Progress Energy Joins Utilities Suing U

Progress Energy Joins Utilities Suing U.S. DOE over Nuclear Waste Repository

The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. -- Mar. 18

Progress Energy has joined dozens of utilities in suing the U.S. Department of Energy for not establishing a national repository for nuclear waste by an early 1998 deadline.

Congress mandated in 1982 that a repository be opened by the deadline, but none has been established.

In its suit filed in January, Progress Energy seeks to force the Department of Energy to open the repository, according to the company's annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Raleigh-based utility has paid $600 million in fees to help pay for the repository.

The suit also asks the Department of Energy to repay an estimated $100 million that the company spent establishing its own nuclear storage areas because a national facility wasn't in operation. Those facilities are at the Robinson nuclear plant in Hartsfield, S.C., and the Brunswick nuclear plant in Southport, N.C.

The Department of Energy wants to open the repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., but a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission won't be submitted until late this year.

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