Exelon Corp. will receive millions of dollars in reimbursement from the U.S. government under a settlement reached Aug. 10. The money is for construction of spent nuclear fuel storage facilities.

The settlement is the result of about four years of negotiating, says Exelon spokesman Craig Nesbit. "The Dept. of Energy recognized many years ago that it had responsibility for the waste," he says. DOE was supposed to begin taking spent fuel from nuclear powerplants beginning Jan. 31, 1998, at the national repository to be built at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Opening has been delayed until at least 2010. DOE expects to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build and operate the repository by December.

The agreement resolves litigation brought against the government by Exelon and its subsidiaries, which operate 17 nuclear power units at 10 locations. The companies also have four units that are not operating.

Exelon will receive $80 million immediately to cover storage costs incurred since 1998, but company officials expect to spend about $300 million to build new dry storage sites before the scheduled opening of the national repository. If the repository is delayed until 2015, the total outlay for new dry storage construction could reach $600 million, Nesbit says.

Exelon has built three new repositories and has another 10 sites ready for construction. "The next ones must be ready by 2005, 2008 and 2010," Nesbit says. Beyond that, the company will need one new storage area a year.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, Washington, D.C., estimates that by the end of 2006, about 60 reactors owned by various utilities will have no more spent-fuel storage space on site, and by 2010, 78 reactors will have exhausted their storage capacity. Building a new dry-storage facility at a plant requires an initial investment of between $10 million and $20 million, with yearly construction outlays of between $5 million and $7 million.

More than 60 more lawsuits by utilities are pending against the government over the storage issue and the cost for those companies to build storage facilities until Yucca Mountain is open is well over $1 billion, says Charles Pennington, vice president of NAC International, Atlanta, which is one of three companies that have licensed technology to build the storage areas at nuclear powerplants. "We have 500 systems in the field right now and that could quadruple or quintuple over the next 15 years," he says.

DOE’s failure to begin receiving spent fuel by 1998 exposed it to claims of more than $50 billion from nuclear plant owners (ENR 11/30-12/7/98 p. 12).