US nuclear regulators drop their environmental justice policy

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is withdrawing its policy statement and strategy for environmental justice. This means the agency will no longer have a specific public policy on how it considers environmental justice in its licensing and regulatory decisions.

The US government has been pushing agencies to consider environmental justice for decades. This policy withdrawal means the nuclear regulator is stepping back from that effort. It removes a specific set of guidelines that communities could point to when challenging nuclear projects near them.