Candidate Obama is 2008 declared he would close the Nuclear disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. President Obama started doing just that when he was elected. The only problem? The Nuclear Waste Disposal Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 and the Energy Policy Act of 1992. These acts specify that spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste will disposed of underground, in a deep geological repository. The NWPA named Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Vegas as the only site for the repository. The NRC was tasked with consideration of the application for construction authorization and "shall issue a final decision approving or disapproving the issuance of a construction authorization not later than 3 years after" the application is submitted. The Department of Energy, which is tasked with construction and operation of the repository, submitted its licence to the NRC on June 3, 2008, 5 months before the presidential election. The NRC formally acctepted the application in September of the same year.
President Obama kept his campaign promise. He decided that Yucca mountain would not hold those spent nuclear materials and high-level radioactive waste. He directed his Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whom Republicans have repeated requested he fire, to withdraw the application for the repository. 3 administrative judges within the NRC declared that the President couldn't unilaterally close the site. Closing it, they said, would require an act of Congress, since an act of Congress declared the site viable in the first place.
"Unless Congress directs otherwise, DOE may not single-handedly derail the legislated decision-making process by withdrawing the (Yucca repository) application. DOE's motion must therefore be denied," the judges wrote, adding that the DOE had weakened its arguments by "conceding that the application is not flawed nor the (Yucca) site unsafe."
Which brings me to the point of this diary. Those judges didn't stop Obama from trying to close the site. In fact after the ruling not only did Obama appeal the ruling, he zeroed funding for the contruction of the repository in his FY2012 budget. And the Commission chairman of the NRC followed his directive. But here we run into another problem. The NRC is, and for much of the past 30 years, has been criticised for being too close to the Nuclear industry. That's the conclusion of one report from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
• In 2002 the GAO found the NRC weighed the financial impacts of its safety-related decisions on the industry’s bottom line — stalling a forced reactor shutdown at Davis-Besse because the NRC fretted about the impact on the plant owner’s finances and the “black eye” an emergency shutdown might give the industry.
• In 2004 the GAO found that little had changed within the NRC’s safety and inspection culture since Davis-Besse. An internal NRC task force failed to look at more agency-wide issues uncovered during their post-mortem review, the GAO found.
• In 2009, the OIG found that key NRC staff couldn’t name the four core areas of improvement the NRC had identified to better protect the public’s health and safety after Davis-Besse incident. In fact, the OIG discovered many NRC staff didn’t know the “lessons learned” project existed.
A report issued last month [May 2011] by the nuclear watchdog group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, found 14 “near misses” at U.S. nuclear reactors in 2010, with the NRC’s response to some critical errors less than reassuring.
“If you still believe that the NRC is a nuclear watchdog, you are probably still sending your money to Bernie Madoff,” said Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear-industry executive turned whistleblower.
If you been watching or reading the news lately you may have seen stories about the "leadership style" of the Chairman of the NRC Gregory B. Jaczko. From the Washington Post
The four NRC commissioners said in a letter to the White House that they have “grave concerns” about Jaczko. They said his bullying style is “causing serious damage” to the commission and creating a “chilled work environment at the NRC.”
The letter was written Oct. 13 but was made public late Friday. It stops short of calling for the chairman to resign, but says Jaczko’s actions could adversely affect the agency’s mission to protect health and safety at the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors.
The NRC is a 5 member panel and no more than 3 commissioners may be from any one political party. Currently, there are 3 Democratic Commissoners , including the chairman and 2 Republicans. The nuclear industry was opposed his nomination in 2005. Most likely because of the very real concerns that both he and President Obama share about the NRC being too close to the nuclear industry.
Finally, there's this story from the Huffington Post about the coup planned by the other commissioners to overthrow Jaczko.
Bill Magwood, the man at the center of an effort to overthrow the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and his most likely successor if the move is successful, served as a consultant for Tepco, the Japanese company that owns the Fukushima nuclear power plant, according to information provided by Magwood as part of his nomination and confirmation process, which was obtained by The Huffington Post.
Yes, they are refering to THAT Fukushima. Massive radiation leaks. Nuclear meltdown. The whole nine yards. Darrell Issa is scheduled to hold hearing about the letter and the NRC in general on Wed. Personally, I've never thought much about nuclear energy or its disposal. But with 104 nuclear plants in this country, and all of them aging someone has to figure out what to do with the waste. Chairman Jaczko is being set up, IMHO, for a witch hunt. What do you think?
P.S. Sorry this post was so long.