business

In a dispute over the cost of storing nuclear waste, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy has been awarded $116 million in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The ruling of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington is subject to appeal. DOE officials were unavailable Friday for comment.

The suit, which has been in the courts for nine years, centered on Xcel's bearing the cost of storing spent fuel at the company's Prairie Island and Monticello plants.

The Xcel subsidiary, Northern States Power (NSP), like many other nuclear power plant owners, had a contract calling for the federal government to eventually ship and bury radioactive waste in a proposed underground site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

NSP originally sought $1.2 billion for past and future costs of storing and securing waste on the site of its Prairie Island and Monticello plants.

A federal court ruled that NSP could seek recovery only of expenses it already had assumed, and in a revised claim, NSP sought recovery of its waste storage expenses through the end of 2004.

In a separate suit, brought last month, Xcel demanded that the DOE pay waste storage costs for 2005 through June 2007. The company has not yet indicated how much money it will seek.

Xcel officials stopped short of predicting that such lawsuits would become a perpetual process.

"I would not say that Yucca Mountain is dead," said Charlie Bomberger, Xcel's general manager of nuclear asset management. "I think we are seeing progress in making that [permanent nuclear waste storage site] happen."

Nevertheless, Bomberger said that Yucca Mountain is unlikely to start accepting nuclear waste from utilities around the country until 2017. NSP is one of 39 utilities suing the federal government for recovery of waste storage expenses.

Meanwhile, Xcel is likely to remain in court fighting for reimbursement -- money that ultimately would be likely to benefit electric ratepayers, said Kerry Koep, the company's assistant general counsel.

"It seems prudent to try to keep things moving along and claim damages as they occur," he said.

Mike Meyers • 612-673-1746

Mike Meyers • meyers@startribune.com