## Facts

- Metropolitan Edison Co. owned two nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (TMI-1 and TMI-2).
- While TMI-1 was shut down for refueling, TMI-2 suffered a serious accident, prompting widespread public concern.
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ordered Metropolitan Edison to keep TMI-1 shut down until the NRC could determine whether TMI-1 could be operated safely.
- During the NRC’s consideration of whether to permit restart of TMI-1, the NRC invited briefing on whether psychological harm or other indirect effects of the prior accident or renewed operation should be considered under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
- People Against Nuclear Energy (PANE), a local residents’ group, argued that restarting TMI-1 would cause severe psychological harm to nearby residents and disrupt community stability and well-being.
- The NRC declined to take evidence on PANE’s psychological-harm contentions in its NEPA environmental review.

## Issues

1. Whether NEPA § 102(C) requires an agency, when evaluating a proposed federal action, to consider psychological harm and community disruption arising from fear of a possible nuclear accident.
2. Whether alleged effects based on perceived risk, rather than on a change in the physical environment, qualify as “environmental effects” or “environmental impact” under NEPA.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the D.C. Circuit and upheld the NRC’s decision not to consider PANE’s psychological-harm contentions in its NEPA analysis.
- The Court held that NEPA requires consideration of impacts on the environment, understood in this context as effects tied to the physical environment, not every consequence to human welfare.
- The Court concluded that NEPA incorporates a requirement of a “reasonably close causal relationship” between a change in the physical environment and the alleged effect, analogous to proximate cause.
- Because PANE’s asserted injuries flowed from fear of a potential accident rather than from an identified physical environmental change caused by the restart decision, the alleged psychological and community harms were outside NEPA’s required scope.
- Justice Brennan concurred, agreeing that the causal chain linking restart to psychological harm based on perceived risk was too attenuated to be required in a NEPA review.

## Legal Principles

- NEPA § 102(C) does not obligate agencies to assess every impact of a proposed action; it requires analysis of impacts on the environment.
- NEPA’s references to human health and welfare are pursued through protection of the physical environment; effects must be connected to physical environmental conditions.
- NEPA review is limited to effects that bear a reasonably close causal relationship to a change in the physical environment; agencies need not evaluate harms arising from risk perception alone.
- Psychological harm and community disruption based solely on fear of a potential accident, without a qualifying physical environmental change, are not “environmental effects” that must be addressed in an EIS.

## Conclusion

The Court held that NEPA does not require the NRC to analyze psychological distress or community disruption based on fear of a nuclear accident from restarting TMI-1, because such effects lacked a reasonably close causal relationship to a change in the physical environment.


Metro. Edison Co. v. People Against Nuclear Energy, 460 U.S. 766 (1983)