Diane Curran

For the past four decades, Diane Curran, a nationally recognized expert in the field of nuclear safety and security regulation, has represented state and local governments and environmental organizations across the United States in legal proceedings before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and federal courts. Applying health and environmental protection statutes such as the Atomic Energy Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and other laws, Diane has won significant improvements to the NRC's regulation of public health and safety, security and environmental protection. In 1997, she won one of the first environmental justice victories in the U.S., defeating a proposed uranium enrichment plant in Louisiana. In 2020, she won an NRC decision that conditioned renewal of the Seabrook nuclear plant’s operating license on significant new monitoring requirements for the plant’s deteriorating containment. Diane’s court victories include a ground-breaking 2006 decision by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals requiring the NRC to address the environmental impacts of terrorist attacks in its licensing decisions; and a 2012 decision by the D.C. Circuit vacating the NRC's decades-old “Waste Confidence Rule” and ordering NRC to prepare an environmental impact statement on long-term storage of spent reactor fuel.

Ms. Curran received a B.S. from Yale University, and a J.D. from the University of Maryland.