Washington (Platts)--5Apr2010/558 pm EDT/2158 GMT

The Nuclear Energy Institute and 16 of its member companies sued the US Department of Energy in a federal appeals court Monday, asking the court to order the department to suspend collection of a fee nuclear utility customers pay for the federal government's spent fuel management activities.

NEI filed the suit with the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners took similar action on Friday. NEI and NARUC sent separate requests to Energy Secretary Steven Chu last October seeking a suspension of the fee collection because of the department's planned termination of the repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

NEI argued in its letter to Chu last year that the department had failed to fully take into account the effect the termination of the Yucca Mountain project would have on the DOE program's financial needs and that resumption of the collection of the Nuclear Waste Fund fee should not begin until a new national spent fuel management program has been defined and evaluated.

Congress established the Nuclear Waste Fund in 1982 to bankroll DOE's civilian nuclear waste management program. The fund's balance, including fees and interest, now stands at $21 billion, excluding the $10 billion already spent on work related to the Yucca Mountain program over more than two decades. Nuclear utility customers pay a 1 mill (one-tenth of a cent) fee for every kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity sold.

Revenue from the fee collections now amounts to roughly $750 million a year.

Chu has said DOE will continue to collect the fee while the Yucca Mountain project is being terminated because money will be needed to carry out recommendations of the blue ribbon commission. The independent commission was established to evaluate alternatives to a Yucca Mountain repository and to recommend potential paths for a new national radioactive waste policy.

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com