As reported by the Washington Post.
The New York Times has also reported on this story.
The gutting of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) would impact anti-nuclear activism is a very significant way. For example, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff is scheduled to publish Draft Environmental Impact Statements re: the Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance and Interim Storage Partners/Waste Control Specialists irradiated nuclear fuel consolidated interim storage facilities in New Mexico and Texas, respectively. The DEISs are due out in March and May, respectively. The resistance is gearing up to provide extensive, quality public comments on the dangerous schemes.
In the earlier NEPA stage -- environmental scoping -- opponents to the two de facto permanent, surface storage, "parking lot dumps" broke the record for the number of comments submitted on these high-level radioactive waste issues. In the Holtec proceeding, more than 40,000 public comments were submitted to NRC. In the Interim Storage Partners proceeding, more than 50,000 public comments were submitted to NRC.
Based on Trump's stated policy to gut NEPA, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff may now attempt to ignore climate chaos in both the Holtec NM and Interim Storage Partners TX Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) DEISs. NRC staff may attempt to ignore the risks of extreme weather-related impacts on both CISFs -- tornadoes, extreme heat, flooding, wildfires, etc. -- many major and ever more likely risks, that will just get worse over time if climate destabilization is not stopped.
It must also be pointed out that the largest high-level radioactive waste dump schemes in history cannot be arbitrarily and capriciously limited to a certain small page-length environmental impact statement. Holtec proposes to ship and "temporarily store" 173,600 metric tons (MT) of irradiated nuclear fuel. ISP proposes to ship and "temporarily store" 40,000 MT. Those 213,600 MT are three times more than the Yucca Mountain dump's 70,000 MT. Yet the Yucca dump's 2002 Final EIS and 2008 Supplemental EIS are voluminous, stretching to many thousands of pages.
Environmental groups can be expected to challenge Trump's gutting of NEPA. But tragically, Trump and the Republican U.S. Senate are loading the courts with like-minded anti-environment judges and justices.
Linked here is the Trump Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) attack on NEPA.