Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
DAMAGE CLAIMS: Nuclear waste trials starting
Three utilities seek money from government for its failure to build central storage site
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The government's failure to open a dump site for commercial nuclear waste could expose taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars in damages.
One of the first in an expected string of trials to determine exactly how much began Monday in a courtroom across the street from the White House.
Owners of three reactors in New England claim they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars building storage facilities and maintaining spent nuclear fuel that the government under a contract had promised to pick up six years ago. In all, more than 60 claims have been filed seeking damages from the government.
More than two decades ago, the government signed a contract with utilities promising to take charge of the highly radioactive used reactor fuel at commercial power plants beginning in 1998. But the government has yet to come up with a central storage site.
A number of court cases have ruled that the Department of Energy is liable for the cost of keeping the waste because of a breach of contract. How much is at stake is anyone's guess, but the industry has put the number as high as $56 billion.
Three utilities that own the Yankee group of reactors in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut, went to trial Monday before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The trial is expected to last seven weeks.
Jerry Stouck, an attorney representing the utilities, outlined a case that was expected to focus on expenses utilities had to pay because of the government's repeated failures, dating back to 1983, to get approval for a central waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain and its refusal in the interim to accept the waste at some other facility.
"They built these facilities for one reason only -- because of DOE's default," Stouck said of the utilities.
A Justice Department attorney countered that the damage claims were "speculation" and wrongly assumed that if the government had met the 1998 deadline, the New England reactors' waste would have been taken within a few years.
In fact, the companies would have had to build storage facilities and maintain fuel for years as they awaited their turn for shipping waste to a central repository, the government argued.
"Even though there was a delay, the (utilities) cannot prove there was incremental damage," argued Harold Lester, the government's lead attorney, representing the Energy Department.
The courts already have ruled the government violated its contract with the nation's utilities to take charge of the waste. Now the utilities are seeking damages, with a total of 65 claims having been filed, including a rush of them at the beginning of the year, just before the six-year statute of limitation for lawsuits expired.
"Damages. Damages. It's all about damages. How much money are we entitled to," Stouck said during a break in the proceedings.
"If this litigation is successful, it will provide some financial relief to the electric customers who bear the increasing costs to store fuel at these sites as a result of the DOE's failure to meet its legal obligations," said Bruce Kenyon, chairman of Yankee Atomic Electric Co.
The utilities together are asking for $548 million in damages for costs incurred to keep the spent reactor fuel in dry-cask storage until 2010, the year the proposed Yucca Mountain waste site could be opened. The amount is nearly double the $268 million cited in 1999 when the New England utilities began litigation.
Stouck said the cost of keeping the waste on site, initially underestimated, has grown because today's terror threats require increased security.
But the money sought in this trial is only a fraction of what the government may have to pay, given that these are only three of 65 claims filed by owners of the country's 102 reactors at 72 power plants.
The bill could grow if the Yucca Mountain waste site does not open in 2010 as planned.
