Opinion ID: 407564
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Vermont Yankee I

Text: 310 When this case first came to our court, environmentalist petitioners challenged Table S-3 on the grounds that its values expresse(d) in numerical terms the conclusion that the environmental effects of the fuel cycle, including (nuclear power) waste disposal, are insubstantial. 20 Judge Bazelon's opinion for the court set aside those portions of the rule pertaining to the issues of high-level waste disposal and waste reprocessing. 21 At the outset the panel majority held, under § 102(2)(C) of NEPA, that absent effective generic proceedings to consider (long-term waste disposal) issues, they must be dealt with in individual licensing proceedings. 22 Judge Bazelon's opinion for the panel then went on to find the agency's generic proceedings ineffective for two interrelated reasons: because the agency's procedures were inadequate to ventilate thoroughly the waste fuel disposal issues, and because the agency's record was inadequate to support its rule. 23 Thus, the issues were relegated to individual adjudication. 311 Judge Tamm, concurring in the result, joined only the second of the court's two grounds, finding that the inadequacy of the record demands that we remand this case to the Commission in order to ensure that it has taken a hard look at the waste storage issue. 24 Challenging Judge Bazelon's first ground of decision, Judge Tamm noted that the deficiency is not with the type of proceeding below, but with the completeness of the record generated. 25 He concluded, 312 The appropriate remedy at this point is not to impose ad hoc procedural requirements in an attempt to raise the level of petitioners' participation, already adequate under (5 U.S.C.) section 553, but to remand for ... the documentation which the majority finds so conspicuously lacking. The Commission should be able to supply the court with a statement of the methods by which its staff arrived at the figures embodied in Table S-3 and by which (the NRC Waste Management Division Director) concluded that the waste storage problem is already technologically and economically soluble. If it cannot, we will have no choice but to invalidate the Commission's rule under the arbitrary, capricious standard ; if it can, we should defer to the administrative weighing of risks and benefits of additional reactors. 26