The federal government does not have to return more than $4 million in Nuclear Regulatory Commission fees to Southern Co. subsidiaries Alabama Power and Georgia Power, a court of federal claims judge ruled Monday..
In granting summary judgement to the U.S. federal government in this third round of litigation by the companies, Judge Patricia E. Campbell-Smith said earlier court rulings had already considered whether the companies should recoup NRC fees because of the Energy Department’s ongoing failure to take possession of spent nuclear fuel.
In court papers, the companies said they had not immediately appealed the denial of a potential $4.3 million recovery of NRC fees for fear that it would have delayed the already-awarded total of approximately $63 million they had won in a prior ruling on the DOE spent fuel breach.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has not ruled out the possibility of some nuclear plant operators collecting NRC fees, “only that in each case the evidence must be evaluated to determine whether the plaintiff met its burden of proof,” Judge Campbell-Smith said in the nine-page order.
The Energy Department was supposed to take possession of spent nuclear fuel and dispose of it permanently in the Yucca Mountain deep geological repository. However, the repository has been in limbo since 2010, when the Barack Obama administration effectively cancelled the project. The Donald Trump administration has proposed reviving the project as part its 2018 budget proposal for DOE.
