Appeal Filed Over Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Refusal To Consider Mitigation For Severe Nuclear Accidents

On behalf of NRDC, last week we filed a Petition for Review in the D.C. Circuit challenging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) recent decision concerning Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives (SAMAs) at the Limerick nuclear power plant outside Philadelphia.  Although NRC is preparing a NEPA Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) as part of the relicensing process for the power plant, and recognizes that SAMAs – which can reduce the severity of serious nuclear accidents – must be considered as part of that NEPA process, the agency recently ruled that NRDC may not challenge the adequacy of the SAMA analysis because the agency’s regulations foreclose such a challenge. The Petition seeks to overturn that ruling in order to force NRC to conduct a legally sufficient SAMA analysis during relicensing.