Energy Northwest joins suit
Utilities are challenging fee on nuclear energy
Energy Northwest has joined other utilities in a lawsuit challenging continued imposition of a surcharge on electricity generated using nuclear energy.
The fee, one-tenth cent per kilowatt-hour, has cost Washington electricity ratepayers almost $290 million since 1984, when Energy Northwest started delivering power from its Columbia Generating Station near Richland, said spokeswoman Rochelle Olson.
The surcharge was intended to help fund nuclear waste storage efforts, principally a repository below Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu suspended work at the site last year. In March, the DOE announced it would abandon the project.
The Nuclear Energy Institute and members such as Energy Northwest say collection of the energy surcharge should be blocked until the DOE prepares an annual review of waste storage that accounts for the termination of work at Yucca Mountain.
The fee imposed on 104 reactors produces about $750 million in revenues for the Nuclear Waste Fund, which has a balance of $24 billion.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Energy Northwest in February was awarded $56.9 million by another court because the DOE violated an agreement with the utility under which it was supposed to start taking Columbia Generating Station waste in 1998.
The award by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims compensates the utility for the cost of building its own storage facility because a federal site was unavailable, Olson said.