nuclear-news

Mountainous cost of nuclear wastes and still no plan

The DOE now has no place to put the waste and no plan

Seeking a ‘Plan B’ 
for nuclear waste:  With Yucca Mountain site dead, billions paid into project are in limbo By Margaret Newkirk , The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,  April 2, 2010 “…….. Georgia electric customers paid the U.S. government more than $701 million over nearly three decades, in exchange for a service now 12 years overdue.Today, the U.S. government is as far away from delivering on its part of the bargain as it has ever been.

Electric customers not only can’t easily get their money back — Congress borrowed it for other things — but must keep on paying.

That’s a snapshot view of the nation’s Nuclear Waste Fund.

The fund was supposed to pay the U.S. Department of Energy to remove radioactive waste from power plants. But that hasn’t happened, and the recent decision to scrap the Yucca Mountain waste project in Nevada has left the DOE essentially in a position of starting over…..

as that project dragged on, utilities and their customers paid to build storage to keep waste on-site even as they kept paying the DOE to take it away.

That has inspired a donnybrook of litigation, still years from being over. Georgians paid for that, too, both as ratepayers and taxpayers…..

The DOE now has no place to put the waste and no plan, although it says the Waste Fund money will eventually be needed to pay for whatever alternatives emerge.

Customers are still paying their pennies into the fund. Nationally, they’ll pay an estimated $770 million this fiscal year.

The Yucca collapse comes as nuclear utilities, led by Southern Co., build new reactors for the first time in decades……..

The DOE has spent $150 million litigating the cases, and utilities have spent between $5 million and $7 million per case, the congressional report said. The Energy Department has estimated its total liability at $12.3 billion. The nuclear utilities estimate it at $50 billion. Both figures assume that the DOE would begin removing waste from nuclear plants by 2020.

Given the cancellation of Yucca, that’s “an unlikely occurrence,” the congressional report said…..

Meanwhile, a new “blue ribbon” commission of nuclear experts held its first meeting in Washington 10 days ago.

Their charge: Come up with a Plan B.

Seeking a ‘Plan B’ 
for nuclear waste  | ajc.com

April 3, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear spin, radioactive, reactors, uranium, wastes