Consumers Energy kept money that was supposed to clean up old nuke plant

For years Consumers Energy collected surcharges that were supposed to fund the decommissioning of Big Rock nuclear power plant in Charlevoix, but instead of setting the money aside for this purpose the company kept the money as general revenue.

On Monday the Michigan Public Service Commission declared this practice improper, and gave the power company 30 days to come up with a plan to refund customers $86 million that it had wrongly collected.

The Jackson Citizen Patriot has more.

“The utility believed they were handling the money properly, but the commission found the utility failed to deposit decommissioning funds into the trust funds for that purpose,” MPSC spokeswoman Judy Palnau said.

According to the order, the utility said an MPSC staff member agreed it was permissible to do so. But on Monday, the commission said it speaks only through its orders, and that staff members do not have the authority to let a utility stray from a commission order…

“Indeed, it appears that Consumers went out of its way to avoid placing this issue squarely before the Commission,” the order reads.

Big Rock, Michigan’s first nuclear power plant, operated from 1963-1997.

Consumers Energy has removed the power plant from its 475 acre site on the shore of Lake Michigan.

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

Contaminants at the site include uranium and decay products, and fission products. Low levels of ground water contamination, primarily tritium, are non-uniformly distributed at the site because of a dry, silty clay layer that underlies only the south part of the site.