Environmental groups want an appeals court to rehear a case that affirmed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license commercial consolidation and storage of spent nuclear fuel.
The groups led by Beyond Nuclear last week filed for a rehearing en banc, or by all the members of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. The Washington-based group also asked the court for an abeyance in the case, essentially keeping proceedings on ice while the Supreme Court deals with a competing claim: the the NRC lacks authority to license away-from-reactor storage.
The circuit court had not ruled on either of Beyond Nuclear’s motions as of Tuesday. The U.S. Supreme Court, an independent branch of the federal government, had as of Tuesday not scheduled oral arguments in an appeal of a separate but related case from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2023 sided with the state of Texas and voided NRC-granted interim storage license to two private companies.
In the D.C. circuit case, a panel of three judges held that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had the authority under the Atomic Energy Act to license Holtec International to store spent nuclear fuel in New Mexico.
The case, decided in August, largely did not focus on whether the NRC had the legal authority to license storage of spent fuel, as it did for Holtec and New Mexico and Interim Storage Partners, an Orano-Waste Control Specialists joint venture, in Texas.
Instead, the D.C. court, focused on Beyond Nuclear’s argument that NRC had illegally licensed Holtec to take custody of spent fuel from the Department of Energy, something DOE is not allowed to do until it constructs a permanent repository for spent fuel. The D.C. circuit rejected that argument.
