NARUC FILING IN REOPENED CASE: DOE WASTE FEE ‘ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS’

Petitioners have filed an initial brief this week in a recently reopened case challenging the Department of Energy’s continued collection of the Nuclear Waste Fee from utilities following the shutdown of Yucca Mountain. The court reopened the challenge by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Nuclear Energy Institute earlier this year after the petitioners in January asked the Court to reopen its case and reject the Department’s January determination finding that payment of the fee is appropriate. “The January 2013 Determination is as arbitrary and capricious as DOE’s 2010 fee assessment and should similarly be ruled legally defective,” this week’s filing states. It notes that DOE’s fee adequacy review was based on a nuclear waste strategy DOE released the week before the review. “The proposed Strategy, however, is not embodied in law and in fact proposes a nuclear waste disposal program that is, in many fundamental respects, contrary to current law,” the filing states.

The original opinion from the court last June called for DOE to complete a required fee adequacy review within six months. DOE released the court-mandated review Jan. 18, which 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 case’s schedule calls for a response from DOE by June 12 and final briefs from both parties on July 17.