Nuclear utilities say they shouldn't have to pay an estimated $769 million this year toward a waste repository since the U.S. is abandoning the Yucca Mountain site and hasn't settled on another disposal plan.rnThe Nuclear Energy Institute sent a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu last month asking that the payments be suspended.rnSince the early 1980s, utilities have paid a fee of one tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated in reactors to pay for a nuclear waste repository. DOE signed contracts promising to take the waste beginning in 1997. About $29.6 billion in fees and interest has gone into the nuclear fund as of the end of 2008.
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