Our market-leading nuclear service represents governments and businesses as they seize opportunity from the nuclear sector’s current worldwide renaissance. Working in collaboration across our global offices, we assist our clients with the full spectrum of regulatory, litigation, and transactional needs.
Our lawyers are versed in US and international requirements covering new plants, power plant projects and transactions, plant regulation, nuclear liability issues, and all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining, enrichment, fabrication, and transport to nuclear waste management, decommissioning, and disposal.
When high-stakes lawsuits arise, our litigation team employs in-depth knowledge of nuclear regulatory issues, technology, and sector services to steer our clients to a quick resolution with limited cost.
Our business, corporate, and transactional lawyers focus on enabling our clients to optimize and realize the full value of their nuclear assets through a range of commercial transactions and related tax, antitrust, and complex labor and employment matters.
New Plants
Morgan Lewis is helping a number of governments and businesses position themselves to take full advantage of the growing demand for nuclear services. We helped obtain the first design certification, the first early site permit (ESP), and the first combined operating license (COL) ever issued by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). We subsequently have assisted other applicants in obtaining additional ESPs and COLs, and we continue to assist the first COL holders with legal and regulatory issues during the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States. Our lawyers are also assisting in reinitiating the licensing of formerly deferred plants. In the UK, we assisted in the successful application for the first nuclear site license. We also help clients in developing nuclear countries to establish and comply with the legal and regulatory framework for nuclear projects, as well as advise on issues of site selection and characterization, licensing and permitting, transport of nuclear material, developing policies, and strategies and compliance procedures.
Nuclear Regulation, Enforcement, and Compliance
Even as Morgan Lewis assists the sector in preparing for new power plants, intrusive regulation of current plants continues. We counsel nuclear utilities on every aspect of nuclear licensing, regulation, and related investigation and enforcement matters. We offer guidance to nuclear clients in their efforts to recover from regulatory-imposed shutdowns and negative ratings from regulators. Our lawyers frequently assist in the defense and conduct of investigations and in the development of comprehensive recovery plans for utilities that confront major regulatory performance issues.
We also represent clients in the area of license renewal. We have played an active role in sector activities related to license renewal for more than 20 years, and our broad sector involvement informs license renewal strategies tailored to individual clients. To date, Morgan Lewis lawyers have represented more than half of all license renewal applicants in the United States in the regulatory, environmental permitting, agency adjudicatory, and federal litigation arenas.
We also participate—on behalf of utility clients and sector trade associations—in rulemakings and interactions with regulatory authorities on a range of generic issues, including such matters as decommissioning criteria, maintenance requirements, enforcement policy, reactor oversight processes, financial qualifications, foreign ownership, and export controls. These interactions allow us to provide our clients with critical "real-time" insight into evolving government policy and regulatory initiatives.
Enrichment and Fuel Cycle
Morgan Lewis represents a large and diverse group of domestic and international companies in virtually every segment of the nuclear fuel business, from uranium recovery through enrichment to the manufacture and transport of finished fuel products. We also represent manufacturing companies, as well as healthcare and academic institutions, that use radioactive materials and are subject to regulation.
We represent uranium enrichment companies in the United States and have assisted companies in obtaining the necessary NRC licenses for these activities. We also represent fabricators of nuclear fuel on a range of domestic and international regulatory issues affecting their manufacturing and sales operations, including the only planned mixed-oxide fuel fabricator. Similar services have been provided by Morgan Lewis to several major European suppliers of nuclear fuel, enrichment, and related services.
Nuclear Waste Management and Decommissioning
Morgan Lewis has successfully handled some of the sector's most challenging radioactive waste management, decontamination, and decommissioning issues. We counsel clients regarding the financial assurance requirements for decommissioning liabilities and the management and tax treatment of decommissioning trust funds. We assist these clients in developing decontamination and decommissioning plans, and provide advice on governmental standards for radiological contamination and other licensing issues.
