Investigative report: N.E.’s nuclear money pit

BOSTON -- New England’s electricity consumers and nuclear power plant owners have poured close to $1 billion into a federal waste fund for the past three decades, honoring their end of a 1982 bargain with the government to finance the permanent storage of thousands of tons of spent fuel from the region’s reactors.
The payoff?
A cavernous empty $11 billion hole in a Nevada mountainside, a broken promise from the U.S.government to remove the radioactive waste and mounting bills that could still saddle New England with at least five mothballed plants and dozens of dry spent fuel casks, turning communities into mini-nuclear waste dumps for decades, if not forever.
"It’s the most expensive dry hole we’ve ever built," said Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Nuclear Safety Project. "Who would trust the government with a dollar after they’ve wasted billions? We’ve messed this up as bad as we possibly could."