Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. et al. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (462 U.S. 87)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 6, 1983 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 462 U.S. 87 · 103 S. Ct. 2246
- Decided
- June 6, 1983
- Term
- October Term 1982
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. Section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 83 Stat. 853, 42 U. S. C. §4332(2)(C) (NEPA), requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impact of any major federal action. As part of its generic rule-making proceedings to evaluate the environmental effects of the nuclear fuel cycle for nuclear powerplants, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Commission) decided that licensing boards should assume, for purposes of NEPA, that the permanent storage of certain nuclear wastes would have no significant environmental impact and thus should not affect the decision whether to license a particular nuclear power-plant. We conclude that the Commission complied with NEPA and that its decision is not arbitrary or capricious within the meaning of § 10(e) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §706. The environmental impact of operating a light-water nuclear powerplant includes the effects of offsite activities necessary to provide fuel for the plant (“front end” activities), and of offsite activities necessary to dispose of the highly toxic and long-lived nuclear wastes generated by the plant (“back end” activities). The dispute in these cases concerns the Commission’s adoption of a series of generic rules to evaluate the environmental effects of a nuclear power-plant’s fuel cycle. At the…
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