A report on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental justice efforts based on a months-long review process is ready for agency leadership to look over, a spokesperson said this week.
The environmental justice review team, led by Gregory Suber, deputy chief of NRC’s operating reactor licensing division, sent its findings to the commission Tuesday, an agency spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email Wednesday. The team’s report should become publicly available in “10 business days,” the spokesperson said.
The final product of NRC’s environmental justice review comes after several public meetings in the latter half of 2021 and a comment period that wrapped up in late October. Suber said during one such meeting that his team hoped to determine “what’s appropriate” for an agency like NRC to adopt as an environmental justice policy, and to see how well the commission was abiding by those standards.
The environmental justice review, first announced in July 2021, was aimed at assessing whether NRC should expand its efforts on the subject beyond what’s required under the National Environmental Policy Act — a standard the agency set in a 2004 policy statement.
Environmental justice has become a common theme across the Joe Biden administration’s energy and climate agendas. The White House last January established an environmental justice advisory council to address the issue and propped up the Justice40 initiative — a program designed to ensure that 40% of the nation’s environmental improvements benefit underserved communities and those most impacted by the effects of climate change.
