Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1946, Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act, which as we have noted elsewhere was not only “a new, basic and comprehensive regulation of procedures in many agencies,” Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U. S. 33 (1950), but was also a legislative enactment which settled “long-continued and hard-fought contentions, and enacts a formula upon which opposing social and political forces have come to rest.” Id., at 40. Section 4 of the Act, 5 U. S. C. § 553 (1976 ed.), dealing with rulemaking, requires in subsection (b) that *524 “notice of proposed rule making shall be published in the Federal Register . . . describes the contents of that notice, and goes on to require in subsection (c) that after the notice the agency “shall give interested persons an opportunity to participate in the rule making through submission of written data, views, or arguments with or without opportunity for oral presentation. After consideration of the relevant matter presented, the agency shall incorporate in the rules adopted a concise general statement of their basis and purpose.” Interpreting this provision of the Act in United States v. AlleghenyLudlum Steel Corp., 406 U. S. 742 (1972), and United States v. Florida East Coast R. Co., 410 U. S. 224 (1973), we held that generally speaking this section of the Act established the maximum procedural requirements which Congress was willing to have the courts impose upon agencies in conducting rulemaking procedures. 1 Agencies are free to grant additional procedural rights in the exercise of their discretion, but reviewing courts are generally not free to impose them if the agencies have not chosen to grant them. This is not to say necessarily that there are no circumstances- which would ever justify a court in overturning agency action because of a failure to employ procedures beyond those required by the statute. But such circumstances, if they exist, are extremely rare.

Even apart from the Administrative Procedure Act this Court has for more than four decades emphasized that the formulation of procedures was basically to be left within the discretion of the agencies to which Congress had confided the responsibility for substantive judgments. In FCC v. Schreiber, 381 U. S. 279, 290 (1965), the Court explicated *525 this principle, describing it as “an outgrowth of the congressional determination that administrative agencies and administrators will be familiar with the industries which they regulate and will be in a better position than federal courts or Congress itself to design procedural rules adapted to the peculiarities of the industry and the tasks of the agency involved.” The Court there relied on its earlier ease of FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 309 U. S. 134, 138 (1940), where it had stated that a provision dealing with the conduct of business by the Federal Communications Commission delegated to the Commission the power to resolve “subordinate questions of procedure . . . [such as] the scope of the inquiry, whether applications should be heard contemporaneously or successively, whether parties should be allowed to intervene in one another’s proceedings, and similar questions.”

It is in the light of this background of statutory and decisional law that we granted certiorari to review two judgments of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because of our concern that they had seriously misread or misapplied this statutory and decisional law cautioning reviewing courts against engrafting their own notions of proper procedures upon agencies entrusted with substantive functions by Congress. 429 U. S. 1090 (1977). We conclude that the Court of Appeals has done just that in these cases, and we therefore remand them to it for further proceedings. We also find it necessary to examine the Court of Appeals’ decision with respect to agency action taken after full adjudicatory hearings. We again conclude that the court improperly intruded into the agency’s decisionmaking process, making it necessary for us to reverse and remand with respect to- this part of the cases also.

I

A

Under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 68 Stat. 919, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2011 et seq., the Atomic Energy Comm *526 ission 2 was given broad regulatory authority over the development of nuclear energy. Under the terms of the Act, a utility seeking to construct and operate a nuclear power plant must obtain a separate permit or license at both the construction and the operation stage of the project. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 2133, 2232, 2235, 2239. In order to obtain the construction permit, the utility must file a preliminary safety analysis report, an environmental report, and certain information regarding the antitrust implications of the proposed project. See 10 CFR §§2.101, 50.30 (f), 50.33a, 50.34 (a) (1977). This application then undergoes exhaustive review by the Commission’s staff and by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), a group of distinguished experts in the field of atomic energy. Both groups submit to the Commission their own evaluations, which then become part of the record of the utility’s application. 3 See 42 U. S. C. §§ 2039, 2232 (b). The Commission staff also undertakes the review required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), 83 Stat. 852, 42 U. S. C. §4321 et seq., and prepares a draft environmental impact statement, which, after being circulated for comment, 10 CFR §§ 51.22-51.25 (1977), is revised and becomes a final environmental impact statement. § 51.26. Thereupon a three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board conducts a public adjudicatory hearing, 42 U. S. C. § 2241, and reaches a decision 4 which can be *527 appealed to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board, and currently, in the Commission’s discretion, to the Commission itself. 10 CFR §§ 2.714, 2.721, 2.786, 2.787 (1977). The final agency decision may be appealed to the courts of appeals. 42 U. S. C. § 2239; 28 U. S. C. § 2342. The same sort of process occurs when the utility applies for a license to operate the plant, 10 CFR § 50.34 (b) (1977), except that a hearing need only be held in contested cases and may be limited to the matters in controversy. See 42 U. S. C. § 2239 (a); 10 CFR §2.105 (1977); 10 CFR pt. 2, App. A, V (f) (1977). 5

