Gov. M. Jodi Rell on Monday tossed Connecticut’s hat into the opposition against the Obama administration’s decision to further delay the removal of 1,920 metric tons of nuclear waste from Connecticut to a multi-billion-dollar federal repository in Nevada.
In August, a business coalition led by the New England Council pressed the administration and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to reconsider delaying its opening of the Yucca Mountain site in a remote corner of Nevada.
Officials say Connecticut ratepayers have spent in excess of $8 million per year for more than a decade to temporarily store radioactive waste while awaiting the opening of Yucca Mountain.
“DOE has spent decades and billions of dollars investigating the suitability of 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 said in her 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 in proceeding with its license application.”
In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act required the Energy Department to establish a national repository for all spent nuclear waste by 1998, with the ratepayers from states with nuclear energy paying into a fund each year to fund the repository’s construction. Connecticut is home to two nuclear reactors: the operating Millstone plant in Waterford and the shut down Connecticut Yankee reactor in Haddam.
Although the Energy Department has been slow in establishing that repository and missed its 1998 deadline, for the last decade the federal agency has established a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. While a technically strong location for the nation’s nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain has met strong political opposition, particularly from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV.
In January, President Barack Obama pulled the plug on the Yucca site, which will be permanently shut down on Sept, 30. Obama has established a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to discuss the nation’s nuclear options, including a new plan for what to do with the waste. Recycling the spent uranium for future use is one of the options.
Since 1982, Connecticut’s ratepayers have contributed more than $383 million to the fund for a national repository. Ratepayers contribute an additional $8 million to store the nuclear waste on the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee site in Haddam, a 588-acre parcel that would already have been sold if not for the continued uranium storage.
