In November 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE or Department) re‐established its Environmental Justice (EJ) Task Force to review and update the 1995 Environmental Justice Strategy and develop an Environmental Justice Five‐Year Implementation Plan.

The Department of Energy (hereinafter DOE or the Department) is responsible for ensuring the Nation’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. DOE maintains the Nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, reduces the threat of nuclear proliferation, oversees the Nation’s energy supply, leads the Nation in areas of federally sponsored basic research critical to U.S.

As a result of the 2007 ruling by the U.S. District Court of Northern California that the DOE must prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to evaluate alternatives for cleanup of Area IV of the SSFL, DOE has implemented major changes in its management of SSFL Area IV. As an initial step, this community involvement plan (CIP) outlines a series of activities and programs that intend to engage the public, establish transparency in DOE actions and decisions, and increase input from the community.

Studies indicate that the energy burden — energy costs as a percentage of annual family income — on low-income families is inordinately high, compared to that of the rest of the population. Rising fuel costs exacerbate this problem. Residential solar energy systems can help address this situation by furnishing a price-stable energy source with the added benefit of reduced greenhouse gas emissions. However, without appropriate incentives, these systems are prohibitively expensive for low-income families.

Introduction

A. The Biden-Harris Administration’s Commitment to Environmental Justice 

Mainstream approaches to energy democracy and public engagement with energy transitions tend to adopt specific, pre-given meanings of both “democracy” and “publics.” Different approaches impose prescriptive assumptions about the model of participation, the identity of public participants, and what it means to participate well.

The goal of this literature review is to bring together the different concepts, respective definitions and perspectives that have been used to study the participation of non-professionals in scientific activities. We start by presenting a short definition of citizen science and the perceived benefits of such approaches to the production of scientific knowledge. We then clarify the difference between today’s citizen science projects and their ancestors in the field sciences by highlighting technological and social changes.

The U.S. nuclear waste management program has labored for decades at a cost of billions of dollars each year, and yet there is still no active disposal program either for spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors or for the high-level radioactive legacy waste and spent nuclear fuel from defense programs.

About the WHEJAC:

Although different policies for radioactive waste management, including nuclear fuel waste (NFW), have developed in different countries, the basic challenge is the same everywhere: finding a method and a place for isolating the radioactive waste from the biosphere. During the last decade, this issue has moved to a new phase where responsible authorities and companies are now facing the task of implementing waste disposal or management strategies. A number of countries (e.g.

With the termination of the Yucca Mountain project, which was proposed to be our nation’s first repository for the disposal of military and civilian spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, the future of nuclear waste management and disposal in this country became increasingly uncertain. Interim storage has been advocated by many as a temporary solution while a permanent solution is studied for potentially several more decades to come.

Nuclear energy experts consider commercial power from fission to be a strong contender to help mitigate the increasing effects of climate change, in part due to its low-to-no carbon emissions. Nevertheless, nuclear energy's history, including meltdowns such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and dumping in sacred Indigenous land such as Yucca Mountain, raises important concerns in public deliberation over nuclear power.

The purpose of this research was to collect, analyze, and summarize all of the nuclear power-related surveys conducted in the United States through June, 1981, that we could obtain. The surveys collected were national, statewide, and areawide in scope. Slightly over 100 surveys were collected for an earlier, similar effort carried out in 1977. About 130 new surveys were added to the earlier survey data. Thus, about 230 surveys were screened for inclusion in this report.