Why are the utilities so adamant about the need for a government solution?
The federal government currently has a contract in place that requires it to provide a service to utilities that own nuclear power plants. According to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 as amended in 1987, the Department of Energy has been directed to build a deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel. This facility is intended to be a permanent repository for the material. The law’s basic assumption is that the long term future for used nuclear fuel is to store it deep underground, essentially forever. According to the law, the facility was scheduled to begin accepting waste by 1998; the current schedule indicates that this date of initial acceptance might be closer to 2010 or 2015. The NWPA requires utilities to collect a 0.1 cent per kilowatt-hour fee from their customers and pay that fee to the federal government as part of the cost for providing this used fuel removal service. That may not sound like much money, but there are enough nuclear kilowatt-hours produced e
