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The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA), introduced on September 30, 2026, would make consequential changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by accelerating environmental reviews and substantially restructuring judicial review of NEPA challenges. If passed in its current form, BAAJA could have a significant impact on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It generally would reinforce the direction of the agency’s pending revisions to its NEPA regulations; however, it may also require or permit the removal of NEPA-based contentions from the NRC’s adjudicatory processes or, at a minimum, create tension between the bill’s deadlines for issuing a record of decision (ROD) and the NRC’s proposed NEPA rules, which continue to contemplate agency adjudication of issues pertaining to the agency’s environmental review. 

We describe the impacts of BAAJA, and how the NRC might respond to them, below.

A More Explicitly Procedural NEPA

BAAJA would codify the principle that NEPA is procedural and informational rather than outcome-determinative. The bill also would give lead agencies greater control over the scope of environmental review and ensure consideration of only those alternatives, other than the no-action alternative, that meet the project sponsor’s goals. 

These changes are broadly consistent with the NRC’s July 2026 proposed revisions to 10 C.F.R. Part 51. As we previously described, the NRC has proposed to narrow environmental review to effects within its substantive statutory authority, revise the procedures for determining the appropriate level of review, expand categorical exclusions, permit greater applicant participation in preparing environmental documents, and eliminate or consolidate numerous existing Part 51 requirements. 

Faster and More Deferential Judicial Review

BAAJA would transform NEPA litigation for all federal agencies. The bill does not exempt any agencies from its requirements, thus seemingly imposing restrictions on all NEPA-based challenges to major federal actions, including those for which the NRC is responsible.

A challenge generally would have to be filed within 150 days (or shorter, if a more specific statutory review scheme controls) after the authorization is made public. Original and exclusive jurisdiction generally would lie in the federal court of appeals for the circuit in which the project will be constructed, expanded, or operated. The court would have supplemental jurisdiction over related challenges to the same authorization. In cases where an environmental impact statement is circulated for comment, claimants ordinarily would have to demonstrate that they submitted a substantive comment sufficiently detailed to notify the agency of the particular issue later presented in court. They also would need to allege an actual or imminent injury-in-fact amounting to direct harm.

The bill also would significantly restrict remedies. Its structure favors remand without vacatur, allowing the authorization to remain in effect while the agency corrects an identified deficiency. Preliminary injunctive relief would be unavailable where the alleged violation rests exclusively on NEPA. These provisions would reduce, if not eliminate, the potential for NEPA litigation to halt construction or operation of an NRC-licensed project while a defect in the NRC’s environmental analysis is addressed. 

These changes are consequential for the NRC because judicial review of final NRC orders currently lies in the courts of appeals under the Hobbs Act, though not necessarily in the circuit in which the project operates, and because the NRC currently channels legal challenges about the adequacy of its environmental review through its adjudicatory processes. As an initial matter, the project-location rule could shift more nuclear licensing litigation to the circuit in which the facility is located and away from the D.C. Circuit.  More fundamentally, enactment of BAAJA as the appropriate (and highly curtailed) vehicle through which an agency’s compliance with its obligations under NEPA can be challenged, calls into question whether the NRC can or should continue to entertain NEPA-based contentions in its adjudicatory proceedings. 

New Deadlines Extending from the Application to the Authorization

BAAJA would impose deadlines at several stages of federal review. An agency generally would have 60 days after receiving an application to determine whether it is complete or identify missing information. Once the application is determined to be complete, the agency generally would have another 60 days to determine the appropriate level of NEPA review, including whether the action qualifies for a categorical exclusion, requires an environmental assessment, or requires an environmental impact statement (EIS). And an EIS must generally be completed within two years.

The most important deadlines would apply after completion of the environmental document. Where an EIS is prepared, the lead agency would have to issue a ROD within 45 days after publishing the final EIS. Participating federal agencies would have 90 days after publication of the final EIS to decide all outstanding authorizations, while nonparticipating federal agencies would have 120 days. Whether that 90-day provision independently governs the NRC’s own licensing authorization when the NRC serves as lead agency is less clear, but the provision could apply to other federal approvals needed for an NRC-licensed project and reinforces the bill’s expectation that authorization decisions follow promptly after the final EIS.

Tension Between BAAJA’s Deadlines and the NRC’s Proposed NEPA Rules

For many NRC proceedings, BAAJA’s EIS deadline may not present a fundamental structural problem. Spurred by the ADVANCE Act and Executive Order 14300, the NRC already conducts environmental and safety reviews largely in parallel and uses project schedules, generic analyses, categorical exclusions, and applicant-supplied information to streamline environmental review.

The more difficult issue is BAAJA’s requirement that the lead agency issue a ROD within 45 days after publication of the final EIS.  Proposed § 51.102, governing issuance of a ROD, reflects the NRC’s pre-BAAJA approach. It provides that, “[a]t the time of the NRC’s decision on the proposed agency action,” the NRC will issue a ROD or incorporate its NEPA determination into another decision document. The ROD would identify the decision and alternatives considered, explain the relevant factors, address practicable mitigation, and certify that the NEPA process is complete. Section 51.102 further designates the initial decision of the presiding officer as the ROD when a hearing is held.

