By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court threw out on Wednesday a legal challenge by the state of Texas and oil industry interests to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of certain nuclear waste storage facilities.
The 6-3 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh and decided on procedural grounds, overturned a lower court’s decision that had invalidated a license awarded by the NRC to operate an off-site nuclear waste storage facility in western Texas. The NRC is the federal agency that regulates nuclear energy in the United States.
The NRC issued a license in 2021 to a company called Interim Storage Partners – a joint venture of France-based Orano and Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists – to build a nuclear waste storage facility in Andrews County in Texas, near the New Mexico border.
Kavanaugh wrote that Texas and the oil industry challengers were not authorized to bring their legal claim since they were not parties to the NRC’s initial licensing proceeding.
“To qualify as a party to a licensing proceeding, the Atomic Energy Act requires that one either be a license applicant or have successfully intervened in the licensing proceeding,” Kavanaugh wrote, adding that the challengers had not met either requirement.
The U.S. government and Interim Storage Partners had appealed the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the NRC lacked authority to issue the license based on the federal Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The appeal was brought under Democratic former President Joe Biden and was continued under Republican President Donald Trump.
The government argued that Congress gave the NRC the authority to license temporary off-site nuclear waste storage facilities and that the challengers lacked the right to sue.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to decide the issue of the NRC’s licensing authority, meaning the question could return in a future dispute.
The Interim Storage Partners license was challenged by Fasken Land and Minerals, a Texas-based oil and gas extraction organization, and the nonprofit Permian Basin Coalition of Land and Royalty Owners and Operators. Texas and New Mexico later joined the challenge, arguing the facility posed environmental risks to the states. The case brought by New Mexico subsequently was dismissed.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch in a written dissent backed the challengers’ position.
“Both are entitled to their day in court – and both are entitled to prevail,” wrote Gorsuch, whose dissent was joined by fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
During March 5 arguments in the case, those three justices seemed wary of the NRC’s claim that the licensing arrangements at issue were authorized by law and would be temporary. The license issued to Interim Storage Partners was set to last for 40 years, with the possibility of being renewed.
A proposal to permanently store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel at a federal facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been stalled following decades of opposition in that state.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has limited the authority of various federal agencies including the Environment Protection Agency and Securities and Exchange Commission in various rulings in recent years. The court last year overturned its own 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
Comments