The nuclear industry driven attempt to force out Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Jazcko has escalated with an attempt of character assassination, but Senator Boxer pummeled the attackers with the facts including evidence that four commissioners are stonewalling on improving safety based on lessons learned from Fukushima.
Why are Republicans and the nuclear industry so angry with Chairman Jazcko? Because he had the courage to implement President Obama's order to shut down the proposed nuclear waste repository (dump) at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Fred Upton and House Republicans admit the attacks on Jazco are about Yucca Mountain in a December 13 House Committee meeting headline
Since March, Committee Has Been Investigating NRC Chairman Jaczko and the Administration’s Rush to Terminate the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository
Yesterday, Ryan Grim wrote a HuffPo expose of an earlier successful coup led by Commissioner Bill Magwood during the Clinton administration. Environmentalist Terry Lash was directing a program at the Department of Energy that Republicans and the nuclear industry objected to. Magwood was Lash's deputy.
These sources identified two men, Bill Magwood and Alex Flint, as being directly involved in Lash's ultimate downfall. Magwood was Lash's deputy. He had come to the DOE from the nuclear industry, and he would return to it at subsequent points in his career. Flint, meanwhile, was a clerk for Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, who steered billions of nuclear research dollars to his home state of New Mexico from his perch as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.
According to Grim's sources, Magwood went behind Lash's back conspiring successfully with Flint and Dominici to drive Lash out of his job. In a recent interview with Grim, Magwood denied communicating with Flint or Congressional Republicans about Lash. Although Lash had done nothing illegal, the secretary of Energy assigned him to a new job as a hitgh level advisor to end the political battles with Congressional Republicans. When G.W. Bush became President, Democratic appointees were all made to resign except for Magwood, who was promoted from acting to permanent director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Lash's old job. Now, according to Grim, Magwood is replaying the same treacherous act to try to become Chairman of the NRC.
Based on my 15 years of experience in high level waste safety research at the NRC, Grim's sources are correct about the motivations for the attacks on Jazcko. We got strong push back from the nuclear industry on our research on tectonics and volcanism in the region around Yucca mountain when it showed that the DOE was using methods that made the region appear to be more geologically stable than it actually is. In my experience, the nuclear industry kept a close watch on all of NRC's activities and placed strong pressure on the NRC through its ties with congress when the NRC did something it objected to.
A former senior Democratic aide who has worked with Jaczko, Magwood and Flint sees more political motivations at work behind the attacks on Jaczko. Magwood "and the industry hate Greg because they think he was put on the commission by Reid, who's anti-Yucca, and he's gonna be a Reid stooge. And you know what? They're f*cking right," the former aide said. "That's exactly why he was put on there. But that commission and that agency were complete and total captives of the nuclear industry. One and the same. And what's happening now is Alex is orchestrating this whole thing, and Magwood is."
For all its brazenness, a Democratic lobbyist and former senior Senate aide who worked on nuclear policy with Magwood and Flint sees the attack on Jaczko as a bit cowardly. "This whole thing is just a big proxy fight, where Greg is at the center of a fight where no one wants to take on the actual people you need to fight with, Harry Reid and Barack Obama, on Yucca Mountain. I mean, going after the civil servants, it's just pathetic," he said.
Chairman Jaczko developed a plan for rapid regulatory response to Fukushima to improve nuclear safety, but the other 4 commissioners, who have ties to the nuclear industry, have engaged in delaying actions since the Fukushima incident began. Chairman Jazcko planned to begin implementing safety improvements at the end of October, but the other commissioners are continuing to delay.
Senator Boxer read them the Riot Act.
Today is the fifth time the Members of this Committee have gathered in this room to discuss nuclear safety following the Fukushima crisis in Japan in March. At each of those meetings, I have repeatedly asked the NRC to heed the wakeup call from Fukushima, to reevaluate the safety and security of nuclear power plants in the United States, and to implement the recommendations of the Near-Term Task Force as soon as possible.
In fact, at our last NRC hearing on August 2, four of you made the commitment to me that you would move forward on some or all of the Near-Term Task Force recommendations within 90 days. To my great disappointment, that hasn't happened.
