DOE desperately needs temporary storage site

Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 | 10:46 a.m.

Now that an appeals court has placed responsibility for radioactive waste piles around the country squarely with the Energy Department, pressure may increase to consider the Nevada Test Site as a temporary storage facility.

The Test Site has been considered a potential temporary site for 25 years, but pressure to open the facility to nuclear waste storage has been mounting in recent months. The nuclear industry has been getting increasingly edgy about the growing stockpile of waste being stored at nuclear facilities.

However, the DOE has two immediate options in dealing with the appeals court ruling, nuclear industry lawyers say. Either the DOE could go to the Supreme Court or go to trial in 13 separate cases brought by power companies, attorneys familiar with the case told the Sun on Thursday.

The federal appeals court on Tuesday denied a DOE request to rehear a case brought by nuclear utilities seeking compensation from the government because it missed the 1998 deadline set by Congress to remove radioactive wastes from reactor sites across the country.

The order upholds the Aug. 31 appeals court decision that found the DOE liable.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the lone site under study by the DOE as a permanent tomb for 77,000 tons of nuclear wastes piling up at 103 nuclear power plants. But the DOE will not have Yucca ready until 2010 at the earliest.

Although Energy Secretary Bill Richardson was unavailable for comment, the DOE in a prepared statement, said Thursday: "The department is prepared to go forward on this litigation to determine, in accordance with the terms of the standard contract, the actual costs to the utilities of the department's delay in beginning to accept commercial spent nuclear fuel."

A DOE spokeswoman today said the department had no further comment on the next action.

Sources say the DOE is afraid, however, that Congress will not approve enough funding to compensate the nuclear industry if the department ultimately loses the case. In this scenario, the DOE would be looking for an immediate place to temporarily store the waste.

If the DOE goes to the Supreme Court, a lengthy legal debate could be in store.

If the DOE plans to fight the utilities in court, however, 13 separate cases could go to trial, unless the cases were consolidated, Mitch Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute said.

Earlier this year Richardson offered to take responsibility for the nuclear wastes stored on site next to reactors.

Payments to the utilities for storage casks could run as high as $80 billion.

"It wouldn't surprise me if they asked the Supreme Court for review," said attorney Jerry Stouck, representing the Yankee Utilities. He said he was pleased with the direction of the case, toward collecting damages.

Yankee Utilities' damage claims for three cases is roughly $300 million. "These are relatively small nuclear plants," Stouck said.

The government can remove those damages by moving the fuel, Stouck said. When asked where, he said, "I don't know, that's their problem."