Feds will pay $145M to ex-Yankee operators in latest lawsuit over spent fuel

The federal government will pay $145 million for failing to remove spent nuclear fuel from three shuttered New England power plants over five years, court papers filed this week show.

The payment, jointly agreed to last week by the plant operators and federal officials, was approved Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The government agreed to the payments after a little more than two months of negotiations with Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company, Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company, and Yankee Atomic Electric Company.

Under the reported opinion filed Nov. 19, the government will pay Connecticut Yankee $52.78 million, Maine Yankee $48.43 million and Yankee Atomic $43.79 million. Payments cover the five years between Jan. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2021, during which the Department of Energy failed to fulfill a contractual obligation to take custody of spent fuel from these plants.

The Yankee operators, like all plant operators who signed a standard contract with DOE in order to get a federal operating license, are still free to sue the government for further breaches of contract. 

Connecticut Yankee operated the Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Haddam Neck, Ct., 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.

The payments proposed to the Yankee operators are the latest in an outpouring from the federal judgment fund that tallied about $11 billion as of November 2023, still the most recent data available as of deadline for RadWaste Monitor, from the federal government’s failure to build and license a Department of Energy-operated disposal facility for spent fuel.