Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Utilities’ case on nuclear waste storage in court

WASHINGTON -- A federal court on Monday began hearing the case of a group of utilities suing the federal government over the failure to open Yucca Mountain.

The government was supposed to take commercial nuclear waste from the reactors in 1998, but six years later the utility companies still store their own waste. The utilities also pay for additional onsite storage and put billions into the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the Yucca Mountain federal nuclear waste repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"Congress locked itself into a policy that was unreachable," said David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

A case involving three utilities that own the Yankee group of reactors in Maine, Vermont and Connecticut, went to trial Monday before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The trial is expected to last seven weeks.

The case before Judge James Merow is limited to used reactor fuel that is being stored at the Maine Yankee, Vermont Yankee and Yankee Rowe (Connecticut) nuclear plant sites. The issue is especially important to the New England utilities because the reactors have been shut down and keeping the waste is expensive and may affect site cleanup.

"If this litigation is successful, it will provide some financial relief to the electric customers who bear the increasing costs to store fuel at these sites as a result of the DOE's failure to met its legal obligations," said Bruce Kenyon, chairman of Yankee Atomic Electric Co.

The company is asking for $548 million.

The utilities are among the 65 that filed lawsuits against the department for missing the 1998 deadline to open the nuclear waste repository.

Indiana Michigan Power Co. previously sued, asking for $107.7 million in damages in a case heard earlier this year. In a May 27 ruling, the court decided the department breached the contract but the utility should not receive payment yet because it has not been hurt by the missed deadline, according to court documents. Other trials are expected.

The lawsuits and possible $56 billion in damages the government may have to pay, by the industry's estimate, are what those watching the project say push Yucca forward.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee, which creates the Yucca budget, has concerns about cost to taxpayers posed by the looming lawsuits.

Hobson's been working to fully fund the program, although so far this year he was only able to approve $131 million in Yucca funding, a sharp cut from the department's $880 million request.

The funding problems on top of the recent federal court decision criticizing the project's radiation standard could slow down the project beyond the new 2010 deadline, causing even a longer delay.

Prices for storing nuclear waste onsite vary, but the containers can cost at least $1 million, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham estimates it will cost the government at least $500 million a year for each year of delay just for the government's nuclear waste sites. For each year beyond 2010, the department estimates the nuclear industry will pay $500 million a year to store spent fuel at utility sites.

"A delay in opening the repository could substantially increase the Department's liability," Abraham wrote.

He did not answer Hobson's question earlier this year about how much it would cost the federal government if the delay in opening Yucca lasts much longer.

Cherry said the government brought the problem on itself by leaving no other option to study but Yucca Mountain. As the 1998 deadline came and went, Congress --by federal law--could not study any other site but Yucca, leaving no option but to study a site it knew was flawed, Cherry said.

"The American taxpayer will be on the hook for this," Cherry said. "They (the nuclear industry) argue the ratepayers are getting hurt since there is not a central storage location, but they always look to the taxpayers for the bailout."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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