Althouse: "I want to flag one case that’s really funny to me, Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas. It’s sort of like the chickens coming home to roost..."

October 13, 2024

"I want to flag one case that’s really funny to me, Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas. It’s sort of like the chickens coming home to roost..."

"... for the Supreme Court. A few years ago, the court made up the 'major questions doctrine,' the principle that when an agency makes a decision that involves a 'major question,' courts have a free-floating veto to block it. Well, the 5th Circuit used this doctrine to blow up the entire system of nuclear waste storage in this country, possibly forever.... The 5th Circuit sided with Texas in this case, declaring that the commission is actually powerless to grant licenses for the temporary storage of nuclear waste offsite from the plant... not because federal law says the commission can’t do that... [but because] temporary storage is a 'major question' because it involves nuclear material. And... Congress has to come in and authorize it even more clearly....Because the question 'has been hotly politically contested for over a half century.'"

Says Mark Joseph Stern, in "The Supreme Court Takes a Nuclear Waste Case Almost Too Wild to Believe" (Slate).

29 comments:

Leland said...: It seems Democracy doesn’t work because it is hard, but worse, our Supreme Court won’t allow the easy short cuts.

I think Matt Taibbi is right. Our elites are not and therefore not up to the task of leading us.; 10/13/24, 5:30 AM
rehajm said...: Sounds to me like a call for ‘Cleanup on Capitol Hill’.; 10/13/24, 5:33 AM
Dave Begley said...: Neal Katyal was in Omaha last week about was whining and bitching about how Chevron was overruled.; 10/13/24, 5:51 AM
tim maguire said...: Anybody else notice how upset Democrats get when power is put in the hands of people who can be held accountable?; 10/13/24, 6:31 AM
Mikey NTH said...: Tim for a show called "Return to Yucca Mountain".; 10/13/24, 7:52 AM
Wince said...: I remember when the left would have called the siting of nuclear waste repository a “big fucking deal.”; 10/13/24, 8:00 AM
Kate said...: If SCOTUS spends 20% of its docket on 5th Circuit cases decided by those nasty Trump appointees, then good. The court is supposed to clarify the law, especially when it's vague and the deep state has gone too far.; 10/13/24, 8:04 AM
Kate said...: Yucca Mtn may be in the middle of nowhere, but the train lines for delivering the waste all go through the heart of Vegas. It was a haphazard plan forced on a state the coastal elites consider a desert wasteland. Congress may try it again and Reid is no longer around to stop them. Vegas has more clout now, though. Some other Western state will have to get the shaft.; 10/13/24, 8:11 AM
Aggie said...: They'll have to get it sorted out now, because the nuclear power-generation industry is about to get very busy indeed, with the fast-growing requirements for energy-intensive data farms housing bit-coin mining, A.I., and all of those nasty little personal tidbits the NSA is saving up for the right moment.; 10/13/24, 8:30 AM
Temujin said...: Correct and on target. Things are just getting going. This needs to get figured out.; 10/13/24, 8:41 AM
cronus titan said...: Nuclear waste storage is in chaos due to the decision to close Yucca, in direct violation of the statute. Congress will not change that statute nor will they fund it. In short, Congress refuses to do its job. The legal issues are much wider and complicated than the linked article suggests.; 10/13/24, 8:46 AM
EAB said...: My simplistic brain tends to applaud whenever the court tosses something to Congress. In effect, saying, “Do your job.”; 10/13/24, 9:15 AM
J Scott said...: Congress needs to start doing it's job. Allowing unelected bureaucrats take the heat for decades is the problem.; 10/13/24, 9:16 AM
Skeptical Voter said...: Time for Congress to do its job. The administrative state has run wild because Congress won't guide it.; 10/13/24, 9:18 AM
Earnest Prole said...: Mark Joseph Stern is not fundamentally opposed to courts making up doctrine out of thin air, only when the other side does it.; 10/13/24, 9:28 AM
Howard said...: Nuclear waste is definitely the hottest political potato. The real reason yucca Mountain is inappropriate is that Nevada is the location of the thinnest crust with the highest heat flow in the United States. The entire nuclear waste disposal selection process was corrupt. We budding geologists learned this in college back in the early 1980s.

