Wyden say NWF should be used for dry casks at BWRss

DECEMBER 18, 2012, 7:26 AM

Come January, Another Try on Nuclear Waste

By MATTHEW L. WALD

The incoming chairman of the Senate Energy Committee suggests that the Energy Department should stop billing utilities more in waste disposal fees than the department is actually spending on addressing nuclear wastes. And he wants the department to pay for moving some of the wastes out of spent fuel pools at the nation's highest-risk reactors and into dry casks.

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, will take over as the committee's chairman when Congress begins its new session next month. In an interview on Monday, he pointed out that the department collects about $750 million a year in waste disposal fees at the rate of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated by the reactors that feed those utilities. Yet the government is spending nearly nothing, he noted.

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