Name Charles Eccleston | Role Author | |
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Books Environmental Impact Assessm, Effective environmental assessments, Global Environmental Policy: C, The NEPA planning process, Environmental Impact Statemen | ||
Charles H. Eccleston is an American author, consultant and lecturer in US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Dr. Eccleston has received many awards including the National Association of Environmental Professional’s (NAEP) Outstanding Achievement Award (2001), the NAEP's Outstanding Environmental Leadership Award (2010). and his college's Outstanding Alumni Award. He is listed in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in America as one of the leading authorities on preparing Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) and the NEPA. He has written 10 books and authored over 70 environmental and scientific publications. His books are used by professionals and in university curriculum. His recent works include: The EIS Book, NEPA and Environmental Planning, Global Environmental Policy, Inside Energy, and Preparing NEPA Environmental Assessments. He developed a suite of peer-reviewed tools and techniques for improving and streamlining NEPA. Many of these tools are used by government agencies and in legal cases:
He was an employee of the United States Energy Department, and later worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Eccleston charged that to minimize public concern and opposition, NRC management had intentionally mislead the public by dismissing significant nuclear safety and environmental issues in the EISs prepared for re-licensing the nation’s fleet of nuclear power reactors; specifically, NRC management stated that the risk posed by a nuclear accident, such as a full-scale meltdown, was so small that the agency could dismiss the issue from its EIS analysis. Using the Risk-Uncertainty Test, Eccleston concluded that such a sweeping assertion was scientifically irresponsible, particularly given the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Fukushima accidents. He further concluded that NRC management concealed the actual risk posed to the nation, at large, by disregarding one of the basic EIS requirements to assess the cumulative risk of a major nuclear accident; specifically, he charged that NRC management had intentionally underestimated the actual the risk posed from over 100 operating nuclear reactors by approximately two orders of magnitude (100 times). A special Washington State Legislature Nuclear Power Task corroborated his findings in a section of their final report titled, “Doesn’t NRC address consequences of severe accident in EIS for relicensing? (Sept. 24, 2014)”
In May, 2015, he was charged with attempting to obtain information from government computers. On February 2, 2016, he pled guilty to one count of attempted "unauthorized access to a protected computer". He was released two months after later.