The following are summaries of opinions issued by the Fifth Circuit in August 2023. The summaries are overviews of particular aspects of the opinions; please review the entire opinions.
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW: Petitioners did not need to be “aggrieved parties” to challenge grant of license as ultra vires; Nuclear Regulatory Commission lacked authority to license private storage of nuclear waste.
Texas v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, No. 21-60743, 2023 WL 5498874 (5th Cir. Aug. 25, 2023).
Congress mandated that the Department of Energy find and develop a geologic repository for nuclear waste. DOE selected Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the location but since then, the effort has stalled.
Searching for an alternative, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission set out to license “interim” storage facilities for nuclear waste. A private company then applied for an interim-storage license for a facility in West Texas.
Fearing the interim facility would become permanent, an oil and gas company (Fasken) and Texas opposed the license. Texas also passed a law banning…