Nuclear industry sues DOE over waste fee
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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Britain Goes Full Week Without Coal Power
LONDON - For the first time in a century, Britain weaned itself off of coal consumption for an entire week.
Reuters reported that Britain went seven days without relying on any power generated by coal-powered stations.
The accomplishment is symbolic of a shift to more clean energy sources; Britain was home to the first coal-powered plant back in the 1880s.
Today, Britain has some aggressive plans in place to completely eliminate its coal power generation permanently by 2025. In addition, Britain aims to cut its total greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels within the next 30 years.
Natural gas was the…
