PORTLAND, Maine - A U.S. court says the federal government must pay electricity consumers in New England $76 million to compensate them for the cost of storing spent nuclear fuel at three nuclear power plants. That includes $24.6 million for consumers who were served by Maine Yankee in Wiscasset.
It's the third such award in a series of suits filed by Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee and Yankee Rowe in Massachusetts to recover year-by-year storage costs that should have been averted by now-failed plans for a federal nuclear waste repository.
Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes says the award will flow to ratepayers in a plan to be developed with state regulators. Some of the proceeds from earlier suits have helped finance the Efficiency Maine Trust.