That approach may conflict with BAAJA when an adjudicatory proceeding remains pending after the final EIS is issued. If an admitted contention challenges the environmental analysis, issuing a ROD that certifies the environmental review as complete could appear to prejudge an issue still before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. And although proposed § 51.102 designates the presiding officer’s initial decision as the ROD, issuance of that decision within 45 days may not conclusively satisfy BAAJA if Commission review remains pending. The NRC could argue that the statutory requirement is met upon issuance of the document formally designated as the ROD, particularly if the initial decision has become effective under the applicable procedural rules. But BAAJA’s sequencing and apparent emphasis on closure of the NEPA process support the contrary view that the ROD must embody the lead agency’s completed environmental determination. An initial decision subject to further Commission review—and potential reversal, modification, or remand—may not provide that closure.

The central question, therefore, is not simply whether the NRC can complete its environmental review on BAAJA’s schedule, but whether it can reconcile the Act’s independent 45-day ROD deadline (and perhaps its 90-day authorization deadline) with a licensing process in which the final agency decision may await completion of a contested hearing and appeal to the Commission. Resolving that tension may require the NRC to reconsider the timing and role of the ROD in its licensing process and its process for considering objections to its environmental analysis. 

Changes the NRC Could Consider

If BAAJA is enacted in its present form (and assuming the Commission continues to channel NEPA contentions through its adjudicatory proceedings), the NRC should establish a procedure for addressing a still-pending environmental contention when the ROD deadline—and any applicable authorization deadline—arrive. 10 CFR § 51.102 designates the initial decision of the presiding officer as the ROD when a hearing is held, and the timing of that ROD may in some circumstances be compliant with BAAJA. But there may be circumstances where the adjudication, and particularly an appeal to the Commission, may not be complete when the deadlines pass. 

One starting point for satisfying the timing requirements of BAAJA would be restructuring § 51.102 to require that a ROD be prepared by the NRC staff, within 45 days of final EIS publication, based on the administrative record developed to that point, even when contentions are pending. The rule, which would change the current practice in contested proceedings of designating the presiding officer’s initial decision as the ROD, should avoid suggesting that the ROD prejudges issues pending before the Licensing Board or the Commission. Any such procedure also would need to specify whether and how the ROD or environmental analysis would be revised if the subsequent adjudicatory process identified material new information or a deficiency in the staff’s NEPA review.

The Commission might instead determine that preserving the NRC’s existing adjudicatory model and issuing a ROD—or even a final authorization—while adjudicatory issues remain unresolved would not provide a workable means of satisfying NEPA, as amended by BAAJA. In such a case, the Commission could consider the more groundbreaking alternative of removing NEPA contentions from Part 2 adjudications and directing challenges to the adequacy of the NRC’s NEPA compliance into the judicial-review process contemplated by BAAJA. 

Under that model, the NRC staff would prepare the environmental document and ROD, consider public comments, and develop the administrative record, but challenges to the legal adequacy of that process would proceed directly to judicial review following final agency action rather than being litigated first before the Licensing Board. The Commission could designate the public-comment process as the opportunity for an informal hearing on the adequacy of its environmental analysis and provide that persons whose interests may be affected, and who timely request a hearing and submit qualifying substantive comments, are admitted as parties to the licensing proceeding. Those persons therefore could seek judicial review as “parties aggrieved” within the meaning of the Hobbs Act and the Atomic Energy Act.

Federal courts ordinarily review other agencies’ NEPA compliance on the administrative record under the Administrative Procedure Act’s arbitrary-and-capricious standard, without a preceding trial-type adjudication of the EIS before the agency. Applying that model at the NRC could make the bill’s 45-day ROD deadline—and any applicable authorization deadline—materially easier to satisfy, avoid the awkwardness of declaring the NEPA process closed while a NEPA contention remains pending, and align NRC practice with BAAJA’s expedited and highly deferential judicial-review scheme. That model would require coordinated changes to Parts 2 and 51, and it may plausibly be contested as inconsistent with the Atomic Energy Act’s hearing requirement as well as with historical NRC practice, but it may provide the cleanest means of reconciling NRC licensing with the bill’s schedule.

Conclusion

On balance, BAAJA and the NRC’s proposed NEPA revisions are substantively aligned in their efforts to narrow, accelerate, and standardize environmental review. However, if BAAJA becomes law, the agency may need to modify its processes for issuing RODs and perhaps authorizations in a manner that satisfies the bill’s requirements. It will also need to determine whether environmental challenges should continue to be adjudicated within the NRC or instead proceed, as they generally do for other agencies, directly to judicial review on the administrative record. 

Industry participants should carefully monitor both BAAJA’s progress through Congress and the NRC’s ongoing rulemaking to understand how NEPA issues will be handled in future NRC proceedings. We will provide additional guidance on these issues as Congress considers BAAJA and as the NRC finalizes its revisions to its NEPA regulations.