Nuclear utilities say that they shouldn't have to pay an estimated $769 million this year toward a waste repository since the US is abandoning the Yucca Mountain site and hasn't settled on another disposal plan. Pres Barack Obama said earlier this year in budget documents that the US would no longer seek to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, NV. Utilities already have won court decisions allowing them to collect damages, now thought to run well over $20 billion, from the federal government for their extra costs -- including building temporary steel-and-concrete silos to store spent fuels.
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