Many of us who have been following the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi have also been paying attention to what the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been doing to respond. A preliminary report was released last year highlighting the weaknesses in U.S. nuclear plants identified by the events at Fukushima. Yet when NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko tried to spur action in the form of new regulations related to risks from earthquakes, flooding, lousy designs, lousier engineering, corner-cutting and negligent-to-nonexistent maintenance, the other four industry-connected commissioners staged a coup d'etat and took their war with Jaczko to the U.S. Congress.
It was a staged bureaucratic lynching, but it didn't manage to "get rid of" Obama's appointed Chairman. It was, however, effective in stalling any new regulations, which was the point. This has allowed the industry to avoid spending any significant money to ensure the next nuclear disaster doesn't result in dead zones and permanently displaced populations right here in the "Homeland."
Last December's Kabuki act quickly faded into the holiday season, all things nuclear went back to Business As Usual. No new regulations, 2 new licenses - the first issued in decades - several more rubber-stamp 20-year extensions for aging rustbuckets, and no necessary steps taken by the nuclear industry to address the identified weaknesses of those rusty old nukes. Jaczko's still the NRC Chairman, his votes to uphold the commission's public safety mandate routinely overridden by the industry protection squad majority.
Turmoil at U.S. nuclear regulator spills into Congress
WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - A toxic internal battle that has scarred the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it works on historic reforms now threatens to hold up the work of the U.S. Senate as leaders spar over an opening on the five-member panel.
Seems the Republican Senate leadership wants President Obama to renominate the only female member of the commission, Kristine Svinicki, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants her O-U-T.
Politico reports this afternoon that Obama will comply and renominate Svinicki, but no word on when Reid might bring the nomination to the floor.
Reid and his fellow Nevada Senator Dean Heller have lodged objections to Svinicki for her work with the Department of Energy back in the 1990s to promote the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada. Work which, Sen. Reid insists, she lied about during her original confirmation hearing in 2007. The Yucca project was abandoned when ex-Reid staffer Jaczko took the Chairmanship in 2009. The industry is still adamant that the project must go forward with haste (damn the torpedos, or just the unsuitability of the site) and that the people of Nevada need to STFU about it. Unlike Japan, here in the US of A we don't allow affected citizens a voice on where nuclear plants or waste dumps are sited.
More than a year after the onset of the disaster at Fukushima the powerful nuclear industry has succeeded in once again stalling the implementation of any new regulations that might affect its collective bottom line (or hefty share of governmental subsidies, which have increased steadily over the past 50 years). "Everybody knows" the industry is entirely non-competitive in that mystical free market Republicans never tire of touting, including the two senior officers of Exelon, this country's biggest nuclear power conglomerate. Who have both stepped forward to say that nuclear power is economically non-viable in the modern world and always will be.
Business as usual, with our own nutty brand of partisan posturing in D.C. once again serving to eviscerate effective regulatory action in the face of dire existential threats to the health and safety of the American public. Because in this country the nuclear industry is not responsible for the risks of doing business (or the disasters that can result), they enjoy carte blanche to push their rusty machinery way beyond design basis and lifetime, pocketing 100% of the profits from these antiquated, decidedly unsafe cash cows.
Good luck, and good night.