A federal court in D.C. on Wednesday issued a pointed rebuke to a coalition of environmental groups seeking to block a proposed commercial storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and dismissed their lawsuit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

With its Wednesday ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals closed the book on the joint lawsuit, led by anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear, which asserted that NRC violated federal law by rejecting agency-level challenges to the proposed Interim Storage Partners (ISP) site in Andrews, Texas.

The court was not convinced by Beyond Nuclear’s argument that NRC wrongly refused the group’s 2019 contention, in which the anti-nuclear organization complained that the ISP site’s license ran afoul of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act by giving the Department of Energy authority to handle spent fuel shipments to the proposed facility.

But the court said Wednesday that it saw “no error in these decisions,” essentially because Beyond Nuclear’s contention did not account for “the possibility of private ownership.”

Beyond Nuclear’s interpretation of the license, the court said, “ignored the proposed license’s plain text, which requires ISP to obtain contracts with either DOE or private entities,” to accept title to any spent fuel destined for the proposed storage site.

The court on Wednesday also declined to say whether NRC’s September 2021 decision to approve a license for the proposed ISP site was legal, reasoning that it “lack[ed] jurisdiction” to make such a judgment.

According to the ruling, the court could only review the site’s license if Beyond Nuclear was allowed to intervene in NRC proceedings. Because the organization wasn’t permitted to do so, it has no standing to challenge the licensing decision, the court said.

In a statement Wednesday, Beyond Nuclear attorney Diane Curran said that she was “disappointed” that the case had been dismissed “on a procedural technicality.”

ISP, a joint venture between Waste Control Specialists and Orano, has said that its proposed facility could store around 40,000 tons of spent fuel, about half the nation’s existing inventory.