Sometimes a breach of contract leaves you with an unfinished bathroom or a bum repair job on your car. But when you get stuck with nearly 30-years-worth of highly radioactive, spent nuclear fuel, you’re in an unusual quandary.
Yet every commercial nuclear power plant in America finds itself in precisely this position, including our very own San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, operated by Southern California Edison. SCE is suing the federal government for $146.5 million - essentially what it cost to store said highly radioactive, spent nuclear fuel through 2005. (Expect to see more claims for post-2005 nuke storage bills in the future.)
Most every nuclear plant operator in America is suing as well. It could cost the federal government more than $1 billion by the time it’s all done.
WHITHER YUCCA MOUNTAIN?
Back in the ’60s and ’70s, nuclear power was the future. To encourage its development, the federal government passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, promising to accept spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste from commercial plants by Jan. 31., 1998. In return, the plants would make quarterly payments into a Nuclear Waste Fund.
SoCal Edison signed its contract with the U.S. Department of Energy in 1983. Since then, it has paid about $15 million per year into the fund - for a total of $373 million by the end of 2005.
Who provides that money? You, the ratepayers. And what did that money buy? Largely, squat. It quickly became apparent that the feds weren’t going to have a nuclear waste disposal facility ready by 1998…or 2008…or perhaps even 2018. Which left SoCal Edison and all the other power plant operators scrambling.
SoCal Edison’s pretrial brief tells a fascinating story about the machinations behind trying to accommodate all that spent fuel over the years (read it here: pretrial-brief), but suffice to say it involved shipping waste across the country for reprocessing (which never happened); shifting old waste from one reactor pool to another reactor pool to make space; erecting reinforced concrete dry storage canisters; and more.
The trial - Southern California Edison Company v. United States of America - was heard in April. SoCal Edison awaits the court’s decision. And we at The Watchdog are left wondering: Why the heck do we do it this way anyway? Why don’t we recycle spent nuclear fuel as they do in France, which cuts down enormously on what you’d have to stick in a place like Yucca Mountain? If it’s good for the bottle, and good for the can, shouldn’t it be good for the nuclear fuel, too?
We’ll get back to you next week with more on that riddle.
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