Government to pay $80 million toward storage of Chicago utility's spent fuel
York Daily Record, Pa. --Aug. 18
Aug. 18--The U.S. Department of Justice and Exelon Corp. have reached a settlement that will shift $80 million in reimbursements to the utility to cover spent fuel storage costs.
The spent fuel in question is stored in large, white, Thermos-style dry casks
and kept on power plant pad sites behind razor wire and in view of motion
detectors.
Exelon's Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station has 21 casks; Dresden in Illinois
has 21 casks; and Oyster Creek in New Jersey has eight casks.
Should a national repository at Yucca Mountain open by 2010 and the U.S.
Department of Energy start to ship dry casks, Exelon believes its total gross
reimbursement will be about $300 million.
The road to Exelon's settlement has been long and winding.
In 1982, each nuclear utility signed a standard contract known as the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act that required the DOE to take control of the spent fuel
starting Jan. 31, 1998.
"That date has passed," Nesbit said. "And no site is
ready."
The act directed the DOE to start looking for a permanent repository site,
such as the one now under investigation at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. For their
part, the utilities and customers started the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the
repository expenses, Nesbit said.
Since 1993, the fund has collected $24 billion with about $7 billion already
spent to follow through with tests and studies at Yucca Mountain.
In the late 1990s, it became clear that the DOE would not meet its national
repository deadline and utilities would have to make other arrangements.
Exelon invested millions to build onsite concrete pads, buy dry casks and pay
for special equipment to move the large storage containers, Nesbit said.
In 1998, Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station officials and the DOE worked out a
deal in which the power plant would stop putting money toward the Nuclear Waste
Fund.
Instead, the DOE would give the plant credit toward the fund and the power
station would use otherwise earmarked cash to pay for its own storage fees.
Other utilities around the country challenged the agreement and claimed that
national money could not be used to fund a private pad site.
A federal court upheld the challenge in 2002 and Peach Bottom Atomic Power
Station once again contributed cash to the Nuclear Waste Fund.
Later that year, both the DOE and Exelon began to negotiate a new agreement.
And last week, both parties agreed that all Exelon sites with nuclear waste
storage issues -- including Peach Bottom -- would be reimbursed by the
government.
"We're pleased with the result," said Chris Crane, Exelon Nuclear's
president and chief nuclear officer. "It resolves the litigation between
parties, it eliminates a financial uncertainty for both Exelon and DOE, and it
allows the government to meet its legal obligations to a sixth of the nation's
nuclear power plants."
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