COURT REOPENS NUCLEAR WASTE FUND CASE

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday reopened a case challenging the Department of Energy’s continued collection of the Nuclear Waste Fee from utilities following the shutdown of Yucca Mountain. This comes after the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in late January asked the Court to reopen its case, originally decided last July, and reject the Department’s recent finding that payment of the fee is appropriate. The new schedule calls for final briefs from both parties on July 17.

DOE released a court-mandated review Jan. 18 that found it did not believe that cancellation of the Yucca Mountain geologic waste repository project merited any change to the one-tenth of a cent per nuclear-generated kilowatt-hour fee that nuclear utility ratepayers send to the Nuclear Waste Fund. The DOE report “is defective, and should be set aside,” NARUC argued in its Jan. 31 filing. “DOE’s second bite at the fee adequacy apple is fundamentally flawed, and further fee collection should thus be suspended.”

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