Opinion ID: 3046307
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The NRC’S Prior Analysis of the Terrorism

Text: Threat Even if NEPA required an assessment of the environmental effects of a hypothetical terrorist attack on a nuclear facility, the NRC has already made this assessment. As described above, the GEIS addresses the risks associated with a terrorist attack, stating that “estimates of risk from sabotage” are impossible to quantify but nonetheless characterizing the risks as “small.” GEIS at 5-18. The GEIS goes on to say that, should the unlikely event occur, the effects would be “no worse than those expected from internally initiated events.” Id. The NRC rules codify these generic findings, and by regulation, license renewal applicants are excused from discussing generic issues in their environmental reports. See 10 C.F.R. § 51.53(c)(3)(i); id. Part 51 Subpt. A, App. B, Table B. Generic analysis “is clearly an appropriate method of conducting the hard look required by NEPA.” Baltimore Gas, 462 U.S. at 101 (internal quotation marks omitted). Indeed, it is “hornbook administrative law that an agency need not—indeed should not—entertain a challenge to a regulation” in an individual adjudication. Tribune Co. v. FCC, 133 F.3d 61, 68 (D.C. Cir. 1998). NJDEP’s contention challenges the NRC’s generic findings, essentially arguing that certain characteristics of Oyster Creek make the risk of a terrorist attack more than “small” and the environmental effects of a terrorist attack 28 somehow different from “those expected from internally initiated events.” These arguments thus amount to collateral attacks on the licensing renewal regulations, and the proper way to raise them would have been in a petition for rulemaking or a petition for a waiver based on “special circumstances.” See 10