N.J. court finds Oyster Creek spent fuel casks are “permanent”
The Tax Court of New Jersey has ruled that Oyster Creek’s spent nuclear fuel storage casks are subject to taxation as real property.
In a lawsuit against the Township of Lacey, site of the closed Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, current plant owner Oyster Creek Environmental Protection and former plant owner Exelon challenged whether the spent fuel casks are taxable as real property, claiming that they are being temporarily stored at Oyster Creek’s independent spent fuel storage installation until a permanent repository is opened.
The Township of Lacey, however, maintained that because there is no place under the law to move the spent fuel, the casks are permanent and therefore taxable as real property.
The Oyster Creek ISFSI houses 67 casks containing spent fuel and greater-than-Class C waste.
The ruling: In a February 25 summary judgment, the tax court sided with the Township of Lacey, finding that the lack of any path for removing the casks qualifies them as being permanently fixed. In its ruling, the court noted that for the past 50 years the federal government has mandated a custom of storing spent fuel at reactor sites.
Furthermore, the court wrote: “Aspirations and dreams of off-site storage are speculative. After 28 years of political wrangling and litigation, the Executive and Congress abandoned the Yucca Mountain project. The proposed Utah site was bogged down for 15 years until it was shelved. The Texas and New Mexico sites are now bogged down in litigation as well.”
Background: A 625-MWe boiling water reactor, Oyster Creek operated from 1969 to 2018. In 2019, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the transfer of Oyster Creek’s license from Exelon to Holtec International subsidiary Oyster Creek Environmental Protection as owner and Holtec Decommissioning International (HDI) as operator.
HDI, which is decommissioning Oyster Creek, completed the transfer of the reactor’s remaining spent fuel to the site’s ISFSI by the end of May 2021. HDI intends to complete decommissioning and terminate Oyster Creek’s license by the end of 2035.
