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DOE sued over nuclear waste fund
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STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy was sued Friday by state utility regulators who challenge whether consumers should continue paying into a $30 billion government nuclear waste fund if a Yucca Mountain repository is no longer in the plans.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, or NARUC, asked judges to suspend collection of the fees until a new review of whether the money still is needed.
The petition, filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, presents another challenge to the Obama administration as it seeks a new strategy for storing and disposing of thousands of tons of highly radioactive used fuel.
President Barack Obama has moved to terminate the behind-schedule Yucca Mountain storage project in Nevada, and has formed a blue ribbon panel to study alternatives and report within two years.
But with no new plan in sight, NARUC challenged the fee that collects about $750 million a year from utilities, and ultimately from ratepayers.
"We do not take this action lightly; we are hopeful that the newly appointed Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future will chart a workable path," said NARUC President David Coen of Vermont.
"But until that time, there is no need to assess these fees on our consumers, particularly when we have no idea what solutions the commission will suggest, and whether they will be implemented," Coen said.
DOE spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller said the blue ribbon commission has been asked to recommend how the fees should be handled.
"The fees collected from the nuclear industry are legally mandated and reviewed every year and will pay the cost of the eventual long-term disposition of the materials," Mueller said. "Secretary (Steven) Chu has appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission of respected, bipartisan experts to make recommendations on these issues."
The nuclear waste fund was established by Congress in 1982 to collect fees to build a nuclear waste repository. Utilities that draw on nuclear power pay one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour of electricity generated.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association and lobbying arm of the nuclear industry is expected to file a similar court action as soon as next week, according to industry sources.
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Or to put it another way, NARCU has decided that the tax is just unworkable and should be cancelled.
Wait, isn't this Chu's line for Yucca Mountain?
Obama and Chu are destroying the American Constitution and legal system. Yet, the LVRJ and Sun fail to understand that any law is now subject to being determined to be unworkable - the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for example.
The end DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS - no matter what is evidently taught in Searchlight.
"The fees collected from the nuclear industry are legally mandated " !!!!! ????
So is OCRWM. So is the Yucca Mountain Repository. It appears you recognize the NWPA as being a law, but want to ignore 99% of it.
You can't have it both ways.
Also, as a long time nuclear electricity sourced ratepayer, I want the full amount collected in the Nuclear Waste Fund refunded including the $13 billion already spent. I suspect each of us 50 million ratepayers are owed almost $700 apiece. This should help boost the economy.
This is what happens when politics trys to make decisions best made by scientists and engineers.
The Obama adminstration paraded by Harry Reid, has set back our nation's nuclear industry by decades.
Nice going guys!
Bad Reid
Bad Senator
http://aBadReid.com
If I'm not mistaken, this huge "waste fund" is actually used in calculations of the national load to make the burden "look" much smaller than it actually is.
Someone should tell the people of this country what the government actually owes these rate payers. These companies have been paying into this because they were under an assumption, some might even consider it a contract, that the DOE would find a solution to this mess.
In fact, when the US government went into production of the most harmful by-product in human existence they should be fully responsible to find a solution to cleaning it up!
Oh and lets not talk about the need for educated, forward-thinking, well-paying professions like nuclear engineers, and physicists to help the economy a little instead of the brain drain to countries like France, where they are actually tackling this problem.
I say pay-up government or shut-up and get to work fixing this mess.
Why SHOULD the utilities continue to pay the government, if the government has explicitly said that it intends to do absolutely nothing about nuclear waste for the next fifty years?
In fact, if Harry gets his way and the waste is left right where it is for the next five hundred years, then the government will have effectively turned responsibility for the waste back to the utilities. So if the utilities have to figure out what to do with it, then they have every right to be repaid the ENTIRE waste fund. Not just to stop paying into it.
But the government has probably already spent the waste fund elsewhere, like the social security fund. So to pay the utilities back, the government will probably have to raise taxes and/or borrow still more money. Which will be REAL money, when you consider that the utilities will probably also charge interest or even damages.
So Harry gets to make his political statement, a whole lot of lawyers get even more rich, and American taxpayers get to foot the bill. Meanwhile, Nevada has double digit unemployment and Las Vegas is running out of water.
It would be interesting to find out how much money Harry Reid's law firm has made heroically crusading against Yucca Mountain over the years.