Of all the intractable, unwinnable positions that U.S. Department of Justice lawyers are bound to defend, few can rival the fight over the storage of spent nuclear fuel.
The latest slapdown came on Nov. 19, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the government to quit collecting annual fees from nuclear power plant owners for the disposal of radioactive waste. It was a major win for the industry, which has been paying $750 million per year to fund a program that doesn’t exist — and is unlikely to anytime soon. The Obama administration in 2010 pulled the plug on Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a site for the depository.
