The court holds that a uranium mining company must exhaust its jurisdiction-based appeals in the Navajo tribal court system before challenging in federal court the Navajo court's jurisdiction over nuclear torts. The court first holds that the Price-Anderson Act's jurisdictional provisions do not cre...

The court holds that a low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) facility developer lacks standing to challenge the Secretary of the Interior's rescission of its previous record of decision approving the sale and transfer of federal land to the state of California, which would have allowed the developer to...

The court denies environmental groups' petitions to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) decision not to bring an enforcement action against a city for violating the terms of an operating license for a hydroelectric project on the Cowlitz River in Washington. In 1967, the city ...

The court holds that an electric utility company that was a 70% owner of a nuclear power plant in Iowa can deduct 15 years' worth of Energy Policy Act (EPACT) assessments in the tax year that the liability was determined. In 1992, Congress enacted the EPACT, which established a fund for the decontam...

The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) order allowing states to regulate the reimbursement of "headwater benefits" from downstream hydropower plants to upstream dam operators. To enable upstream firms to recoup part of the cost of conferring headwater be...

The Fourth Circuit held that the Federal Power Act (FPA) does not grant the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) permitting jurisdiction when a state denies approval of a permit application within one year. Two state utilities commissions and two community interest organizations challenged se...

The D.C. Circuit denied a petition challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 's (FERC's) approval of the Electric Reliability Organization's (ERO's) method for allocating costs based on net energy for load. The ERO was created under §215 of the Federal Power Act to establish and enfo...

A court holds that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) violated the Energy Policy Act in refusing to require large private and municipal fleets of motor vehicles to use alternative fuel vehicles. The Energy Policy Act, which was designed to reduce air pollution, global warming, and U.S. dependence o...

The court upheld the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's dismissal of environmental groups' intervention in early site permit proceedings for new nuclear power facilities in Clinton, Illinois. The groups contended, among other things, that the applicant failed to adequately consider energy efficiency or...

The Ninth Circuit held that federal law preempts Washington State's Cleanup Priority Act, a statute enacted through the passage of a voter initiative. The Act was intended to "prevent the addition of new radioactive and hazardous waste" at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation site until cleanup of existi...