These cases arise from two separate decisions of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In the first, the court remanded a decision of the Commission to grant a license to petitioner Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. to operate a nuclear power plant. Natural Resources Defense Council v. NRC, 178 U. S. App. D. C. 336, 547 F. 2d 633 (1976). In the second, the court remanded a decision of that same agency to grant a permit to petitioner Consumers Power Co. to construct two pressurized water nuclear reactors to generate electricity and steam. Aeschliman v. NRC, 178 U. S. App. D. C. 325, 547 F. 2d 622 (1976).

B

In December 1967, after the mandatory adjudicatory hearing and necessary review, the Commission granted petitioner Vermont Yankee a permit to build a nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt. See 4 A. E. C. 36 (1967). Thereafter, Vermont Yankee applied for an operating license. Respondent Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) objected to the granting *528 of a license, however, and therefore a hearing on the application commenced on August 10, 1971. Excluded from consideration at the hearings, over NRDC’s objection, was the issue of the environmental effects of operations to reprocess fuel or dispose of wastes resulting from the reprocessing operations. 6 This ruling was affirmed by the Appeal Board in June 1972.

In November 1972, however, the Commission, making specific reference to the Appeal Board’s decision with respect to the Vermont Yankee license, instituted rulemaking proceed-' ings “that would specifically deal with the question of consideration of environmental effects associated with the uranium fuel cycle in the individual cost-benefit analyses for light water cooled nuclear power reactors.” App. 352.' The notice of proposed rulemaking offered two alternatives, both predicated on a report prepared by the Commission’s staff entitled Environmental Survey of the Nuclear Euel Cycle. The first would have required no quantitative evaluation of the environmental hazards of fuel reprocessing or disposal because the Environmental Survey had found them to be slight. The second would have specified numerical values for the environmental impact of this part of the fuel cycle, which values would then be incorporated into a table, along with the other relevant factors, to determine the overall cost-benefit balance for each operating license. See id., at 356-357.

Much of the controversy in this case revolves around the *529 procedures used in the rulemaking hearing which commenced in February 1973. In a supplemental notice of hearing the Commission indicated that while discovery or cross-examination would not be utilized, the Environmental Survey would be available to the public before the hearing along with the extensive background documents cited therein. All participants would be given a reasonable opportunity to present their position and could be represented by counsel if they so desired. Written and, time permitting, oral statements would be received and incorporated into the record. All persons giving oral statements would be subject to questioning by the Commission. At the conclusion of the hearing, a transcript would be made available to the public and the record would remain open for 30 days to allow the filing of supplemental written statements. See generally id., at 361-363. More than 40 individuals and organizations representing a wide variety of interests submitted written comments. On January 17, 1973, the Licensing Board held a planning session to schedule the appearance of witnesses and to discuss methods for compiling a record. The hearing was held on February 1 and 2, with participation by a number of groups, including the Commission’s staff, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a manufacturer of reactor equipment, a trade association from the nuclear industry, a group of electric utility companies, and a group called Consolidated National Intervenors which represented 79 groups and individuals including respondent NRDC.

After the hearing, the Commission’s staff filed a supplemental document for the purpose of clarifying and revising the Environmental Survey. Then the Licensing Board forwarded its report to the Commission without rendering any decision. The Licensing Board identified as the principal procedural question the propriety of declining to use full formal adjudicatory procedures. The major substantive issue was the technical adequacy of the Environmental Survey.

