Energy Department Pays For Spent Fuel Breach

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has awarded $29.4 million to System Fuels and Entergy Arkansas, the owners of a nuclear power plant in Arkansas, for the Department of Energy’s failure to fulfill its obligations to take control of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from the facility. The same court previously awarded System Fuels $44 million in damages for DOE’s breach of a contract over the same issues at a nuclear power plant in Mississippi. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which required DOE to complete a nuclear waste repository by 1998, the agency was expected to collect used fuel from nuclear power plants across the U.S. Without Yucca Mountain completed, DOE has been in breach of contract for nearly two decades. By the end of fiscal 2013, DOE had paid out about $3.7 billion to utility owners and generators, according to a Government Accountability Office report. DOE estimates that its future liability related to storing used fuel will be $21.4 billion through 2071.