S.C. utilities sue DOE over nuclear waste

CHARLESTON — Two South Carolina utilities are suing the federal Department of Energy about the spent nuclear fuel and waste accumulating at the V.C. Summer power plant they operate near Columbia.

They claim the DOE broke deals to take the waste off their hands.

Moncks Corner-based Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility, and Columbia-based SCANA Corp., a publicly traded utility, took their action Jan. 28, three days before a deadline to sue for breach of contract.

Nearly 3,000 tons of nuclear fuel are at V.C. Summer. Spent fuel must be stored in basins of water or in dry storage vaults and containers.

In all, about 50 nuclear plant operators have pursued similar lawsuits around the nation that seek about $56 billion.

Charlotte-based Duke Energy owns two South Carolina nuclear power plants and has had its suit pending since the late 1980s. Progress Energy, a Raleigh-based utility that owns a nuclear plant in Hartsville, also has sued.

Nuclear power plant operators began contributing to the federal Nuclear Waste Fund in the 1980s. Through 2002, the fund had generated $13.4 billion, with $1.6 million of that coming from South Carolina plant operators. The government was obligated to start taking waste from them beginning in 1998.

The DOE planned to bury the radioactive material at Yucca Mountain, Nev., about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Opposition from environmentalists and others delayed approval until 2002. Now the DOE says the site won’t be ready until 2010 at the earliest.

Early on, the Energy Department argued it had not broken its agreement because it encountered “unavoidable delays” at the Yucca Mountain site.

A federal appellate court rebuffed that argument in a 1997 ruling in a lawsuit brought by Northern States Power Co. The contract defines “unavoidable delays” as acts of God or “of the public enemy.”

The first legal cases on the delay went to trial last month, and a decision on those disputes is expected in coming weeks.

Robert Shapiro, a partner in the Washington-based Spriggs & Hollingsworth law firm, is representing nine utilities in similar lawsuits. “The government has done a decent job of bollixing up these cases,” Shapiro said.