*530 In April 1974, the Commission issued a rule which adopted the second of the two proposed alternatives described above. The Commission also approved the procedures used at the hearing, 7 and indicated that the record, including the Environmental Survey, provided an “adequate data base for the regulation adopted.” Id., at 392. Finally, the Commission ruled that to the extent the rule differed from the Appeal Board decisions in Vermont Yankee “those decisions have no further precedential significance,” id., at 386, but that since “the environmental effects of the uranium fuel cycle have been shown to be relatively insignificant, ... it is unnecessary to apply the amendment to applicant’s environmental reports submitted prior to its effective date or to Final Environmental Statements for which Draft Environmental Statements have been circulated for comment prior to the effective date,” id., at 395.

Respondents appealed from both the Commission’s adoption of the rule and its decision to grant Vermont Yankee’s license to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

C

In January 1969, petitioner Consumers Power Co. applied for a permit to construct two nuclear reactors in Midland, *531 Mich. Consumers Power’s application was examined by the Commission’s staff and the ACRS. The ACRS issued reports which discussed specific problems and recommended solutions. It also made reference to “other problems” of a more generic nature and suggested that efforts should be made to resolve them with respect to these as well as all other projects. 8 Two groups, one called Saginaw and another called Mapleton, intervened and opposed the application. 9 Saginaw filed with the Board a number of environmental contentions, directed over 300 interrogatories to the ACRS, attempted to depose the chairman of the ACRS, and requested discovery of various ACRS documents. The Licensing Board denied the various discovery requests directed to the ACRS. Hearings were then held on numerous radiological health and safety issues. 10 Thereafter, the Commission’s staff issued a draft *532 environmental impact statement. Saginaw submitted 119 environmental contentions which were both comments on the proposed draft statement and a statement of Saginaw’s position in the upcoming hearings. The staff revised the statement and issued a final environmental statement in March 1972. Further hearings were then conducted during May and June 1972. Saginaw, however, choosing not to appear at or participate in these latter hearings, indicated that it had “no conventional findings of fact to set forth” and had not “chosen to search the record and respond to this proceeding by submitting citations of matters which we believe were proved or disproved.” See App. 190 n. 9. But the Licensing Board, recognizing its obligations to “independently consider the final balance among conflicting environmental factors in the record,” nevertheless treated as contested those issues “as to which intervenors introduced affirmative evidence or engaged in substantial cross examination.” Id., at 205, 191.

At issue now are 17 of those 119 contentions which are claimed to raise questions of “energy conservation.”', The Licensing Board indicated that as far as appeared from the record, the demand for the plant was made up, of normal industrial and residential use. Id., at 207. It went on to state that it was “beyond our province to inquire into whether the customary uses being made of electricity in our society are ‘proper’ or ‘improper.’ ” Ibid. With respect to claims that Consumers Power stimulated demand by its advertising the Licensing Board indicated that “[n]o evidence was offered on this point and absent some evidence that Applicant is creating abnormal demand, the Board did not consider the *533 question.” Id., at 207-208. The Licensing Board also' failed to consider the environmental effects of fuel reprocessing or disposal of radioactive wastes. The Appeal Board ultimately-affirmed the Licensing Board’s grant of a construction permit and the Commission declined to further review the matter.

At just about the same time, the Council on Environmental Quality revised its regulations governing the preparation of environmental impact statements. 38 Fed. Reg. 20550 (1973). The regulations mentioned for the first time the necessity of considering in impact statements energy conservation as one of the alternatives to a proposed project. The new guidelines were to apply only to final impact statements filed after January 28, 1974. Id., at 20557. Thereafter, on November 6, 1973, more than a year after the record had been closed in the Consumers Power case and while that case was pending before the Court of Appeals, the Commission ruled in another case that while its statutory power to compel conservation was not clear, it did not follow that all evidence of energy conservation issues should therefore be barred at the threshold. In re Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., 6 A. E. C. 995 (1973). Saginaw then moved the Commission to clarify its ruling and reopen the Consumers Power proceedings.

