The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental justice review needs to prioritize actionable outcomes, stakeholders and members of the public said during an agency conference call Monday.
“[I]t’s not enough for NRC just to review its policies,” said Leona Morgan, co-founder of New Mexico community organizer Nuclear Issues Study Group. “What we need to see is change, and not not just in the policies, but in the actions of the staff, all the way up to the commissioners.”
NRC invited members of the public Monday to say their piece about its environmental justice review, aimed at addressing how the agency approaches issues of environmental justice in its regulatory activities. A team of staff will evaluate whether NRC should expand its environmental justice efforts beyond what’s required by the National Environmental Policy Act, as recommended in a 2004 agency policy statement.
The team, led by deputy director of NRC’s operating reactor licensing division within the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) Gregory Suber, will wrap up its work with a report in February, the commission has said.
In the meantime, the commission remains largely in listening mode. There was not much crosstalk between environmentalists and feds at Monday’s meeting, where the head of one anti-nuclear group, Nuclear Information Research Service, said that environmental justice is “not a word or a checkbox.”
“It’s an action, it’s a series of actions,” David Kraft, director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Information Research Service, said. “I’ve been listening to these sessions for over 40 years now and I hear a lot of fine words … but I need to see some action, really meaningful on the ground action that is protective of the public, which is the NRC’s mandate.”
Kevin Kamps, head of the Washington-area environmental watchdog Beyond Nuclear, accused NRC of “routinely and serially” running afoul environmental justice, including “the licensing of high level radioactive waste dumps.”
Earlier this month, NRC granted a license to Interim Storage Partners’ proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in west Texas.
NRC is still accepting written public comments on its environmental justice review. The agency recently extended the submission deadline to Oct. 29 in a Federal Register notice.
Environmental justice has been a major theme in the Joe Biden administration’s energy and climate agenda. In January Biden established the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to “confron[t] longstanding environmental injustices and to ensur[e] that historically marginalized and polluted, overburdened communities have greater input on federal policies and decisions,” according to a March press release.
The administration also created the Justice40 initiative, a program aimed at ensuring that 40% of the nation’s environmental improvements benefit underserved communities and those most impacted by the effects of climate change.
