Washington (Platts)--11Jun2008

The US Department of Energy has notified companies interested in building
new nuclear reactors in the US that it is ready to begin discussing new
standard contracts for the disposal of spent fuel generated by those units,
spokeswoman Angela Hill said.

Hill confirmed in an e-mail that DOE has developed what she called "an
amendment" to the standard contract.

Unlike the existing contract, which stipulated that DOE would begin
disposing of utility spent fuel by January 31, 1998, the new contracts will
not contain specific dates, waste program director Edward Sproat said June 3
following a DOE briefing on the repository license application it had sent to
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that day.

Sproat said then that the new contracts might stipulate that DOE is
obligated to take that fuel 10 years after a new unit shuts down. No
information was available on whether the amendment contains the 10-year
requirement.

A generating company building a new reactor must have a spent fuel
disposal contract in hand before NRC will license the nuclear unit. It does
not, however, have to have a contract before it submits an application to NRC
for a combined reactor construction permit-operating license.

Unlike the existing contracts, which were contained in a DOE regulation,
DOE will negotiate these contracts individually with utilities.