In a lengthy opinion, the Commission declined to reopen the proceedings. The Commission first ruled it was required to consider only energy conservation alternatives which 'were “ ‘reasonably available,’ ” would in their aggregate effect curtail demand for electricity to a level at which the proposed facility would not be needed, and were susceptible of a reasonable degree of proof. App. 332. It then determined, after a thorough examination of the record, that not all of Saginaw’s contentions met these threshold tests. Id., at 334-340. It further determined that the Board had been willing at all times to take evidence on the other contentions. Saginaw had simply failed to present any such evidence. The *534 Commission further criticized Saginaw for its total disregard of even those minimal procedural formalities necessary to give the Board some idea of exactly what was at issue. The Commission emphasized that “[particularly in these circumstances, Saginaw’s complaint that it was not granted a hearing on alleged energy conservation issues comes with ill grace.” 11 Id., at 342. And in response to Saginaw’s contention that regardless of whether it properly raised the issues, the Licensing Board must consider all environmental issues, the Commission basically agreed, as did the Board itself, but further reasoned that the Board must have some workable procedural rules and these rules

“in this setting must take into account that energy conservation is a novel and evolving concept. NEPA 'does not require a “crystal ball” inquiry.’ Natural Resources Defense Council v. Morton, [148 U. S. App. D. C. 5, 15, 458 F. 2d 827, 837 (1972) ]. This consideration has led us to hold that we will not apply Niagara retroactively. As we gain experience on a case-by-case basis and hopefully, feasible energy conservation techniques emerge, the applicant, staff, and licensing boards will have obligations to develop an adequate record on these issues in appropriate cases, whether or not they are raised by intervenors.

“However, at this emergent stage of energy conservation principles, intervenors also have their responsibilities. They must state clear and reasonably specific energy conservation contentions in a timely fashion. Beyond that, they have a burden of coming forward with some *535 affirmative showing if they wish to have these novel contentions explored further.” 12 Id., at 344 (footnotes omitted).

Respondents then challenged the granting of the construction permit in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

D

With respect to the challenge of Vermont Yankee’s license, the court first ruled that in the absence of effective rulemaking proceedings, 13 the Commission must deal with the environmental impact of fuel reprocessing and disposal in individual licensing proceedings. 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 344, 547 P. 2d, at 641. The court then examined the rulemaking proceedings and, despite the fact that it appeared that the agency employed all the procedures required by 5 U. S. C. § 553 (1976 ed.) and more, the court determined the proceedings to be inadequate and overturned the rule. Accordingly, the Commission’s determination with respect to Vermont Yankee’s license was also remanded for further proceedings. 14 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 358, 547 P. 2d, at 6.55.

*536 With respect to the permit to Consumers Power, the court first held that the environmental impact statement for construction of the Midland reactors was fatally defective for *537 failure to examine energy conservation as an alternative to a plant of this size. 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 331,547F. 2d, at 628. The uourt also thought the report by ACRS was inadequate, although it did not agree that discovery from individual ACRS members was the proper way to obtain further explication of the report. Instead, the court held that the Commission should have sua sponte sent the report back to the ACRS for further elucidation of the “other problems” and their resolution. Id., at 335, 547 F. 2d, at 632. Finally, the court ruled that the fuel cycle issues in this case were controlled by NRDC v. NRC, discussed above, and remanded for appropriate consideration of waste disposal and other unaddressed fuel cycle issues as described in that opinion. 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 335, 547 F. 2d, at 632.

*538 II

A

Petitioner Vermont Yankee first argues that the Commission may grant a license to operate a nuclear reactor without any consideration of waste disposal and fuel reprocessing. We find, however, that this issue is no longer presented by the record in this case. The Commission does not contend that it is not required to consider the environmental impact of the spent fuel processes when licensing nuclear power plants. Indeed, the Commission has publicly stated subsequent to the Court of Appeals’ decision in the instant case that consideration of the environmental impact of the back end of the fuel cycle in “the environmental impact statements for individual LWR’s [light-water power reactors] would represent a full and candid assessment of costs and benefits consistent with the legal requirements and spirit of NEPA.” 41 Fed. Reg. 45849 (1976). Even prior to the Court of Appeals’ decision the Commission implicitly agreed that it would consider the back end of the fuel cycle in all licensing proceedings: It indicated that it was not necessary to reopen prior licensing proceedings because “the environmental effects of the uranium fuel cycle have been shown to be relatively insignificant,” and thus incorporation of those effects into the cost-benefit analysis would not change the results of such licensing proceedings. App. 395. Thus, at this stage of the proceedings the only question presented for review in this regard is whether the Commission may consider the environmental impact of the fuel processes when licensing nuclear reactors. In addition to the weight which normally attaches to the agency’s determination of such a question, other reasons support the Commission’s conclusion.

