Judges this week declined to second-guess the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to proceed — over an environmental group’s objection — with decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, writing that the federal government’s plan would not violate the law.
The NRC last year declined a petition by Public Watchdogs to halt decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), and the California-based environmental group asked the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals to review the commission’s denial.
But the court said Wednesday that it had no authority to review the decision unless NRC had done something that amounted to “an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.”
“Public Watchdogs has not demonstrated that the NRC has abdicated its duty to ensure that spent nuclear fuel is stored safely at SONGS,” the three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit wrote in Wednesday’s court memo. The judges said NRC’s generic environmental impact statement for continued storage of spent nuclear fuel covered Public Watchdog’s concerns.
Officials from the watchdog group suggested that they were considering further legal challenges to the decommissioning of San Onofre’s reactors.
“Public Watchdogs has assembled a special legal team to explore the full range of legal options,” Charles Langley, the group’s executive director, told Exchange Monitor in an email Thursday.
Nina Babiarz, public advocate and board member at Public Watchdogs, told Exchange Monitor Thursday that the case has “national consequences.”
“We are troubled by the prospect that there appears to be no meaningful court of appeal for NRC decisions outside of the regulatory framework,” Babiarz said in an email.
Commission spokesman David McIntyre said in an email to Exchange Monitor Thursday that the agency was “very pleased” with the court’s decision.
San Onofre’s Units 2 and 3 ceased operations in 2013. Decommissioning began in 2020 and the process will take up to a decade to complete.