I actually agree with the fifth circuit decision here Congress needs to actually tackle the problem rather than keep hunting it to an unelected commission.; 10/13/24, 9:49 AM
Narayanan said...: never understood why on-site storage is not simple solution; 10/13/24, 9:54 AM
Sebastian said...: "courts have a free-floating veto to block it" The usual prog bad faith. In fact, courts are telling Congress to do its job.; 10/13/24, 10:07 AM
Jamie said...: It's sort of like the chickens coming home to roost for the Supreme Court.

This quote suggests that the Stern thinks the Court's motive in promulgating a doctrine is to bring about some particular result in the particular case about which they set forth the doctrine. Conjuring emanations and penumbras in order to bring about nationwide access to abortion, for example. And he seems to believe that the "conservative Court" has now been hoist on its own petard because this doctrine, set forth in one case to bring about a desired result in that case, is being applied in another case...

... rather than that the "conservative Court" intended this doctrine to be applied wherever it's, you know, applicable.

Window into the mind of the Left, it seems to me. - a BAMN mindset.

(I'm not doing too well with my pre-election gag order... but I was waiting and waiting for someone else to say this. Maybe I'm misreading, but this is how it reads to me.); 10/13/24, 11:25 AM
Hassayamper said...: Encasing nuclear waste in heavy glass and pushing it off the gunwale of a boat a hundred miles out at sea would be absolutely safe.

You could dilute all the spent nuclear fuel ever produced in one cubic mile of water and safely drink nothing else for the rest of your life, and there are hundreds of millions of cubic miles in the world's oceans.; 10/13/24, 11:42 AM
cubanbob said...: The French encase their nuclear waste in heavy glass and have been doing so for several decades. I don't see why we can't do the same. I'm not a physicist or engineer, but radioactive materials radiate heat as well. Presumably that waste heat could be used to pre-warm water for use in a heat exchanger.; 10/13/24, 12:12 PM
Lazarus said...: "Nuclear Chicken"? If they still show cartoons Saturday mornings, that would be a good one.; 10/13/24, 12:48 PM
Brad Preston said...: What we call nuclear "waste" is actually partially used fuel. Something like 90% of the energy remains. It can be used in fast reactors and the leftover waste from this process is much less and much safer.https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/when-nuclear-waste-is-an-asset-not-a-burden; 10/13/24, 1:03 PM
Josephbleau said...: The quote says that the nrc can’t issue permits for TEMPORARY storage of nuclear waste off plant site. Yucca Flats is a permanent site so it should be a ok to permit.

In my opinion, build a facility in a subduction zone, encase some waste in glass and let it end up at the center of the earth. But since the volume is small. Just put the glass shapes in an old football stadium guarded by the nrc and cooled with water circulation.

Or keep the glass shapes where they are now and let the plant operators take care of them.; 10/13/24, 2:34 PM
ChrisC said...: Exactly so. Congress is so lazy and stupid they won't write actual laws. Instead, its blah, blah, blah let the regulatory agency do it. The founders wouldn't even understand the premise of this case. They would say, "Of course congress needs to decide major questions, duh"; 10/13/24, 3:12 PM
Greg The Class Traitor said...: Yep.

Look, I'm opposed to Texas trying to stop this, but if Congress didn't explicitly give the NRC the power to do it, then they don't have the power.

Good for SCOTUS for the "major questions doctrine", and good of the 5th for enforcing it.

Congress is going to have to pass laws, or else the Feds should not be able to do ANYTHING; 10/13/24, 5:54 PM
I Use Computers to Write Words said...: Any time someone argues that the Supreme Court can't rule something unconstitutional because it would be impractical and undermine X huge system in the government, they're really admitting that large parts of the government's place in society are founded on lawlessness. Then they act smug while they try to hold the rest of the nation hostage with the consequences of undoing their past crimes.

Perhaps I'm experiencing recency bias, but it feels like the left does this more and more.; 10/13/24, 8:41 PM
Rocco said...: Howard said...
“The real reason yucca Mountain is inappropriate is that Nevada is the location of the thinnest crust…”

I have a mild preference for deep dish myself.; 10/13/24, 9:01 PM
Rusty said...: There's no law thst says it has to be stored out "west". There is a lack of imagination going on here.; 10/14/24, 11:25 AM