I have blogged in the past about the Nuclear Waste Fund. A law was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1980 to have operators of nuclear reactors make annual payments into a fund that would be used to create a permanent geological repository for nuclear wastes in the U.S. by 1999. In 1987, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designated as the potential site for the national repository. A great deal of research and development was put into creating such a repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In 2002, three years after the repository was supposed to be open for waste disposal, Congress official stated that Yucca Mountain would be the site. The project continued under heavy criticism for not addressing some potential environmental problems. Harry Reid, a Democratic Senator from Nevada and the current Senate Majority leader has strongly opposed the Yucca Mountain Repository. Presidential Candidate Obama campaigned against the repository in the 2008 presidential election. In 2011, the Obama administration ended funding for the Yucca Mountain repository.
There is around thirty billion dollars in the repository fund now. Nuclear plant operators have been suing the Federal government in an attempt to recover some of the money in the fund and/or to have the mandatory fund collection halted because of the missed 1999 deadline and the fact that there will be no permanent repository until 2040 at the earliest. There is also a push to have the repository funds made available for dry cask storage at nuclear plants. The nuclear waste situation in the U.S. is getting desperate. It is estimated that all the spent fuel pools at all the nuclear plants will be full by 2017. Spent nuclear fuel assemblies can be stored in dry casks on or off site. Unfortunately, as the law for the repository fund is written, none of the fund can be spent on building dry storage casks.
A few days ago, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the mandatory fund collection of about seven hundred and fifty million dollar a year had to stop. The court said that since the Yucca Mountain repository project had been cancelled and there was currently no viable alternative project for permanent storage of nuclear waste in the U.S., there was no justification for the continued payments. The nuclear power industry said that this was a “win” for the consumers because they would no longer have to support the repository fund with higher prices for nuclear power.
I think that this is very bad decision. The U.S. is going to have to find a solution to permanent nuclear waste storage. One thing I can guarantee is that the cost for any future repository will continue to climb until it is completed. The thirty billion currently in the fund will not cover the eventual cost. As far as the U.S. public not having to pay now for permanent disposal only means that they will have to pay more when a final solution is found for the disposal of nuclear waste.
Proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository design.
