Excellent article by a former NRC commissioner: "Nuclear agency needs independent appointees"

[bananas]

I recommend reading it in full.

Nuclear agency needs independent appointees
By Peter A. Bradford
Thursday, September 17, 2009

Two of five seats are vacant on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency responsible for the safety of the 104 operating U.S. nuclear power reactors, as well as several applications for new reactors in the southeastern U.S., including two in Georgia. President Barack Obama’s impending NRC appointments will determine whether the agency cleans up leadership deficiencies that have long undermined public confidence in the NRC and that could jeopardize nuclear safety.

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Here are some examples of the culture that needs to change at the NRC:

<snip>

When President George W. Bush appointed Gregory Jaczko to the NRC in 2004, he and Congress insisted that Jaczko not participate for a substantial period in matters related to the potential Yucca Mountain waste repository since Jaczko’s previous employer, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, opposed the project. When President Bush subsequently named Dale Klein to chair the agency, no similar requirement was imposed despite the fact that Klein had been paid to appear in an industry advertising campaign attesting to the suitability of Yucca Mountain to house the nation’s nuclear wastes. (Obama recently transferred the chairmanship from Klein to Jaczko).

<snip>

Other examples abound. They are not offset by any episodes of overreaching on behalf of the general public.

If nuclear power can continue to improve its existing safety record, the real challenge confronting potential new reactors lies mostly in the fact that they are much more costly than other ways of reducing the emissions that cause climate change, a problem the NRC can’t solve. However, the tendency of the NRC commissioners and their overseers in Congress and the White House to act as industry boosters, to shut out the public rather than responding to their concerns, and to slight the NRC’s environmental responsibilities is the same pattern of complacency and risk-taking that has so recently proven catastrophic in our nation’s financial regulation.

<snip>

Peter Bradford is a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and also served as chair of both the New York and the Maine utility regulatory commissions.

[NNadir]

1. Who should we appoint to the dangerous fossil fuel waste dump regulatory

commission?

How about me?

I oppose the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the environment. I call for the shut down of the dangerous fossil fuel industry until it can prevent dangerous fossil fuel war, dangerous fossil fuel terrorism, dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping and dangerous fossil fuel accidents. Clearly I should be on the fossil fuel regulatory commission on the grounds I oppose dangerous fossil fuels, even those with a Walmart stamp of quality from Amory Lovins.

Oh wait...

You mean there isn't a dangerous fossil fuel regulatory commission?

You couldn't care less who's on that committee because it doesn't exist?

I thought so.

Let's be clear on something, big boy. The only highly regulated energy industry in the world is the nuclear industry. You know why, big boy?

Because it is the only industry that can meet the rigorous standards set for it.

There are zero anti-nuke fundies who call for the shutting of the dangerous fossil fuel industry because it has no waste disposal plan, and zero anti-nuke fundies who call for the banning of the weeny (but already toxic) solar industry until it has a permanent waste plan other than dumping its waste in the blood serum of http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html">Chinese kids.

The people here who prattle on and on and on and on and on and on about regulatory issues and other issues in their imagination about nuclear energy are precisely the people here who know the least about nuclear science.

I note, with due contempt, that the explosion at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Refinery_(BP)">Texas City Refinery produced not one fucking peep out a single fundie anti-nuke, NOT ONE, calling for a dangerous fossil fuel regulatory commission.

The NRC has done an outstanding job of regulating nuclear power plants, the evidence being that all of the anti-nuke cult's complaints about nuclear energy consist entirely of scenarios that take place only in their vivid but wholly arbitrary imaginations.

Nuclear power need not be perfect to be vastly superior to all the stuff that anti-nuke fundies don't care about. It only needs to be vastly superior, which, in fact, it is.

[glitch]

2. Excellent article, thanks for posting. K & R

This paragraph in particular, very well-written:

"If nuclear power can continue to improve its existing safety record, the real challenge confronting potential new reactors lies mostly in the fact that they are much more costly than other ways of reducing the emissions that cause climate change, a problem the NRC can’t solve. However, the tendency of the NRC commissioners and their overseers in Congress and the White House to act as industry boosters, to shut out the public rather than responding to their concerns, and to slight the NRC’s environmental responsibilities is the same pattern of complacency and risk-taking that has so recently proven catastrophic in our nation’s financial regulation."