The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) November 5 issued a draft statement intended to weaken its policy governing the ability of citizens to address environmental justice issues in hearings on the siting and operation of nuclear power facilities.
At that time, the NRC announced a 60-day public comment period on the draft policy (ending January 5, 2004)—a period that seems designed to reduce public participation, since many people who might choose to comment will be preoccupied with the Holidays, family and friends. Worse, nine days (or nearly 1/6th) of the way through the comment period, the NRC's website still says that there are no proposed policy statements available for public comment at this time. The draft policy statement itself can be found on the website only if one knows the Accession number or exact title of the document—searching under "environmental justice" for example, will not produce the document. And critical related documents, such as President Clinton's original Executive Order on Environmental Justice, and former NRC Chairman Ivan Selin's March 31, 1994 letter committing the NRC to abide by this Executive Order, are nowhere to be found on the website.
"The NRC seems determined to have as little public notice and comment on their environmental justice policy as possible," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), a national nuclear watchdog group.
NIRS today filed a request for an extension of the public comment period until July 4, 2004, a date which NIRS said it thought the NRC could "agree would represent an appropriate conclusion for an issue involving fundamental human rights." NIRS also called for the NRC to hold "no less than ten public meetings, in widely separated parts of the United States, where NRC officials will explain this draft policy, and accept oral public comment." NIRS said that the draft policy itself is "written in a legalistic, obfuscatory fashion that seems designed to dissuade, rather than encourage, public understanding."
NIRS noted that the draft policy, which seems to remove the teeth of the NRC's existing policy on environmental justice—a policy credited with causing Louisiana Energy Services to withdraw its license application for a new uranium enrichment plant in the 1990s—would never have been issued but for "a self-serving plea from the atomic industry's Nuclear Energy Institute, which would prefer exoneration and immunity from any racist practices."
NIRS concluded that "So far, the NRC's inept handling of this draft policy statement unfortunately leads one to believe that the NRC would prefer that the public know nothing about this draft statement, nor of the essential background materials to it, and thus will not participate in its final drafting. We trust this is merely a case of ineptitude, and not of discriminatory intent—as it appears to be. Fortunately, there is still time for the NRC to prove it is merely the former."
"We think the NRC should encourage the broadest possible public participation in drafting a new policy on how the agency will address fundamental matters of human rights, racial bigotry and environmental justice as it relates to nuclear power facilities," said Mariotte. "We think the NRC needs to rethink its process, and reach out to the American people, rather than try to shuffle the issue under the carpet where it hopes no one will notice."
NIRS said it will prepare detailed comments on the draft policy statement, and will release them to the public when they are completed.
The November 14 letter from NIRS to the NRC is available on NIRS website (www.nirs.org) or upon request. The NRC's draft policy statement also is available there.