Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/2/2014
Entergy is seeking damages from the U.S. government for failure to remove the spent nuclear fuel at its Vermont Yankee site, according to a lawsuit filed late last week in the Federal Court of Claims. The litigation is “Round 2” for seeking repayment for costs incurred to deal with the spent fuel after the Department of Energy failed to live up to its Nuclear Waste Policy Act obligations. The previous round resulted in the payout of approximately $40.7 million to the previous owners of Vermont Yankee for costs incurred from 1998 to 2008. The Round 2 litigation would cover from 2008 to a court-decided end date. “Defendant’s failure to act has not been the result of technical inability, legal impediment, or inadequate resources,” the lawsuit states. “There are ample funds that have been collected to enable DOE to comply with its contractual obligations. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant’s breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, the Plaintiff has suffered and will continue to suffer damages as alleged.”
This lawsuit marks the latest round in litigation concerning DOE’s obligations to remove spent fuel from commercial reactors. The NWPA calls on DOE to remove the spent nuclear fuel and transport it to a final repository, designated as Yucca Mountain, but after the Obama Administration shuttered Yucca Mountain in 2010, deeming the site “unworkable,” DOE has not been able to remove any spent fuel from the commercial reactors. The U.S. government has already paid out an estimated $23 billion in damages to commercial reactors for its failure to move the spent fuel, with the latest payout of approximately $104 million to Duke Energy occurring in March. The Department of Justice did not return to calls for comment this week.
