Anti-nuclear and environmental groups are poised to take legal action if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves the first new reactor in more than three decades tomorrow.

A consortium of utilities led by Atlanta-based Southern Co. wants to build two new reactors in Georgia, and NRC is scheduled to vote on the companies' license application at an "affirmation session" tomorrow.

The $14 billion Vogtle Units 3 and 4 near Waynesboro, Ga., would be the first built in the United States since 1978.

Southern has already begun to prepare the site for construction, but the license would allow the company to build the containment, reactor cooling systems, spent fuel pools and other reactor components.

Friends of the Earth, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and seven other groups say NRC should hold off on approving the project until they have a chance to file a legal challenge next week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Allowing the company to build the plant in the midst of a legal battle would put ratepayers and the company at risk, they say.

The groups plan to argue that NRC would violate the National Environmental Policy Act if commissioners approve the license without first considering lessons from Japan's nuclear crisis last March.

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex was crippled by a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami almost one year ago, and NRC has been digesting a number of safety upgrade recommendations from an internal panel ever since (Greenwire, Jan. 17).

Diane Curran, one of three attorneys representing the groups, said the commission has delayed a number of the safety upgrades stemming from the Fukushima accident that could prompt expensive safety changes at the Vogtle plant in the future if new federal rules are crafted.

Curran said NRC must prepare a new environmental impact statement for the Vogtle plant that explains how cooling systems for the reactors and spent fuel storage pools will be protected against earthquakes, flooding and long periods without power.

The EIS should also detail how emergency equipment and emergency plans for the reactors will be revised to account for accidents affecting multiple reactors on the Vogtle site, she said.

The groups also plan to appeal NRC's approval of the reactor design that Southern and other utilities want to use at the Vogtle site, Curran said.

In approving Westinghouse Electric Co.'s design for the AP1000 reactor, NRC again failed to incorporate lessons learned from the Fukushima disaster, she said (Greenwire, Dec. 22, 2011).

Separately, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is suing the Energy Department for failing to disclose information about Southern's $8.3 billion loan guarantee for the new Vogtle reactors. The department has said information the groups are seeking is proprietary and not available to the public (Greenwire, Feb. 6).