics charge that outdoor casks are vulnerable to cracking and even to sabotage. They say utilities are using casks as a cheap and unsafe way to milk profits from outdated reactors.
       "There are too many incentives for utilities to cut corners here -- the casks crack," said Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information Resource
Service, a national watchdog group critical of the nuclear industry.
        ....................
        "In the long term -- measured in thousands of years -- casks probably do have problems," said  Rodney Ewing, a University of Michigan radioactive waste expert.
       "We realize they can't stay outside forever. The communities next to them don't like it, but right  now casks are among the only solutions we have."
 
                    Dismantling starts
                     ...............
     Big Rock's waste still sits in the plant's fuel pool,  behind dozens of steel doors and protected by shifts of armed guards. The plant's removal will  take seven years and at least $260 million, but the waste itself will stay there in dry casks until 2012.
       Most of the surrounding building will be trucked on hundreds of miles of public roads to a special landfill in South Carolina and buried.
...............
       Although few could argue that Big Rock  operated efficiently and within federal safety  guidelines, the plant's closure may signal the rapid
 decline of an entire industry.
      Anticipating that decline, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission streamlined its rules for decommissioning just two years ago. In Colorado,  Maine, Michigan and other states, 11 reactors have
closed their doors in the past 10 years. ........
 
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't Waste Michigan
P.O. Box 445
Petoskey, MI 49770-0445
(excerpt)
We have received the first version of the plan.
While we have looked it over and have our concerns, we thought it prudent to have it reviewed by a qualified agent other than the NRC. To this end we have secured the assistance of Radioactive Waste Management Associates (RWMA) located in New York City.

RWMA is an "independent consulting firm established in 1989 to assist state and local governments and citizen organizations in dealing with waste management issues". RWMA is a team of scientists, economists, and engineers. Some of the groups RWMA has advised include: Lake Michigan Federation (dry cask storage issues at Palisades), Greenpeace (health effects of fire on plutonium ship), and Citizen Awareness Network (decommissioning of Yankee-Rowe). The primary person we are in contact with is Dr. Marvin Resnikoff who received his Ph.D. is in physics from the University of Michigan in 1965. After several research and teaching assignments he began working exclusively on radioactive waste issues in 1974. Since then he has worked on many projects producing many reports, including two books entitled Living Without Landfills and Deadly Defense. More extensive information is available upon request.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michigan Plant Exceeds Discharge Limit
 
 CHARLEVOIX, Michigan, March 16, 1998 (ENS) -  An emergency was declared Sunday by the Big Rock Point nuclear power plant when instruments detected the release into Lake Michigan of double  the amount of radioactive material permitted.
     Cobalt-60 and manganese-54 were the materials released from the condensers of the plant into the lake.
     The Big Rock Point plant is on the western extremity of southern shore of the Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan. The site is 228 miles north northwest of Detroit and 262 miles north northeast of Chicago in a sparsely populated wooded area.
       The plant is in the process of being decommissioned. Licensed through the year 2000, the plant's licensed operator, Consumers Energy
 Company, made the decision to close the plant for  economic reasons. On August 29, 1997, the reactor was permanently shut down, ending 35 years of  electric power generation as the nation's oldest and longest running nuclear plant.
                                      ........................
 Consumers Energy Company scientists have concluded that "the source of the activity was from sediments in Lake Michigan containing radioactive  material from previous discharges."