The head of the lobbying arm for the nuclear energy industry is urging the Trump administration to halt what she called “misleading budget tactics” by its predecessor related to the Nuclear Waste Fund.
A federal appeals court in November 2013 directed that the Department of Energy stop collecting payments into the fund from utilities because it had not me its mandate under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to build a permanent repository for U.S. commercial and defense nuclear waste. The Obama administration notified Congress in May 2014 that it was formally obeying the court ruling.
“However, despite this ruling, the former administration continued to budget $350 million annually knowing that the receipts would not be collected. The industry believes this inequity must be addressed and corrected,” Nuclear Energy Institute President and CEO Maria Korsnick said in an April 21 letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “A clear reading of the court decision indicates that there is no basis to budget for collection of the annual fees if there are no funds currently appropriated to implement any program.”
NEI released Korsnick’s letter on Thursday.
The nuclear industry has already provided $20 billion to the Nuclear Waste Fund, which by last September held $38 billion and was collecting another $1.5 billion in annual interest, Korsnick said. There should be no fee on utilities as long as the fund’s annual investment income remains higher than yearly expenses for the program and until DOE can show that a fee is necessary to cover the life of the program, she added.