In 2007, Morgan Lewis was selected as lead regulatory counsel to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in its application for a high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
We are also well placed to assist international clients in the UK decommissioning market. Our lawyers were closely involved with the reorganization of the sector following the enactment of the Energy Act in 2004 and the establishment of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in 2005. We have a good working knowledge of the regulatory constraints in the NDA market and are fully conversant in the terms of the management and operation contracts in place with each of the site license companies and their related parent body agreements.
Nuclear-Related Employment Issues
Morgan Lewis represents businesses in investigations involving claims of wrongdoing and defends our corporate clients, as well as their employees, in multiple forums, including the U.S. Department of Labor, the NRC, the DOE, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and state and federal courts. We investigate and defend such claims on behalf of many nuclear utilities and vendors across the nation. We have integrated the firm's litigation, white-collar defense, nuclear regulatory, and labor and employment law capabilities to provide effective defenses in "whistleblower" claims and related investigations. We also work closely with our OSHA team to assist our nuclear power sector clients in a wide variety of workplace safety and health issues, including handling agency investigations and enforcement actions and internal investigations, as well as compliance matters including issues involving safety culture and safety management. We also have experience in assisting our nuclear sector clients in navigating the different (and sometimes overlapping) enforcement authority of OSHA and the NRC in connection with workplace enforcement inspections.
We also counsel clients on reengineering and downsizing programs to help ensure compliance with laws that guarantee employees the right to raise safety concerns and to assist clients in developing management systems and training for responding to employee concerns. To minimize client exposure to such claims, the firm performs Safety Conscious Work Environment assessments and provides extensive counseling on the development of effective Employee Concerns Programs.
We provide management training designed to equip managers and supervisors with the basic tools and practical knowledge to detect and prevent retaliatory situations. Thousands of managers and executives within the nuclear sector, including those at numerous nuclear utilities, DOE prime contractors, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators, and the DOE itself, have received this training.
DOE Contractor Nuclear Operations
In addition to representing clients in the commercial nuclear power sector, Morgan Lewis assists the DOE's largest contractors in an array of complex legal, regulatory, contractual, and operational issues, among them labor, employment, wage-hour, and employee benefits counseling; government contracts; environmental regulation; Price-Anderson enforcement support; and nuclear indemnity and liability matters.
Nuclear Litigation
Our litigators prosecute and defend some of the most far-reaching nuclear litigation in the United States. Our efforts representing US nuclear sector clients in damage claims against the federal government related to spent nuclear fuel disposal have led to multiple judgments in excess of $100 million in contested trials. We have also negotiated groundbreaking settlements yielding hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for our clients. Our mass tort litigation and nuclear energy litigation teams represent companies facing radiation contamination, radiation exposure, personal injury, and property damage claims. We also litigate cases involving the diminution of property values allegedly stemming from nuclear power plant operations, nuclear fuel processing plants, uranium production, storage of nuclear waste, radium products, atomic weapons testing, and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM). In addition to our work drafting contracts for construction projects, our lawyers also manage complex litigation that may arise as a result of a project.
Nuclear Transactions
We represent companies in the acquisition and sale of nuclear facilities—including cross-border transactions—and in the reorganization of nuclear assets through the formation of operating and generating companies.
With a solid command of the regulatory and commercial considerations impacting commercial transactions, our lawyers assist clients with the transfer of licenses under the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, and with matters related to various import/export regulations and international treaties and conventions. We also focus on the resolution of specialized tax problems, as well as questions centered on antitrust, insurance, and employment and labor matters. Knowledgeable about the unique challenges associated with a nuclear workforce, including “deemed exports” of nuclear technology, our immigration team stands ready to handle the most sophisticated global workforce matters for our multinational clients.
Engineering, Procurement, and Construction
We are active in negotiating engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts on behalf of new plants and other complex energy infrastructure projects around the world. With a firm grasp of both the regulatory and commercial issues involved, our integrated team of energy and commercial lawyers negotiates such contracts in the United States and also on behalf of multinational corporations. Our lawyers regularly draft and negotiate EPC agreements, EPC management and project management agreements, front end engineering and design agreements, engineering services agreements, technology and process licenses, equipment supply and construction agreements, and fuel supply and offtake agreements. We also advise clients on relevant import/export controls of nuclear material and technology transfer under the DOE’s Part 810 regulations.