Providing a Powerful Combination of Legal Tools

Latham helps clients navigate the dynamic and highly regulated nuclear energy landscape, from the local to the international. The firm regularly advises equity fund investors in nuclear technologies, major energy companies, parties to nuclear fuel contracts, nuclear power plant operators, and national governments. The practice includes a multidisciplinary group of seasoned practitioners, including former US government regulators, that help clients navigate investments, transactions, regulations, high-stakes litigation, and decommissioning related to a wide variety of issues in the energy industry in the US, Europe, and the United Arab Emirates. 

Understanding the Landscape

As nuclear power and nuclear technologies develop, evolving regulation and shifting market forces present clients with complex challenges and new opportunities. Latham helps clients maximize opportunities and value, while limiting liability and financial exposure. The firm has decades of experience advising clients on:

• Administrative and civil litigation
• Business transactions involving nuclear assets
• Environmental and energy regulatory compliance under federal, state, and local laws and regulations
• Engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracting
• Exports of nuclear technology
• Fuel contracts
• Intellectual property rights in nuclear technologies
• International Convention on Supplementary Compensation
• Investments in nuclear technology, from development stage to decommissioning
• Licensing and licensing extension
• Nuclear decommissioning
• Nuclear power plant regulatory compliance
• Nuclear waste siting
• Power markets
• Price-Anderson Act
• Spent fuel disposition
• Tax and emissions credits

Experience-Based Success

Latham’s successful representation of clients in the nuclear industry includes, for example:

• Advised and assisted an international energy company on all US federal and state energy regulatory matters, including foreign control issues before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in conjunction with its US$4.5 billion acquisition of a regional utility owner with interests in two decommissioned nuclear power plants in New England.
• Advised a private equity firm on site licensing issues (including decommissioning liabilities) and regulation associated with the acquisition of a nuclear waste management technology group in the UK.
• Represented a major US energy company in negotiating a nuclear fuel contract, including all commercial and nuclear liability terms under US and international law, with an international supplier of fabricated fuel rods.
• Represented an engineering services company in a treble-damage qui tam False Claims Act case regarding the design and implementation of nuclear security system facilities at a US nuclear weapons plant. The case was dismissed and then appealed to the US Court of Appeals 10th Circuit and the US Supreme Court, where the dismissal was upheld.
• Advised a leading Spanish utility on the regulatory and environmental aspects of shutting down a nuclear power plant.
• Advised a sovereign wealth fund in the Middle East on the successful financing and development of two nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates, including negotiating terms to mitigate and allocate ricks for potential environmental contamination.