A business coalition campaigning for the removal of nuclear waste from Connecticut now has a $40 million court judgment and a key ally in Gov. M. Jodi Rell. But it still has 1,920 metric tons of spent uranium.
In a 12-year legal war over the U.S. Department of Energy’s failure to deposit waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants into one centralized repository as promised, the owners of three decommissioned New England reactors won the latest battle when the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in September awarded $143 million for costs in storing spent uranium onsite in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine.
“It never ends because every time there is a decision, the government appeals it,” said Robert Capstick, director of government and public affairs for Connecticut Yankee, a company comprised of electric utilities that once operated the now decommissioned nuclear reactor in Haddam.
That money — with $40 million earmarked for Connecticut — covers the first three years of onsite storage starting in 1998, the year the DOE was supposed to start removing the spent uranium. The Yankee Companies, which also operated reactors in Massachusetts and Maine, have another lawsuit pending for $264 million to cover storage from 2002 to 2008.
DOE has until early December to appeal the $143 million ruling. At the same time, the federal government has further delayed the removal of nuclear waste from Connecticut — along with the rest of the nation.
Although it missed the 1998 deadline required under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, DOE for the last decade spent billions in ratepayer money developing the technically feasible but politically controversial Yucca Mountain centralized spent uranium depository in Nevada. Connecticut ratepayers have contributed $383 million to the fund for Yucca Mountain’s construction.
But in January President Barack Obama pulled the plug on Yucca Mountain — with an assist from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV — calling for a rethinking of three decades of nuclear waste storage plans. Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future is expected to make its recommendations next year.
Last week, Connecticut Gov. Rell called on DOE to delay the planned Sept. 30 dismantling of Yucca Mountain, as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board refused DOE’s request to withdraw its Yucca operating license.
“DOE has spent decades and billions of dollars investigating the suitability of (Nevada’s) Yucca Mountain as a geologic repository, determined in 2002 that Yucca Mountain was a suitable location, and even now concedes that its Yucca Mountain application is neither flawed nor the site unsafe,” Rell wrote in a letter to DOE. “To now reverse developing Yucca Mountain as a permanent storage site as a matter of policy is a disservice to Connecticut ratepayers, who continue to be burdened by DOE’s delay.”
With Rell’s support, the business coalition calling for the removal of Connecticut’s nuclear waste — led by the New England Council and the area’s electric utilities — will seek support from other governors and the New England Congressional delegation.
“Rell’s letter will go a long way,” said Jim Brett, CEO of the New England Council. “I sense a political coalition being built throughout New England.”
While all these issues play out, Connecticut remains home to 1,920 metric tons of nuclear waste awaiting permanent storage. Ratepayers expend $8 million each year to store the spent uranium at the 588-acre former site of Connecticut Yankee in Haddam.
