The date that the Nuclear Waste Fund fee will be reduced to zero has been pushed back to Friday. The original date for the court ordered reduction in the fee was supposed to occur this Thursday, according to a memo circulated by the Department of Energy to fee payers late last week, but a new memo from DOE was issued late Monday night that changed the date to Friday. “The Department has since determined that May 16, 2014 is the correct effective date for this change of fee,” the DOE memo said. “Accordingly, the current 1.0 mill/kWh fee remains in effect for electricity generated and sold until May 16, 2014.” The fee would then reduce to zero on May 16.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, along with the Nuclear Energy Institute, petitioned the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to reduce the fee due to the lack of planned disposal options. The fee amounted to one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour of energy generated by nuclear power, and was mandated under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to pay for the ultimate disposal of spent fuel in a repository, designated as Yucca Mountain. But since the Yucca Mountain project has been shuttered since 2010, NARUC and NEI argued that the fees should be suspended as well. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, at the prompting of the court, sent a request to Congress back in early January to seek a fee adjustment. Congress then had 90 days to accept the request, but since no action was taken by Congress, the fee changed to the requested level.