How does the federal government plan on storing spent fuel in the future?
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 required the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to begin safely and permanently disposing of spent fuel from all commercial nuclear power plants no later than January 31, 1998. For the past twenty years, the U.S. Department of Energy has been working on a permanent storage repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The DOE asserts that a final repository at Yucca Mountain will be available to begin storing spent fuel from plants like Vermont Yankee within the next decade. The Act further established the Nuclear Waste Fund – the mechanism by which all classes of ratepayers would fund the safe transportation and disposal of spent fuel through a small fee in their electricity bills for nuclear-generated power. When Yucca Mountain begins to operate, Vermont Yankee will be among the first plants in the country eligible to ship spent fuel there. For this reason, Entergy has already begun preparing for the safe transport of spent fuel by constructing a dry cask
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