Vermont Yankee will produce annually well over 100 pounds of radioactive wastes, some of which will be highly toxic. The Commission itself, in a pamphlet published by its *539 information office, clearly recognizes that these wastes “pose the most severe potential health hazard . . . U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Radioactive Wastes 12 (1965). Many of these substances must be isolated for anywhere from 600 to hundreds of thousands of years. It is hard to argue that these wastes do not constitute “adverse environmental effects which cannot be avoided should the proposal be implemented,” or that by operating nuclear power plants we are not making “irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources.” 42 U. S. C. §§ 4332 (2) (C) (ii), (v). As the Court of Appeals recognized, the environmental impact of the radioactive wastes produced by a nuclear power plant is analytically indistinguishable from the environmental effects of “the stack gases produced by a coal-burning power plant.” 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 341, 547 F. 2d, at 638. For these reasons we hold that the Commission acted well within its statutory authority when it considered the back end of the fuel cycle in individual licensing proceedings.

B

We next turn to the invalidation of the fuel cycle rule. But before determining whether the Court of Appeals reached a permissible result, we must determine exactly what result it did reach, and in this case that is no mean feat. Vermont Yankee argues that the court invalidated the rule because of the inadequacy of the procedures employed in the proceedings. Brief for Petitioner in No. 76-419, pp. 30-38. Respondents, on the other hand, labeling petitioner’s view of the decision a “straw man,” argue to this Court that the court merely held that the record was inadequate to enable the reviewing court to determine whether the agency had fulfilled its statutory obligation. Brief for Respondents in No. 76 — A19, pp. 28-30, 40. But we unfortunately have not found the parties’ characterization of the opinion to be entirely reliable; it appears here, as in Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U. S. 83, 87 (1953), that *540 “in this Court the parties changed positions as nimbly as if dancing a quadrille.” 15

After a thorough examination of the opinion itself, we con- *541 elude that while the matter is not entirely free from doubt, the majority of the Court of Appeals struck down the rule because of the perceived inadequacies of the procedures employed in the rulemaking proceedings. The court first determined the intervenors’ primary argument to be “that the decision to preclude 'discovery or cross-examination’ denied them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the proceedings as guaranteed by due process.” 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 346, 547 F. 2d, at 643. The court then went on to frame the issue for decision thus:

“Thus, we are called upon to decide whether the procedures provided by the agency were sufficient to ventilate the issues.” Ibid., 547 F. 2d, at 643.

The court conceded that absent extraordinary circumstances it is improper for a reviewing court to prescribe the procedural format an agency must follow, but it likewise clearly thought it entirely appropriate to “scrutinize the record as a whole to insure that genuine opportunities to participate in a meaningful way were provided . . . .” Id., at 347, 547 F. 2d, at 644. The court also refrained from actually ordering the agency to follow any specific procedures, id., at 356-357, 547 F. 2d, at 653-654, but there is little doubt in our minds that *542 the ineluctable mandate of the court’s decision is that the procedures afforded during the hearings were inadequate. This conclusion is particularly buttressed by the fact that after the court examined the record, particularly the testimony of Dr. Pittman, and declared it insufficient, the court proceeded to discuss at some length the necessity for further procedural devices or a more “sensitive” application of those devices employed during the proceedings. Ibid. The exploration of the record and the statement regarding its insufficiency might initially lead one to conclude that the court was only examining the sufficiency of the evidence, but the remaining portions of the opinion dispel any doubt that this was certainly not the sole or even the principal basis of the decision. Accordingly, we feel compelled to address the opinion on its own terms, and we conclude that it was wrong.

