United States First Circuit

Petitions for review claiming that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to file supplemental analysis on the environmental impacts of relicensing Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in light of purported new and significant information learned from the Fukushima nuclear incident violated its obligations under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the NRC's regulations are denied, where: 1) the NRC permissibly reasoned that Massachusetts did not show that the spent fuel pool issues in its contention were unique to Pilgrim, instead they applied to all nuclear power plants and would be more appropriately handled through rulemaking; 2) the NRC's rejection of petitioner's contentions regarding core damage issues was not arbitrary or capricious and constituted reasoned decisionmaking; 3) the NRC did not act arbitrarily or capriciously in its application of its suspension standard; and 4) NEPA imposed no obligation on the NRC to withhold the granting of a renewed license here because of the possibility that currently unavailable information might become available in the future.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/25/2013
• Published 02/25/2013

Judges

• LYNCH

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel