Andrew Averbach Successfully Represents Nuclear Regulatory Commission in D.C. Circuit Case

On July 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) 2024 revision to its Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) governing nuclear power plant license renewals, rejecting a challenge brought by Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club.

Womble Bond Dickinson Partner Andrew Averbach argued the petition for the NRC when he served as Solicitor for the agency. Averbach joined Womble in March 2026. With him on the brief were Adam R.F. Gustafson, Acting Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice, and attorney Christopher Anderson.

The environmental groups argued that the NRC violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to adequately consider how aging reactor components could increase the risk of severe nuclear accidents, and how climate change could increase external hazards, such as storms and flooding, that might contribute to such accidents.

The court found that the NRC reasonably concluded that the environmental impacts of severe nuclear accidents remain “small” in the license-renewal context because the probability of such accidents is extremely low. The court emphasized that NEPA requires a reasonable environmental analysis, not a perfect one, and that courts must defer to agencies’ technical judgments when they fall within a “broad zone of reasonableness.”

The court upheld the NRC’s decision not to require a second round of severe-accident mitigation analysis for plants that had already completed one. Plants that have never conducted such a review must still do so. 

Read the decision here.