NARUC notes 20-year anniversary of date government defaulted on responsibility to address nuclear waste

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) recently issued a press release noting the 20-year anniversary of the date the Department of Energy (DOE) was required to start accepting nuclear waste for disposal.

NARUC also urged lawmakers to take action and address funding issues.

“It has been 36 years since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act became law and 20 years since the government defaulted on its obligation. We still have no nuclear repository, and worse yet, we don’t even have the semblance of a nuclear waste program,” NARUC President John Betkoski III said. “Taxpayers and ratepayers have poured literally billions into the federal nuclear waste program and the liability costs continue to increase every day we delay. Moreover, the funding process is broken.”

NARUC noted that the nuclear waste issue has resulted in more than $5 billion dollars in court-awarded damage settlements at U.S. taxpayer expense and said damages could grow to more than $29 billion by 2022.

“Access to billions of dollars collected directly from ratepayers for the Nuclear Waste Fund are effectively stymied by the arcane Congressional budgetary process,” NARUC Executive Director Greg White said. “The Nuclear Waste Fund currently has a balance well in excess of $30 billion and continues to earn interest of more than $1 billion a year, yet any progress on the program is constrained by the Congressional failure to provide meaningful funding.”

Appropriations from the Nuclear Waste Fund that have already been collected should go to support a review of the Yucca Mountain license application, NARUC said. The organization also expressed its support for a recent proposal by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) designed to prevent Congress, if ratepayer fee collections are restarted, from directing collected fees to unrelated projects and to ensure that the NWF corpus is returned.