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Living With the Invisible Risks in the U.S. Urban Areas: Potential Nuclear Power‐Induced Disasters, Urban Emergency Management Challenges, and Environmental Justice Issues
Author(s) -
Kyne Dean
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
risk, hazards and crisis in public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.634
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 1944-4079
DOI - 10.1002/rhc3.12106
Subject(s) - environmental justice , economic justice , nuclear power , mile , environmental planning , geography , political science , business , environmental resource management , environmental science , ecology , law , biology , geodesy
This article attempts to understand potential risks of nuclear power emergencies associated with the U.S. commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs), which could impact populations living within a 50‐mile radius around NPPs during a nuclear disaster. This article will first examine the demographic composition of the populations in communities that host NPPs in urban and non‐urban areas in 1990, 2000, and 2010. Second, the study will investigate the distributive justice of the potential risks, by looking into the difference in demographic characteristics of populations living in the host communities (a 50‐mile radius from the NPPs), as compared to those living in outlying areas, in urban and non‐urban settings. Further, this article will also investigate the distributive justice of the potential risks associated with NPPs by looking at the association between the distance from the NPPs and the percentage of specific racial and ethnic groups living within the 50‐mile radius areas. Finally, in addition to the abovementioned distributive justice, this article will identify other environmental justice issues the communities near NPPs, if there are additional issues to address.