Court rules Oyster Creek fuel storage casks are permanent
A New Jersey court has ruled that used nuclear fuel storage casks at the former Oyster Creek nuclear power plant are permanent fixtures and therefore taxable as real estate property.
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The site's current owner, Oyster Creek Environmental Protection - a wholly owned subsidiary of Holtec International - and former owner Exelon had challenged the Township of Lacey about the taxable status of the 67 casks at the plant's storage facility, claiming that they are being temporarily stored at Oyster Creek's independent used fuel storage installation until a permanent repository is opened. The local township asserted that the used fuel and storage casks should be considered to be permanent, because there is nowhere for the used fuel to be moved to.
The management of civilian used nuclear fuel in the USA is a federal responsibility, but a planned permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which in 1987 was designated as the sole initial repository for 70,000 tonnes of high-level wastes, has not been built. This means used fuel from more than 70 shutdown, decommissioned and operating nuclear energy facilities is currently in storage at sites across the nation.
"For 50 years, the federal government has mandated a custom and usage of spent nuclear fuel remaining at the nuclear power plants which consumed the fuel," the Tax Court of New Jersey said in its 25 February ruling. "There is simply no custom and usage allowing the removal of spent nuclear fuel from a plant site. Aspirations and dreams of offsite storage are speculative," it said.
"History amply demonstrates that efforts to relocate the spent fuel have become mired in legal and political wrangling. It is anyone’s guess as to when or if a disposal site will open. The court cannot base its decision upon speculation. Unless and until a disposal site is up and running and actually accepting spent fuel, the custom and usage is for the fuel to remain safely stored in the onsite storage casks."
The court determined the storage casks to be taxable "since the Taxpayers cannot transfer the spent fuel to another site".
Oyster Creek, a 619 MWe single-unit boiling water reactor plant, was the oldest operating nuclear power plant in the USA when it was shut down on 17 September 2018, after 49 years of electricity generation. Holtec formally took over ownership of Oyster Creek after its subsidiaries completed the transfer and acquisition from Exelon Generation on 1 July 2019.
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