Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
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February 25, 1999, Thursday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 20; Column 3; National
Desk
LENGTH: 638 words
HEADLINE: Energy Agency Plans Offer to Take Utilities'
Nuclear Wastes
BYLINE: By MATTHEW L. WALD
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 24
BODY:
The Energy Department says that because it
cannot dispose of utilities' nuclear waste as it had promised, it will take
ownership of it and pay for temporary storage at the reactors. The money would
come from fees the utilities have been assessed for a permanent repository,
which will not be ready until at least 2010.
The department has been
collecting money from the utilities since 1982 on the promise that it would take
their nuclear waste by January 1998. But it is unable to do so until it opens a
permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., near Las Vegas.
The anticipated date for that opening is 2010, but the department has not even
determined what standards such a storage site must have. Some reactors are
already running out of space in their spent-fuel storage pools, and others no
longer sell power but cannot be decommissioned because there is no place for the
spent fuel. The department is being sued for breach of contract by more than 20
utilities, which are seeking tens of billions of dollars in damages.
Bill Richardson, the Energy Secretary, said today in a telephone
interview that he would propose in testimony before a Senate committee on
Thursday that the department "take title" to the wastes it was scheduled to have
received under the 1998 deadline. The wastes would stay where they now are, in
scores of spent-fuel pools and hundreds of storage casks, and the department
would pay the storage costs, in exchange for the utilities' dropping their
suits.
"I want to address an immediate crisis," Mr. Richardson said.
The Secretary described his proposal as a starting point for
negotiations with the utilities, members of Congress who want the Federal
Government to establish a centralized temporary repository and
environmentalists, many of whom want the wastes to stay where they are.
There is strong sentiment in Congress for construction of an
above-ground interim storage site, probably near Yucca
Mountain, but the Clinton Administration has held off legislation by
threatening a veto. The Administration's argument is that there is no point in
shipping thousands of tons of highly radioactive material around the country
before anyone knows for certain where it will be buried.
Mr.
Richardson's proposal seems unlikely to satisfy the utilities.
"The
industry foremost is looking for movement of fuel," said Scott Peterson, a
spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association here.
Mr. Peterson said several retired reactors could have been converted to
"green fields" for redevelopment if a permanent storage site was in place.
"In the event that there is not movement of fuel, the industry is
looking for compensation for continued storage on site, but movement of fuel is
the priority," he said.
And the industry has previously resisted any
effort by the Energy Department to use the waste fund to pay damages. Under
contracts signed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, utilities paid into
the fund at the rate of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour of energy made in
nuclear reactors. About $15 billion has been raised, with about $6 billion
having been spent.
The industry says the fund is for developing a
permanent repository, or at least a centralized repository, not for expenses at
reactors around the country.
But the settlement would offer immediate
relief to the utilities, in contrast to construction of an interim above-ground
repository, which could not be licensed and put in service until 2004, experts
say.
A Congressional aide on a committee with jurisdiction over the
Energy Department, speaking on the condition that he not be further identified,
said tonight that if there was no settlement, the Court of Claims might award
vast sums to utilities whose wastes the department was already scheduled to have
accepted. http://www.nytimes.com
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February 25, 1999 
