Dale Bumpers: “the pending second-degree amendment caps the fee paid by the utilities for nuclear waste disposal services. That sounds…”

“the pending second-degree amendment caps the fee paid by the utilities for nuclear waste disposal services. That sounds simple enough, but to understand the amendment we must first understand the funding provisions in both the Murkowski substitute, which the pending amendment amends, and how both will affect the nuclear waste program's current funding mechanism. One of the fundamental principles of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is that the full cost of disposing of nuclear waste should be borne by the waste's generators. In the case of the military waste, that means the Treasury and the taxpayers. In the case of commercial power plant waste, that means the utilities and their ratepayers. The existing nuclear waste program will cost about $34 billion. Of this amount, the utilities are responsible for $27 billion and the defense program is responsible for $7 billion. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the utilities' share is recovered through a fee on electricity generated by nuclear power. The 1982 law set the fee at 1 mill, which is one tenth of a cent, per kilowatt-hour. Congress assumed in 1982 that the fee would need to be adjusted from time to time for inflation, to meet higher than expected costs, of if the number of plants paying the fee changed. Thus, the existing law gives the Secretary of Energy the power to adjust the fee. The Secretary has never used his adjustment authority.”