Palisades nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan shut down Wednesday due to an equipment failure and will get an early start on a planned $58 million refuelling , maintenance and inspection project that had been scheduled to start this weekend, officials said. New Orleans-based Entergy, which owns the plant, said it shut down automatically at 1:17 a.m. due to a failure in the turbine generator system - a non-nuclear, non-safety related system.