Fed up with 12 years of delays in removing nuclear waste from Connecticut’s power plants, a coalition of business and utilities is demanding the Obama administration reverse its decision undoing three decades of planning for disposing of waste from the country’s nuclear power programs.
These businesses, led by the New England Council, see the administration’s move to abandon a Nevada storage site as compounding a long-standing federal delay costing Connecticut millions in fees and inflicted untold damage on nuclear power’s reputation in the state and region.
Connecticut ratepayers contribute more than $8 million per year to store more than 1,920 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel at its temporary sites in the state — including a 588-acre site in Haddam that seems prime for redevelopment. That annual fee comes on top of the $383 million state ratepayers have contributed since 1982 to develop a permanent disposal site for this waste.
“It is frustrating for all of us — being ratepayers or utilities — to be paying into this fund for this long and have them not move the waste,” said Jim Brett, CEO of the New England Council, which represents more than 370 organizations in the region. “If you can’t dispose of this waste, then I don’t see any new nuclear plants being built in this country.”
Connecticut is home to two nuclear power facilities: the active Millstone plant in Waterford and the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee reactor in Haddam. The Haddam facility remains active only to store the 412 metric tons of nuclear waste that awaits transport by the U.S. Department of Energy to a permanent disposal site.
In 1982, the U.S. Department of Energy and nuclear power plant providers reached an agreement where ratepayers in states with nuclear power plants would contribute to a Nuclear Waste Fund that would be used to develop a permanent disposal site. Starting in 1998, the Department of Energy was supposed to collect spent uranium from power plants, but none of that waste has been removed to date.
The 12-year delay will be compounded on Sept. 30 when the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada — the only permanent disposal site developed through the Nuclear Waste Fund — will be shut down. President Barack Obama, who eliminated Yucca’s funding for the 2011 budget, formed the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in January to revive nuclear power as a source of energy, as well as figure out the best disposal of the spent uranium.
The Blue Ribbon Commission has only recently started meeting with stakeholders; the next meeting of the subcommittee on nuclear waste disposal is Wednesday in Washington, D.C. The draft report from the commission on all its issues isn’t expected until July 29, 2011.
With Yucca Mountain out of the picture, the New England Council and the owners of Connecticut Yankee — a conglomeration of New England electric utilities — envision the waste removal taking many, many more years. They are calling on the president, the Department of Energy and the Blue Ribbon commission to reconsider.
“Yucca Mountain is not an option,” said Katinka Podmaniczky, Department of Energy spokeswoman. “As the Obama administration takes action to restart the nuclear industry and create new clean energy jobs, we remain committed to ensuring that the federal government fulfills its long-term disposal obligations for nuclear waste.”
But all these delays are turning Haddam into a permanent nuclear waste disposal site, said Robert Capstick, director of government and public affairs for The Yankee Companies, the conglomeration that owns Connecticut Yankee. It’s a shame, too, because so much more could be done with the 588 acres the nuclear plant once sat on.
“But for the fact that the fuel is here, we would be gone,” Capstick said. “All we do is collect the money from the ratepayers to pay for the storage.”
Connecticut Yankee came online in 1968 and produced 110 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in its 28-year operating history. The dismantling and decommissioning of the plant finished in 2007, and the only remnants are the 43 dry storage casks for the nuclear waste.
The $8 million the ratepayers give to Connecticut Yankee each year is exclusively for the security, storage, insurance, administration and taxes of that nuclear waste. If the Department of Energy removed that waste, the costs would drop to zero.
The owners of Connecticut Yankee — including Connecticut Light & Power with a 34.5-percent stake and United Illuminating with 9.5 percent — have sued the Department of Energy seeking $441 million to cover the costs of this continued storage. The case is pending.
Northeast Utilities, whose three electric utilities have a 49-percent ownership stake in Connecticut Yankee, believes on-site storage will continue to be more expensive and less efficient than housing all of the country’s 62,490 metric tons of spent uranium in a permanent centralized location, said Al Lara, Northeast Utilities spokesman.
Other than the costs, the New England Council sees the storage problem as permanently damaging the already sullied reputation of nuclear power in the country at a time when the Obama administration wants to promote new usage, Brett said. Even if the president’s Blue Ribbon Commission comes up with an alternative solution that is acceptable to the public — such as recycling the waste — further delays fuel the perception that nuclear power is difficult to deal with and harmful to the public.
“We need more nuclear: it is affordable, it is reliable, it is emission-free,” Brett said. “Anything that makes us less reliant on the Middle East for our power supply is a good thing.”
The people of Haddam aren’t worried about the nuclear fuel becoming environmentally dangerous, said Paul DeStefano, the town’s first selectman. However, they would like to see the 588 acres be used for something other than uranium storage.
Connecticut Yankee hired a specialty real estate firm to gauge interest in the future use of the site, which includes a small industrial section. The company could sell off a large chunk of the acreage even with the nuclear waste on site — as long as the security zone around the storage containers is maintained — but the uranium remains an obstacle to the full usage of the site.
“There is no way to get anything meaningful over there,” DeStefano said. “It is a sad, sad thing. That is a great piece of land over there.”
