Beyond Nuclear v. NRC live stream,10.30.2025 (Updated 02.17.2026)

Updated February 17, 2026:  Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club are still awaiting a ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on their Petition for Judicial Review of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nuclear industry. However, in a catastrophic move that further defies science and common sense, the Trump administration has erased the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘endangerment finding’ The finding states incontrovertibly that the emissions of certain greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. But as Trump moves to revive coal and expand oil and gas usage, the already specious argument — that new reactors are essential for climate mitigation — falls completely apart.  Not that the nuclear industry or its lapdog regulator care to factor in the impact of more severe climate conditions on future reactor operations, as we have shown in our court proceedings against reactor new licensing and relicense extensions. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has even stated that climate factors that could affect safety are beyond the scope of the environmental review process as required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Beyond Nuclear and Sierra Club v. the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission                                                                                 

(USCA Case #24-1318)

This “Petition for Judicial Review” currently before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenges the NRC’s and the industry’s refusal  to analyze both the adverse impacts of climate change and advanced material aging in commercial power reactors that unacceptably raises the  severe accident risks and consequences during the requested license renewal period.

 Audio Live Stream @ 9:30 AM EST, Thursday, October 30, 2025

Go to the link to listen to the recorded audio live stream of proceeding with counsel for Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Appellate Court Judges 

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The average age of the 94 nuclear power units commercially operating today in the United States is now 43.7 years. And the most apparent, readily available “bridge to the future” for the US nuclear industry is to run the reactors  longer and harder through increasingly extreme operating license extensions of 20 year increments; first for 40 to 60 years and now 60 to 80 years.

According to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report for 2025, as of July 2025, “86 of the 94 operating U.S. units (91.5 percent) had already received 20-year Initial License Renewals for 40 to 60 years of operation.”

The NRC has approved the second 20-year renewal or “Subsequent License Renewals” for 13 US reactor units to extend operations from 60 to 80 years. Presently  another 12 units are still under NRC review safety and environmental reviews.  The industry anticipates another 20 units to submit a second 20-year extension in the relatively near future.

Since 2018, through the legal counsel of Diane Curran, Esq. with the Washington, DC law firm Harmon & Curran, Beyond Nuclear has filed a series of strategic petitions to the US NRC in request of public hearings challenging the agency’s “subsequent license renewals” with allegations of  significant violations of federal environmental law potentially impacting the public health, safety and environmental protection under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Beyond Nuclear and Sierra Club co-petitioners of chapters in Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina have engaged the NRC Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB). Beyond Nuclear and Sierra Club have subsequently appealed the federal safety licensing boards’ consistent denial of our hearing requests and dismissal of all contentions  to the NRC Commissioners challenging the operating license extensions beyond 60 years at the Peach Bottom Units 2 & 3 atomic power plant (PA), the North Anna Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station (VA) and the Oconee Units 1, 2 and 3 nuclear generating station (SC).

In response to Beyond Nuclear and other public interest petitioner appeals, on February 24, 2022, in a 2-1 notation vote, the seated Commissioners issued three memoranda and orders addressing an “error of law” in the previous NRC staff’s environmental reviews, licensing board rulings and previous Commissioners’ orders approving the subsequent licensing renewal applications. In their 2022 decision, the Commission concluded that the 2013 license renewal Generic Environmental Impact Statement (LR GEIS), on which the NRC staff, the licensing boards and Commission had relied, in part, to meet its obligations under 10 Code of Federal Regulation Part 51 and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for the environmental reviews for the requested nuclear power plant renewal applications, did not analyze or consider  environmental impacts arising during the requested 60 to 80 year operating period, relying solely upon a 1996 environmental review pertaining only to the  initial 20 year renewal period for 40 to 60  years. The same legal error  similarly omitted a review from  the  2013 GEIS supplement intended for the  “subsequent” 20 year extension.  The Commissioners’  2022 Orders rescinded the previous Commission’s rulings granting the operational end dates for the 60 to 80 year extension and remanded the dates back to end dates for the current initial license renewal date (40 to 60 years).

The  2022 Commission Orders further directed the NRC staff to rewrite the legally flawed and inadequate license renewal GEIS and present the new draft with remedies for public comment. The rewrite also reset the opportunity to submit updated  public comments and request a new hearing  and contentions based on the reanalysis of the NRC new rule and new LR GEIS.

In August 2024, the staff issued the final NUREG-1437, “Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants,” Revision 2.

Through its public comments, Beyond Nuclear identified that the NRC staff’s rewrite of the LR GEIS once again did not address fundamental NEPA legal concerns as provided in extensive comments to the agency. The NRC failure thus initiated Beyond Nuclear’s October 7, 2024 Petition for Judicial Review before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

On June 13, 2025, Beyond Nuclear and Sierra Club submitted through counsel their  final brief to the United States Court of Appeals,

“In proposing to rely on the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) for the License Renewal of Nuclear Plants (NUREG-1437, August 2024) (‘2024 GEIS’) to support an initial twenty year extension of 40- to 60-years of operation and subsequent license renewal twenty year extension (60- to 80-years ) decisions, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (‘NRC’) has failed to meet its obligations under the National Policy Act (‘NEPA’) and this Court’s decision in New York v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 681 F.3d 471, 478–79, 483 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (‘New York’) by ignoring two central, reasonably foreseeable environmental risks: the effects on reactor accident risk of long-term aging reactor components on accident risk in a subsequent license renewal term (i.e., 60-to-80 years of operation) and climate change during both initial and subsequent license renewal terms.”

In its brief, Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club’s  federal court appeal  raises a  legal issue of whether the NRC may, as a matter of law under NEPA, refuse to evaluate two types of “reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts” in federal agency’s reactor license renewal process:

1) the environmental effects of climate change on safety-related reactor systems, structures and components and reactor accident risk for either a 20-year initial license term (from 40 to 60 years of operation) or a 20-year
subsequent license renewal term (from 60 to 80 years of operation), and;

2) the environmental effects of long-term safety equipment aging on severe accident risk during a subsequent license renewal term (from 60 to 80 years of operation).

The federal agency’s refusal to examine the effects of climate change and aging on reactor safety is a legal policy that subsequently affects all of NRC’s licensing decisions, including reactor license renewal, initial reactor licensing, and licensing of other  types of facilities including those pending subsequent license renewal cases before the federal agency, those anticipated in the future and even new reactors requesting construction permits and operating licenses.

Beyond Nuclear and Sierra Club’s counsel argues that the DC Circuit Court should vacate the NRC Final Rule and remand the Rule and the 2024 GEIS back to NRC to review the effects of aging safety equipment and climate change on reactor accident risks, including measures to avoid, remedy or mitigate those risks.

[Photo: United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit]