CT ratepayers win $75M refund in nuke waste pact

HBJ File Photo The nuclear waste storage site is all that is left of the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee power plant in Haddam.

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Connecticut's electric ratepayers will collect $75 million in refunds over the next three years -- about $1 monthly -- on their power bills for bearing the cost of storing nuclear waste, regulators announced Wednesday.

The state's two nuclear power plants – the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee in Haddam and the active Millstone Power Station in Waterford – have stored spent uranium onsite since the early 1980s.

The U.S. Department of Energy was supposed to come in 1998 to move that nuclear waste to a permanent repository, but that facility never was built.

Owners of Yankee successfully sued the federal government over the continued storage of the waste in Haddam.

Yankee's owners received a $40 million payment in February, while its sister sites in Massachusetts and Maine drew combined payments of $120 million.

Since Yankee and its sister sites are owned by several New England utilities, including Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating, the Haddam storage costs were borne by those utilities' ratepayers.

The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority and of the Office of Consumer Council have worked to get those settlement distributed to ratepayers.

Regulators still are factoring how much the $75 million works out per customer, but figure it would be about $1 per customer per month.