The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit this week denied a challenge brought by Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) process for reviewing reactor license renewals.
“Petitioners argue that the commission did not adequately consider how aging components and climate change affect the risk of accidents involving reactor-core damage,” according to the opinion released Tuesday. “We deny the petition.”
The lawsuit centered around NRC’s 2024 revisions to the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) that the commission uses in considering license renewals for existing commercial nuclear power plants. As part of that process, the NRC concluded the probability of a “severe accident” at a U.S. nuclear power plant is small.
Importantly, the NRC’s 2024 revision concluded nuclear plants that carried out a “severe-accident mitigation alternatives” (SAMA) report years earlier need not draft a new one. “Plants that have not previously considered SAMAs must still do so,” under the NRC review system, the court said.
By the end of 2024, license renewals had become fairly routine across the U.S. nuclear industry, the three-judge panel said.
“At the end of 2024, 94 commercial nuclear power reactors were operating at 54 sites in the United States,” according to the opinion. “Of those operating reactors, 85 had successfully renewed their operating licenses at least once.”
The vast majority of commercial reactors nationally were built decades ago and as part of NRC’s review, companies must show they can manage “the effects of aging” for the next license period.
The NRC GEIS process involves looking at both cross-cutting plant issues across the industry as well as plant-specific issues that might or might not merit a “supplemental environmental impact statement,” according to the court decision.
The appeals court ruled against the environmental groups — finding in part that NRC adequately explained its reasoning and therefore the 2024 revisions were not “arbitrary or capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The appeals court said its role is not to “micromanage” agency decisions but to consider whether the decision is reasonably explained.