A federal court has awarded power company Entergy $49.4 million in damages stemming from the Department of Energy’s failure to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
In an opinion filed Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims awarded Entergy about 60 percent of the $80.8 million the company sought in damages incurred over the 16-year period from 1996 and 2012. A previous U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruling established DOE’s partial breach of contract related to the 1983 Standard Contract for Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and/or High Level Radioactive Waste. Liabilities against the U.S. government have mounted as it abandoned plans for a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and initiated a new search for waste storage sites.
The plaintiffs — listed as System Fuels Inc., Entergy Louisiana Inc., and Entergy Louisiana LLC — sued the federal government in 2003. The company sought damages related to DOE’s failure to meet its mandate to collect and dispose of spent nuclear fuel from the Waterford Nuclear Generating Station Unit 3 in Killona, La.
“The Government concedes that Plaintiffs’ damages for its dry fuel storage project, including the (Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation pad), haul path improvements, security, and Holtec cask purchases, were caused by the Government’s breach of the Standard Contract,” the opinion reads. “In the non-breach world, Plaintiffs would not have had to store their spent fuel on-site. It is uncontroverted that had DOE performed, Plaintiffs would not have required the extra storage space provided by placing spent fuel on an ISFSI in Holtec storage canisters.”
According to Congressional Budget Office statistics from 2015, the federal government has paid more than $5.3 billion in damages to electric utilities resulting from broken contracts in its obligation to extract and dispose of civilian nuclear waste.
