Arizonans who get some of their electricity from nuclear power pay one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour used into a fund to build a permanent nuclear waste storage site amounting to $258 million so far. But now that the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada [right] has been shut down, the Arizona Corporation Commission wants the feds to stop collecting the fee, according to a story in the Arizona Republic.
The Republic says the fund has collected $25 billion from ratepayers around the country. No alternative site has been proposed so utilities will continue to store their own nuclear waste on site for now.
State Senator Al Melvin is pushing for a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant to be built in Arizona that would convert most of the spent fuel, and he wants to build a waste storage facility nearby to hold the remainder.