The court of appeals affirmed a judgment of the district court. The court held that the Department of Energy took the requisite “hard look” at the environmental impact of an intentional terrorist attack required by NEPA in its environmental assessment of a prospective biosafety facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Tri-Valley CAREs and two individuals (collectively, Tri-Valley) sued to challenge the sufficiency of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) environmental assessment (EA) of a prospective “biosafety level-3” (BSL-3) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a nuclear laboratory. In prior litigation, the Ninth Circuit had upheld all aspects of the DOE’s original EA, except for its failure to consider the impact of a possible terrorist attack.
