The $200-Million Delay

IF JUSTICE delayed is justice denied, then hope of equity in the legal handling of nuclear power may be abandoned. Opponents of the peaceful atom have turned the tactic of postponement into a lapidary art.

Naderites, Friends of the Earth, and others who want to slow development of nuclear energy have proved themselves a litigious breed, resorting doggedly to courts and regulatory processes to hinder the licensing and construction of nuclear plants. In this pursuit, they have been greatly aided by a maze of contradictory laws and regulations, and an overlap of jurisdictions which permits the filing of parallel complaints, lodging the same complaint in different places, or a continuing sequence in which an issue laid to rest in one place is reincarnated in another.

IF JUSTICE delayed is justice denied, then hope of equity in the legal handling of nuclear power may be abandoned. Opponents of the peaceful atom have turned the tactic of postponement into a lapidary art.

Naderites, Friends of the Earth, and others who want to slow development of nuclear energy have proved themselves a litigious breed, resorting doggedly to courts and regulatory processes to hinder the licensing and construction of nuclear plants. In this pursuit, they have been greatly aided by a maze of contradictory laws and regulations, and an overlap of jurisdictions which permits the filing of parallel complaints, lodging the same complaint in different places, or a continuing sequence in which an issue laid to rest in one place is reincarnated in another.