DEBATE OF THE WEEK: IS NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO FIDDLING WHILE YUCCA BURNS?
On February 22, 2010, just 21 days after the U.S. Department of Energy formally announced it would suspend the Yucca Mountain national nuclear spent fuel and high-level waste repository project in Nevada, the first of a bevy of lawsuits seeking to overturn the action was announced by three state of Washington businessmen.
Just nine days later, on March 3, the Department filed a license withdrawal request with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (ASLB). A month later, on April 6, the NRC’s Atomic Safety Licensing Board – in the face of mounting legal challenges and interventions relevant to the DOE action– announced it was freezing consideration of the matter to await guidance on the matter from U.S. Court of Appeals proceedings. Less than 17 days later, on April 23 – without waiting for their newest colleague, Commissioner George Apostolakis, who was scheduled to be sworn in just hours later – the Commission vacated the ASLB decision and ordered the Board to render a decision on the DOE withdrawal request in 39 days or less (June 1).
Twenty-eight days after the June 1 deadline, the ASLB issued a unanimous decision rejecting DOE’s license withdrawal request. Less than 24 hours later, in an unusual action, the Commission set immediate ground rules for an appeal of the decision requesting briefs from interested parties by July 9, just nine days later. On July 15, just six days after parties to the proceeding filed a motion seeking the disqualification of three commissioners based on their Senate confirmation hearing testimony earlier in the year, freshman Commissioner Apostolakis recused himself citing other considerations.
In a process that has been defined by days and hours for the most part, it is now 86 days and counting since the ASLB’s June 29th ruling and the initiation of the Commission’s review of the lower panel’s decision. The full Commission has now exceeded the 39 days they initially provided to the ASLB to sift through considerably more complicated issues. Meanwhile the U.S. Court of Appeals , which was scheduled to begin oral arguments on September 23 on the mountain of legal contentions now filed in the matter, has put a hold on the proceedings awaiting a Commission determination. In just six days, the Yucca Mountain project will be in purgatory with the expiration of the fiscal year, a likely continuing resolution and given a DOE edict that it will terminate all remaining employees in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management on September 30.
The Commission’s delay with regard to an ASLB verdict has lead to much conjecture in Capitol Hill, legal and nuclear policy circles. Does the NRC Chairman – a former disciple of chief Yucca Mountain antagonist Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — lack the Commission votes to override the ASLB? Was he waiting to get a consensus on an updated waste confidence rule, which was consummated on September 15? Or for conspiracy theorists is he seeking to help his old boss’s up-hill re-election campaign by deferring a possible affirmation of the decision to reject the DOE license withdrawal until after the November 2 election or until Congress leave towns town for its elections recess? Or for the more charitably-inclined was Jaczko just concentrating on his keynote speech on September 22 to the 54th International Atomic Energy Agency Conference on the scintillating topic of “The Essential Role of the Safety Regulator?”
During the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus purportedly fiddled while Rome burned. One authoritative source claims there wasn’t a fiddle to fiddle at the time – although perhaps he was playing a lyre. Other revisionists suspect that the story was invented by Nero detractors who took power shortly thereafter.
Years later, Clairol’s hair color advertisements famously touted the tag line – “Only her hairdresser knows for sure.” So perhaps while only Chairman Jaczko knows for sure, what’s your view? Thus far, in the Nuclear Townhall poll on the subject, 63 % believe the NRC is delaying the decision until after the election; 14% feel the Commission should take as much time as they need ; 9 % say they are deadlocked. A 2-2 vote by the eligible Commissioners would effectively rebuff a reversal of the ASLB decision.
Tags: ASLB, Debate of the Week, Department of Energy, DOE, George Apostolakis, Gregory Jaczko, Nero, Nuclear Townhall, Yucca Mountain