Nuclear industry sues DOE over waste fee
WASHINGTON DC - The U.S. nuclear industry sued the Energy Department to suspend a fee imposed by the federal government for managing the radioactive spent fuel produced by America's nuclear power plants.
Congress created the fee in 1982 to help pay for a central storage site for nuclear waste to be located underneath Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas. The Obama administration abandoned the project and the nuclear industry does not think the fee is still needed.
The lawsuit seeks to suspend collection of the fee, levied at a rate of 0.1 penny for every kilowatt-hour consumers pay on electric bills.
The fee brings in $750 million a year for the Nuclear Waste Fund held at the U.S. Treasury, which now has a balance of more than $24 billion.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was brought by the Nuclear Industry Institute trade group and 16 of its members, which are mostly utilities that operate nuclear power plants.
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Opponent of Site C dam sharing concerns with northerners
VANCOUVER - One of the leading opponents of the Site C dam in northeastern B.C. is sharing her concerns with northerners this week.
Proponents of the Site C dam say it will be a cost-effective source of clean electricity that will be able to produce enough energy to power the equivalent of 450,000 homes per year in B.C. But a number of Indigenous groups and environmentalists are against the project.
Wendy Holm is an economist and agronomist who did an environmental assessment of the dam focusing on its potential impacts on agriculture.
On Tuesday she spoke at a town hall presentation in Fort…
