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Monday, April 5, 2010 | 2:13 p.m.
Sun coverage
The Nuclear Energy Institute and several nuclear energy companies are suing the federal government over fees their customers pay for nuclear waste management programs.
These funds, generated by a one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour surcharge for customers of utilities that use nuclear energy, goes towards the
development of a nuclear waste repository. It raises about $750 million a year.
In light of the decision to abandon plans to turn Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste dump, the companies and the NEI want the fees suspended until a new management program is defined and evaluated.
The companies involved in the lawsuit are: Florida Power & Light; NextEra Energy Seabrook; NextEra Energy Duane Arnold; NextEra Energy Point Beach; Omaha Public Power District; PSEG Nuclear; Indiana Michigan Power; Energy Northwest; PPL Susquehanna; The
Detroit Edison; Nebraska Public Power District; Northern States Power; Kansas Gas and Electric; Kansas City Power & Light; Kansas Electric Power Cooperative; and Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp.
Kind of like the state taking the water funds from the payers after they decided not to build the pipelines. You cannot steal money from a group under false pretenses. Unless of course your name is Obama or reid.
Oops, I think somebody jumped the gun and did not know they will be losing a big chunk of fees. I guess you can not have it both ways.
Utilities who supply electricity from nuclear power have been paying these fees since 1982 and the ratification of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA).
That's the same law that mandates the construction of a national repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The Act was amended in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain as the site for a proposed repository.
So, the utilities have been paying into this fund since 1982, as required by law. They signed contracts with the government under which, in exchange for this fee, the government would use the funds to construct the repository.
The government's failure to live up to its end of the bargain, while the utilities were responsibly living up to their end of the bargain, has triggered lawsuits that so far have resulted in $1.2 billion in damages awarded to the utilities.
This has been going on since 1998, the date by which the government, under the statute, was obligated to start taking possession of nuclear waste generated by utilities.
All along, it has been the ratepayers of those utilities who have been footing the bill for the construction of a repository.
The irony -- as expected, not reported by the Sun -- is that DOE has to gall to claim that the NWPA, which mandates the construction of a repository at Yucca Mountain, also allows DOE to keep collecting fees for a repository that it will never build. In other words, DOE wants to say on the one hand that it DOES NOT HAVE TO OBEY the NWPA when it comes to building a repository at Yucca Mountain, but on the other hand, that the utilities MUST CONTINUE TO OBEY that part of the NWPA which stipulates that utilities must pay fees into the Nuclear Waste Fund.
FOR A REPOSITORY THAT DOE NO LONGER PLANS TO BUILD!
Rank hypocrisy.
And by the way, the money used to settle the lawsuits brought against DOE for failing to live up to its end of the bargain are paid out of the Justice Fund, which is funded by taxpayers. The ultimate amount expected to be paid out to settle these lawsuits is anywhere from $50 to $100 billion.
So the utilities will probably (1) be allowed to stop paying into the Nuclear Waste Fund, which is only right considering that they will not receive the storage solution they were promised; (2) be refunded the money they have already paid into the fund on behalf of their ratepayers; and (3) will use the taxpayer money they get from lawsuits to buy their own storage facilities on site.
Nevada, in other words, in opposing Yucca Mountain, has just handed the nuclear industry a taxpayer subsidy potentially totaling $100 billion dollars.
Instead of paying for its own storage, through a fee levied on their customers, nuclear utilities will now have their storage PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS, Nevadans included.
Biden said this is a BFD
We broke the law
So, they were paying for something for years for something the government promised was going to happen down the road ....
sound familiar?
hey ardent...
that sounds like a plan to me...
stated alternatively...
that is a tax i will gladly pay...
got that skippy...
it's over...
quit crying like a little girl...
is that all republicans do these day...
cry and cry and cry...
boo hoo hoo...
The California Blackbird is finally in season.
Do Reid and Obama know about this before cutting off the program. It's becoming too political and most likely the next president will reopen it and spend a lot more money to repair all the rusty parts that will accumulate until then.
@Birdie:
You can trundle out your ridiculous haiku remarks all you want, which are little more than brainless gloating, hardly any different from back in the days when the Yucca Mountain Project was on track and you were weeping and wailing brainlessly.
News flash, "skippy": It ain't over till it's over.
I have blogged in here on many occasions what will likely happen, and my assessment is grounded in legal and technical reality, as opposed to your clueless, parochial, lemming-like pseudo-environmentalist talking points.
First, the NRC will likely grant DOE its request to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application, for NRC tends to grant applicants such requests, irrespective of whatever "reasons" are given for seeking a withdrawal.
Second, the NRC most likely WILL NOT grant DOE a withdrawal "with prejudice," which is a special sanction reserved for merits-based rulings and well-documented showings of potential harm to one of the parties. NUREG-0368 and NRC case law make it abundantly clear that a withdraw with prejudice is NEVER granted merely because a party to the proceeding wishes to avoid future adjudication by NRC or resubmittal of a license application.
Third, because NRC will not grant DOE's request for a withdrawal with prejudice, that means the withdrawal request will be granted WITHOUT PREJUDICE, which means the Yucca Mountain license application can be REVIVED at a later time by a future administration.
In short, who's crying now, Bub?
You'll get your little wake at the Ghost Bar, and you'll get all kinds of high-flying rhetoric from your idol, Harry Reid, but the Yucca Mountain Project will not be "finally dead" until Congress passes legislation to make it so, in essence repealing or amending the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Thus far, in vote after vote, Congress has been unwilling to do so, and the only thing that might persuade them to change course is a viable and timely alternative.
So in fact, the only real hope for truly ending the Yucca Mountain Project once and for all lies in the hands of the Blue Ribbon Commission. If they don't come up with a whiz-bang solution to our nation's nuclear waste problem, one that pleases all parties, there is little chance that Congress will act on its recommendations.
In short, your only hope lies in the hands of an "expert panel" given only 18 months to come up with an alternative to 30 years of intense scientific study on the subject, as performed by thousands of experts across a wide array of disciplines.
So "boo hoo hoo" yourself. You'll get your moment in the sun, but then the Reality Principle will take hold, as it always does, and you will again be able to indulge in the deliciously satisfying and irrational fear of all things nuclear, which is the opiate of your particular masses.