South Carolina ex rel. Campbell v. O'Leary

The United States adopted the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors program (the program) for the purpose of encouraging foreign countries to convert nuclear reactors from using highly-enriched uranium, which can be used to construct nuclear weapons, to low-enrichment uranium, which cannot. As part of this program, the United States agreed to accept and store highly enriched spent fuel rods from European countries. The Department of Energy (defendant) recommended the preparation of an environmental-impact statement on its long-term plan to build a facility to store 24,000 spent fuel rods from Europe. While the facility was being built, the Department of Energy intended to store spent fuel rods at existing facilities. The Department of Energy recommended the preparation of an environmental assessment of its short-term plan to store 409 spent fuel rods in need of immediate shipment at its Savannah River Site. The Savannah River Site was already approved for storage of spent fuel rods. Additionally, the shipment and storage of the 409 spent fuel rods did not commit the Department of Energy to accepting future shipments. South Carolina (plaintiff) filed a lawsuit and requested an injunction to prevent the storage of the 409 fuel rods. The district court granted the injunction, ruling that the shipment and storage of 409 spent fuel rods constituted an improper segmentation of the larger fuel rod storage project prior to the completion of the environmental-impact statement. The Department of Energy appealed.