You may have been paying it for 30 years without even knowing . But it all ends Friday . After a protracted legal battle , the Department of Energy is removing a small fee from electric bills intended to pay for the disposal of spent fuel at nuclear power plants . Power companies and state regulators successfully fought the Energy Department over the matter , saying the government has been collecting the fee for 30 years but wo n't begin disposing of nuclear waste for another 34 years . In a November ruling , a federal appeals court called the fees `` quite unfair '' and ordered the government to stop collecting them . The change takes effect Friday . The fee is tiny -- one mill , or a tenth of a cent , for every kilowatt hour generated by nuclear power . That amounts to about 15 to 20 cents on the average monthly electric bill , industry officials estimate . But those tiny fees add up . Since 1982 , the Nuclear Waste Fund has grown by about $ 40 billion , and fees contribute an additional $ 750 million every year . But interest income means the fund will continue to grow by about $ 1.3 billion a year . Currently , the fund contains $ 31 billion , after the government spent billions on the failed effort to open a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada . Waste not removed . For Michigan Public Service Commissioner Greg White , who fought the fee for years , the court victory is `` bittersweet . '' The lawsuit , White says , primarily was intended to prod the federal government into solving the nuclear waste issue . `` From the very infancy of the commercial nuclear power industry , the federal government has always stated that it would take responsibility for the ( disposal ) of high-level nuclear waste , and that has n't happened , '' White said . `` The waste all sits at the plant sites where it was generated , despite the collection of some $ 40 billion . '' Meanwhile , stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel continue to grow . An estimated 2,000 metric tons of waste are generated every year to the 70,000 tons stored at some 100 sites nationwide . Cooling the fuel . Spent nuclear fuel typically is stored for five years in pools of water , where it is allowed to cool . Then it is transferred to dry casks , which are considered safer because they can be cooled passively with air . In 1982 , Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act , which gave the Department of Energy a 1998 deadline to begin disposing of spent nuclear fuel . After lengthy studies , Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the site for a permanent repository of nuclear waste . But opposition was intense , both from Nevada residents and environmentalists . And in 2010 , President Barack Obama , fulfilling a campaign promise , scuttled the Yucca Mountain program . A group of state utility commissioners , power companies and others went to court arguing that the government should not be collecting fees in the absence of a program . The court , in turn , pressed the Department of Energy to defend the fee , demanding estimates on the cost of future waste disposal efforts . It did n't like what it heard . The real solution : dispose of waste . `` According to the Secretary ( of Energy ) , the final balance of the fund to be used to pay the costs of disposal could be somewhere between a $ 2 trillion deficit and a $ 4.9 trillion surplus , '' U.S. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman wrote . `` This range is so large as to be absolutely useless as an analytical technique '' to determining the size of the fee . The Nuclear Energy Institute , the industry organization , heralded the decision to kill the fee , and lamented the lack of progress in finding a nuclear waste storage site . `` On-site storage is safe and can be maintained without any environmental impact . But that does not in any way excuse the federal government 's failure to meet its commitment ... to remove used fuel , '' it said in a statement . White , the Michigan utility commissioner , said the fee is `` a consumer rip-off . '' `` When you 're paying a fee , you should be getting something for what you 're paying for . '' But he said the court ruling is an imperfect victory . `` A perfect victory would have been that the court would compel the federal government to do the program as required by law , '' he said . White said he would welcome the return of the fee if it was accompanied by a workable plan to dispose of spent fuel .
The Department of Energy is removing a small fee from electric bills for nuclear disposal . Power companies said the government was collecting the fee for 30 years . But the government is not disposing of nuclear waste .