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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
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. …
A Longitudinal Study Of Human Exposure To Potential Nuclear Power Plant Risk, Dean Kyne, Jason T. Harris
A Longitudinal Study Of Human Exposure To Potential Nuclear Power Plant Risk, Dean Kyne, Jason T. Harris
Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations
This study constructs a potential risk index (PRI) for the 65 U.S.-based commercial nuclear power plant (NPP) sites in relation to their surrounding populations. Four risk levels are defined: low risk, moderate risk, high risk, and very high risk. Discrepancies that exist in the sociodemographic characteristics of the host communities’ populations are examined as sorted by risk-level category. It is found that a greater percentage of minority groups are exposed to the highest levels of risk. In addition, percent “Hispanic” and percent “Other,” a grouping that includes multiracial, mixed, interracial, as well as Hispanic and Latino groups (for example, Mexican, …