Archive for the ‘United States Court of Appeals’ Category

 

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has dismissed a lawsuit asking for the suspension of the approximately $800 million collected annually by the Energy Department under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.  The suit was filed earlier this year by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, the Nuclear Energy Institute and electric utilities.

 

The Court concluded that an assessment of the adequacy of the waste fee completed this fall by Energy Secretary Steven Chu had rendered the request by the plaintiffs to request a review and suspend the fee in the interim “moot.”

 

The Court also found that a request to order the Secretary to suspend the fee given the current state of the DOE’s Yucca Mountain program “is unripe.”  The Court added that “[T]he interest in postponing review is strong if the agency position whose validity is in issue is not in fact the agency’s final position… Given the Secretary’s recent completion of his annual assessment, petitioners may now be able to properly raise this claim through a challenge to that assessment.”