CASE STUDY: Saving Billions for Nuclear Plants and Their Electricity Customers In November 2013, two months after a Pillsbury partner argued the case for NEI, NARUC and the individual utilities, the appeals court handed down a stinging rebuke to the DOE. The Department’s method for calculating the fee, the court wrote, was “absolutely useless” and “flatly unreasonable. Until some permanent solution to the ” problem of nuclear waste disposal was put in place, the ruling stated, “it seems quite unfair to force petitioners to pay fees for a hypothetical option, the costs of which might well—the government apparently has no idea—be already covered. ” The court ordered that DOE take the required steps to set the nuclear waste fee to zero, which will now save the nuclear utility industry $750 million per year, for “so long as the government has no viable alternative to Yucca Mountain. ” www.pillsburylaw.com | © 2013 Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. All rights reserved. CS_v.01.29.14 .