The Department of Energy cannot make utilities pay for storage of spent nuclear fuel with interest from their own decommissioning trust funds, a federal judge ruled this month.
DOE had argued in the Court of Federal Claims that it should not have to pay $149 million in damages to three former power plant operators in the northeastern U.S. because the decommissioning trust funds for those plants had earned at least that much in interest.
In an order dated Feb. 7 but unsealed only last week, the court threw out DOE’s argument and told the agency it would have to pay Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company, Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company, and Yankee Atomic Electric Company for violating the standard contract the government signed with each of those utilities to dispose of spent nuclear fuel.
“The purpose of the NDTs [nuclear decommissioning trusts] is not to pay for the recurring, breach-induced costs of storing the SNF [spent nuclear fuel] until the government fulfills its contractual obligations,” Judge Thomas Dietz wrote in the nine page order, unsealed Feb. 21.
The utilities sued the federal government in 2021. Their cases, which are ongoing even after this month’s ruling, are among 16 similar spent-fuel cases still pending in the claims court, according to an annual DOE financial report published in November.
Getting sued for breach of the standard contract, and paying for the breaches using the Justice Department’s judgment fund, has effectively become the federal government’s way of paying for the indefinite interim storage of spent fuel at the power plants that created it.
Breach of contract lawsuits began after Jan. 31, 1998, when DOE failed to start disposing of spent nuclear fuel from civilian power plants. Including settlements and unfavorable judgements, the Judgement Fund had paid out some $10.6 billion for standard contract violations as of Sept. 30, according to DOE.
Connecticut Yankee operated the Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Haddam Neck, Ct., from until 2007. Maine Yankee operated the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Wiscasset, Maine, until 1996. Yankee Atomic Electric operated the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station in Rowe, Mass., until 1992.
All three plants have since been decommissioned but the utilities are still paying for storage of spent fuel because successive congresses and presidential administrations have failed to build and open a permanent deep geologic repository for spent fuel.
