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Senate EPW Committee Holds Yucca Oversight Hearing

By Eric McErlain
The big news this afternoon is on Capitol Hill, where the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is holding an oversight hearing on Yucca Mountain at 2:30 p.m. U.S. EST. Click here for a live stream of the hearing.

Meanwhile...
A federal judge has ordered the government to pay $34.9 million to the operator of two nuclear power plants in Alabama and Tennessee after the Energy Department failed to meet a 1998 deadline to dispose of their nuclear waste.

The ruling in favor of the Tennessee Valley Authority is the first one in which the department has been told to pay specific damages to a utility that is keeping highly radioactive spent fuel stored on-site while delays continue to hamper plans for a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Utilities that run most of the nation's 103 nuclear plants and some that have been mothballed have filed 61 lawsuits seeking similar damages.

More later, if warranted.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Haha, government has to pay fines to government owned company TVA. I wonder what TVA will do with these profits? Maybe pay them to their owner, the government? :-D
March 1, 2006 at 5:42 PM
Anonymous said…
There you go, making sense. Most elected officials in Nevada stopped making sense on this topic years ago.

This project has become a political third rail. Anyone with a hope of getting a party endorsement, democrat or republican, must oppose it, unconditionally.

That said, I doubt anyone in Nevada wants to turn off their lights and air conditioning for 2.4 hours every day-- which is the amount they get from nuclear-generated electricity.
March 2, 2006 at 3:41 PM
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