Berka v. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

In an unpublished judgment, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a pro se petitioner’s challenge of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s denial of his petition “that would permit shuttered nuclear power reactors to re-start and be returned to service, essentially ‘as they were,’ without the need for excessively costly upgrades.” The petitioner believed that “returning shuttered nuclear power reactors to service represents the most economical and cost-effective means to deal with the pressing, imminent, and existential threat of climate change, and to return our vulnerable, electrical grid to the robust status that it once had.” The D.C. Circuit concluded that the petitioner had not shown he had standing because his asserted injury based on climate change was “not a particularized injury” and because any alleged particularized injury based on possible power outages during cold weather was not actual or imminent. The D.C. Circuit also found that the petitioner did not establish the redressability prong of standing.

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