In prior opinions we have intimated that even in a rule-making proceeding when an agency is making a “ 'quasi-judicial’ ” determination by which a very small number of persons are “ 'exceptionally affected, in each case upon individual grounds,’ ” in some circumstances additional procedures may be required in order to afford the aggrieved individuals due process. 16 United States v. Florida East Coast R. Co., 410 U. S., at 242, 245, quoting from Bi-Metallic Investment Co. v. State Board of Equalization, 239 U. S. 441, 446 (1915). It might also be true, although we do not think the issue is presented in this case and accordingly do not decide it, that a totally unjustified departure from well-settled agency procedures of long standing might require judicial correction. 17

*543 But this much is absolutely clear. Absent constitutional constraints or extremely compelling circumstances the “administrative agencies ‘should be free to fashion their own rules of procedure and to pursue methods of inquiry capable of permitting them to discharge their multitudinous duties.’ ” FCC v. Schreiber, 381 U. S., at 290, quoting from FCC v. Pottsville *544 Broadcasting Co., 309 U. S., at 143. Indeed, our cases could hardly be more explicit in this regard. The Court has, as we noted in FCC v. Schreiber, supra, at 290, and n. 17, upheld this principle in a variety of applications, 18 including that case where the District Court, instead of inquiring into the validity of the Federal Communications Commission’s exercise of its rulemaking authority, devised procedures to be followed by the agency on the basis of its conception of how the public and private interest involved could best be served. Examining §4 (j) of the Communications Act of 1934, the Court unanimously held that the Court of Appeals erred in upholding that action. And the basic reason for this decision was the Court of Appeals’ serious departure from the very basic tenet of administrative law that agencies should be free to fashion their own rules of procedure.

We have continually repeated this theme through the years, most recently in FPC v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., 423 U. S. 326 (1976), decided just two Terms ago. In that case, in determining the proper scope of judicial review of agency action under the Natural Gas Act, we held that while a court may have occasion to remand an agency decision because of the inadequacy of the record, the agency should normally be allowed to “exercise its administrative discretion in deciding how, in light of internal organization considerations, it may best proceed to develop the needed evidence and how its prior decision should be modified in light of such evidence as develops.” Id., at 333. We went on to emphasize:

“At least in the absence of substantial justification for doing otherwise, a reviewing court may not, after determining that additional evidence is requisite for adequate *545 review, proceed by dictating to the agency the methods, procedures, and time dimension of the needed inquiry and ordering the results to be reported to the court without opportunity for further consideration on the basis of the new evidence by the agency. Such a procedure clearly runs the risk of ‘propel [ling] the court into the domain which Congress has set aside exclusively for the administrative agency.’ SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U. S. 194, 196 (1947).” Ibid.

Respondent NRDC argues that § 4 of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 553 (1976 ed.), merely establishes lower procedural bounds and that a court may routinely require more than the minimum when an agency’s proposed rule addresses complex or technical factual issues or “Issues of Great Public Import.” Brief for Respondents in No. 76-419, p. 49. We have, however, previously shown that our decisions reject this view. Supra, at 542 to this page. We also think the legislative history, even the part which it cites, does not bear out its contention. The Senate Report explains what eventually became § 4 thus:

“This subsection states . . . the minimum requirements of public rule making procedure short of statutory hearing. Under it agencies might in addition confer with industry advisory committees, consult organizations, hold informal ‘hearings,’ and the like. Considerations of practicality, necessity, and public interest . . . will naturally govern the agency’s determination of the extent to which public proceedings should go. Matters of great import, or those where the public submission of facts will be either useful to the agency or a protection to the public, should naturally be accorded more elaborate public procedures.” S. Rep. No. 752, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 14-15 (1945).

The House Report is in complete accord:

“ ‘[U]niformity has been found possible and desirable for all classes of both equity and law actions in the courts .... *546 It would seem to require no argument to demonstrate that the administrative agencies, exercising but a fraction of the judicial power may likewise operate under uniform rules of practice and procedure and that they may be required to remain within the terms of the law as to the exercise of both quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial power/

“The bill is an outline of minimum essential rights and procedures. ... It affords private parties a means of knowing what their rights are and how they may protect them ....

"... [The bill contains] the essentials of the different forms of administrative proceedings . . . H. R. Rep. No. 1980, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 9,16-17 (1946).

And the Attorney General’s Manual on the Administrative Procedure Act 31, 35 (1947), a contemporaneous interpretation previously given, some deference by this Court because of the role played by the Department of Justice in drafting the legislation, 19 further confirms that view. In short, all of this leaves little doubt that Congress intended that the discretion of the agencies and not that of the courts be exercised in determining when extra procedural devices should be employed.