Although Chairman Jaczko repeatedly asked you to keep your commitment to move expeditiously on safety, you are more than a month overdue in that commitment. It doesn't appear to me that such action is set to occur any time soon.
Colleagues, less than a week after the Task Force delivered its report to the NRC, Chairman Jaczko laid out a road map to address the lessons learned from Fukushima, and he set a deadline of October 21 for action on those recommendations. He was proactive, because without a specific timetable for those common-sense safety measures, the NRC will not live up to its mandate to require nuclear power plants to be safe and reliable.
But instead of taking action, every Commissioner except Chairman Jaczko focused on delay in the form of re-review. Guess what the result was -- that re-review came to the same conclusions as the first review. So here we are on December 15, and not one of those safety recommendations has been accepted and acted on. That is simply inexcusable - slow walking needed reforms after a disaster like Fukushima, where widespread contamination has set back Japan immeasurably, must not be an option.
Incredibly, instead of pushing for regulatory improvements in the wake of Fukushima, Republicans chose Senator David Vitter (who, unbeknownst to his wife, engaged prostitutes while wearing diapers) to launch an attack on Jazcko's unsubstantiated, alleged mistreatment of female employees.
Vitter was following up on an unsubstantiated attack in the House Committee on Jazcko, led by coup plot leader Bill Magwood and House Republican Daryl Issa, reported by Ryan Grim. Grim inferred that Alec Flint, who is now the Nuclear Energy Institute's top lobbyist, is working behind the scenes with Magwood and Republicans to try to destroy Chairman Jazcko.
Whether the NEI is leading from in front or behind, step four came the following Wednesday, Dec. 14, when Rep. Issa and fellow Republicans raked Jaczko over the congressional coals at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Later that day, the NEI blasted out a transcript of Issa's hearing to key energy policymakers, according to one person who received it. It was the first time he'd ever received a hearing transcript from the industry.
At the hearing, the full force of personal destruction was brought to bear. Magwood dropped an explosive charge that Jaczko had mistreated women at the agency. "These women remain very disturbed by these experiences," Magwood said, declining to name the women or offer details. "A common reflection they all shared with me was, 'I didn't deserve this.' One woman said she felt the chairman was actually irritated with someone else but took it out on her. Another told me she was angry at herself for being brought to tears in front of male colleagues. A third described how she couldn't stop shaking after the experience. She sat talking through what had happened to her with her supervisor until she would calm down enough to drive home."
But, when David Vitter took these unsubstantiated charges to the Senate, the absurdity of the Republican attacks was bared for all to see. HuffPo annotated the incredible "You can't make this stuff up" hearing.
But Barbara Boxer wasn't going to take this crap from Diaper Dave.
She investigated the claims. Ten out of 15 of Jazcko's long term aides are women. In the male dominated nuclear industry, Jazco has been a champion of women. Boxer heard nothing but praise for Jaczko form the women she interviewed.
Boxer pummeled the plotters and the Republicans with the evidence.
Yesterday, instead of focusing on nuclear plant safety, a House Committee conducted a witch hunt and attempted to assassinate the character of a dedicated public servant. Frankly, I was shocked and appalled.
One of you Commissioners even said in written testimony that the Chairman was abusive to women. I asked my staff to check out this accusation, and let me tell you what they found. They found the opposite - in fact that the Chairman, according to one respected female staffer, was "the most fair person" she has ever met. She went on to say "he treats everyone equally." Other comments include "he invites people to dissent and I have never seen him mistreat others." One woman said "what I am floored by is the conduct of the other Commissioners."
And Senator Bernie Sanders gently cooked Bill Magwood.
At the hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who challenged Magwood on his connections to Fukushima, compared the charges to the trick question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" He asked the other commissioners if they'd ever lost their temper at work.
"No," said Magwood.
"Wow. That's interesting," Sanders said. He asked the Republican senators on the committee if they'd ever lost their temper at staff, and several smiled sheepishly.
Previous post on this topic, 16 December 2011.