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State Representative Joe Atkins
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-4192
For more information contact: Matt Swenson 651-297-8406
Column/LTE
A NUCLEAR WASTE
Fifteen percent of Minnesota’s electric energy comes from two nuclear power facilities. Over the course of the last 35 years, those facilities have accumulated thousands of pounds of nuclear waste - radioactive material sitting idle in temporary storage facilities just miles from Minnesota homes, schools, and businesses.
Like most states, Minnesota has been looking forward to the day when our nuclear waste finds permanent residence underground in a safe, long-term storage facility at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. In the early 1980s, Congress came up a plan to make that happen. The idea was simple. Utilities in states where any power is generated by nuclear facilities would assess a surcharge to the ratepayers to fund the construction and maintenance of Yucca Mountain. In return, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) promised the facility would be finished by January 31, 1998, at which point states would be relieved of the burden of storing spent nuclear fuel.
Today, Yucca Mountain is still just an empty cave, and an empty promise. Like 33 other states with nuclear facilities, Minnesota electric ratepayers have doled-out more than $659 million (including interest) to the federal government since 1983 to help build and maintain the Yucca Mountain facility. That’s an average $549 per person. Twenty-six years later, Minnesotans have nothing to show for it.
Minnesota isn’t the only state waiting for action. Right now in America 55 thousand tons of spent nuclear waste is being held in short-term storage facilities across the country waiting to be transported to Yucca Mountain. Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, California and dozens of other states have paid more than $16 billion to the Nuclear Waste Fund. With interest, the NWF is worth $31 billion and growing. That’s $31 billion sitting in a Washington D.C. bank account gathering dust and interest, doing nothing to make Americans safer.
Several utility companies, including Midwest energy provider Xcel Energy, have already made attempts to get that money back. Filing claims against the DOE, Xcel and other utilities have won their complaints in Federal Claims Court after DOE failed to begin removal of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors by the 1998 deadline. The Court awarded Xcel $116 million for the government’s inaction, but to-date DOE has paid Xcel nothing.
In addition to intentionally ignoring the ruling of a federal court, DOE has defaulted on its agreements with the states to find a national storage solution for radioactive nuclear waste. Like any other organization or business, the federal government should be as good as its word when it enters into an agreement - especially an agreement of this magnitude. As a result, utilities in 34 states have been paying billions to an idle fund rather than spending that money on making our own nuclear storage facilities safer.
The states have waited for action long enough, and ratepayers have paid more than their fair share already. That’s why I introduced a bill (HF894) in the Minnesota State House to withhold any further payment to the NWF. If the bill passes, Minnesotans won’t pay another dime until Yucca Mountain is completed and DOE lives up to its agreement to finally accept nuclear waste. My bill is already moving through the legislative process in Minnesota, working its way toward the governor’s desk.
Should my bill pass, Minnesota will be the first state to halt payment to the NWF. If enough states follow suit, we might finally get an answer on Yucca Mountain - moving 55 thousand tons of nuclear waste to a safe and permanent storage place we’ve been waiting on for decades. I’m encouraging lawmakers in all 34 nuclear states to consider introducing similar legislation in an effort to pressure the federal government into action, and have proposed to have the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) take a supportive position as well. With strength in numbers we can finally tell the federal government that enough is enough, and put an end to nearly 30 years of waiting.
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