There are compelling reasons for construing § 4 in this manner. In the first place, if courts continually review agency proceedings to determine whether the agency employed procedures which were, in the court’s opinion, perfectly tailored to reach what the court perceives to be the “best” or “correct” result, judicial review would be totally unpredictable. And the agencies, operating under this vague injunction to employ *547 the “best” procedures and facing the threat of reversal if they did not, would undoubtedly adopt full adjudicatory procedures in every instance. Not only would this totally disrupt the statutory scheme, through which Congress enacted “a formula upon which opposing social and political forces have come to rest,” Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U. S., at 40, but all the inherent advantages of informal rulemaking would be totally lost. 20

Secondly, it is obvious that the court in these cases reviewed the agency’s choice of procedures on the basis of the record actually produced at the hearing, 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 347, 547 F. 2d, at 644, and not on the basis of the information available to the agency when it made the decision to structure the proceedings in a certain way. This sort of Monday morning quarterbacking not only encourages but almost compels the agency to conduct all rulemaking proceedings with the full panoply of procedural devices normally associated only with adjudicatory hearings.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this sort of review fundamentally misconceives the nature of the standard for judicial review of an agency rule. The court below uncritically assumed that additional procedures will automatically result in a more adequate record because it will give interested parties more of an opportunity to participate in and contribute to the proceedings. But informal rulemaking need not be based solely on the transcript of a hearing held before an agency. Indeed, the agency need not even hold a formal hearing. See 5 U. S. C. § 553 (c) (1976 ed.). Thus, the adequacy of the “record” in this type of proceeding is not correlated directly to the type of procedural devices employed, but .rather turns on whether the agency has followed the statutory mandate of the Administrative Procedure Act or other relevant statutes. If the agency is compelled to sup *548 port the rule which it ultimately adopts with the type of record produced only after a full adjudicatory hearing, it simply will have no choice but to conduct a full adjudicatory hearing prior to promulgating every rule. In sum, this sort of unwarranted judicial examination of perceived procedural shortcomings of a rulemaking proceeding can do nothing but seriously interfere with that process prescribed by Congress.

Respondent NRDC also argues that the fact that the Commission's inquiry was undertaken in the context of NEPA somehow permits a court to require procedures beyond those specified in § 4 of the APA when investigating factual issues through rulemaking. The Court of Appeals was apparently also of this view, indicating that agencies may be required to “develop new procedures to accomplish the innovative task of implementing NEPA through rulemaking. 178 U. S. App. D. C., at 356, 547 F. 2d, at 653. But we search in vain for something in NEPA which would mandate such a result. We have before observed that “NEPA does not repeal by implication any other statute.” Aberdeen & Bockfish B. Co. v. SCRAP, 422 U. S. 289, 319 (1975). See also United States v. SCBAP, 412 U. S. 669, 694 (1973). In fact, just two Terms ago, we emphasized that the only procedural requirements imposed by NEPA are those stated in the plain language of the Act. Kleppe v. Sierra Club, 427 U. S. 390, 405-406 (1976). Thus, it is clear NEPA cannot serve as the basis for a substantial revision of the carefully constructed procedural specifications of the APA.

In short, nothing in the APA, NEPA, the circumstances of this case, the nature of the issues being considered, past agency practice, or the statutory mandate under which the Commission operates permitted the court to review and overturn the rulemaking proceeding on the basis of the procedural devices employed (or not employed) by the Commission so long as the Commission employed at least the statutory minima, a matter about which there is no doubt in this case.

*549 There remains, of course, the question of whether the challenged rule finds sufficient justification in the administrative proceedings that it should be upheld by the reviewing court. Judge Tamm, concurring in the result reached by the majority of the Court of Appeals, thought that it did not. There are also intimations in the majority opinion which suggest that the judges who joined it likewise may have thought the administrative proceedings an insufficient basis upon which to predicate the rule in question. We accordingly remand so that the Court of Appeals may review the rule as the Administrative Procedure Act provides. We have made it abundantly clear before that when there is a contemporaneous explanation of the agency decision, the validity of that action must “stand or fall on the propriety of