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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
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Emerging Environmental Justice Issues In Nuclear Power And Radioactive Contamination, Dean Kyne, Bob Bolin
Emerging Environmental Justice Issues In Nuclear Power And Radioactive Contamination, Dean Kyne, Bob Bolin
Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Nuclear hazards, linked to both U.S. weapons programs and civilian nuclear power, pose substantial environment justice issues. Nuclear power plant (NPP) reactors produce low-level ionizing radiation, high level nuclear waste, and are subject to catastrophic contamination events. Justice concerns include plant locations and the large potentially exposed populations, as well as issues in siting, nuclear safety, and barriers to public participation. Other justice issues relate to extensive contamination in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and the mining and processing industries that have supported it. To approach the topic, first we discuss distributional justice issues of NPP sites in the U.S. …