http://www.twincities.com/ci_8343980?source=rssExpense of storing nuclear waste soars
Taxpayers to bear billions in penalties
BY MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times
Article Last Updated: 02/23/2008 03:14:00 AM CST
WASHINGTON — Forgotten but not gone, the waste from more than 100 nuclear reactors the federal government was supposed to start accepting for burial 10 years ago still is at the reactor sites, at least 20 years behind schedule. But it is making itself felt in the federal budget.
With court orders and settlements, the federal government already has paid the utilities $342 million, but is virtually certain to pay a total of at least $7 billion in the next few years and probably more than $11 billion, government officials said. The industry said the total could reach $35 billion.
The payments come from an obscure and poorly understood government account that requires no new congressional appropriations, and will balloon in size, experts said.
The payments are due because the reactor owners were all required to sign contracts with the Energy Department in the early 1980s, with the government promising to dispose of the waste for a fee of a tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour. It was supposed to begin taking away the fuel in the then far-off year of 1998.
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