House Republicans Attack NRC Chief Jaczko for Closing Yucca Site
U.S. House Republicans criticized Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko’s decision to stop work on a nuclear waste site in Nevada last year, with one lawmaker saying the regulator acted illegally.
“He violated the law” by failing to inform the commission of his plan, Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, said today at a hearing in Washington, contradicting testimony by the agency’s inspector general, Hubert T. Bell. “That is clear, layman common sense,” Barton said.
Bell reported last week that Jaczko “was not forthcoming” with colleagues about his intent to wind down the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas. Bell said today that Jaczko didn’t break the law on the waste-site decision.
Jaczko’s leadership has come under increased criticism from lawmakers and regulators since the Japan nuclear crisis, an accident that has underscored the vulnerability of storing waste near reactors.
President Barack Obama in 2009 decided to cancel plans to build a repository at Yucca Mountain after opposition, led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, blocked the project. The administration was thwarted in a 2010 bid to withdraw the license application when a NRC licensing board rejected the plan. The commission hasn’t issued a final decision.
Republicans have said the administration’s decision to end the Yucca project wasn’t based on a scientific evaluation.
“Chairman Jaczko has let politics trump science here,” Representative Joseph Pitts, a Pennsylvania Republican, said at today’s hearing.
‘Political From Beginning’
Selecting Yucca Mountain to store radioactive waste was “political from the very beginning” because lawmakers didn’t want nuclear waste in their states, said Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat. Scientific studies have found a risk that nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site will contaminate groundwater, he said.
The U.S. spent $14.5 billion, including $9.5 billion from industry fees, on a permanent waste repository that hasn’t been built.
Bell said Jaczko, a former science adviser to Reid, controls information given to commissioners, which led some of them to be “uncertain” about whether they had been adequately informed on policy issues. He gave “varying amounts of information” about his plans to commissioners, and failed to give any information to a colleague, Bell said in his report.
“Its certainly -- is not -- is not an upfront way to do business,” Bell said today, responding to questions about misleading the commissioners from Representative Gene Greene, a Texas Democrat.
Credibility At Stake
The inspector general found that Jaczko used a 2011 budget memorandum to begin the close-out of the agency’s Yucca Mountain license review. It didn’t say Jaczko broke the law.
“This impacts the credibility of the NRC on many issues,” said Representative Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican.
In addition to weighing safety upgrades for U.S. reactors after the Japan accident in March, the NRC is poised to issue the first construction licenses for new U.S. reactors in more than 30 years.
Japan’s nuclear disaster after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami revived debate about Obama’s decision on Yucca Mountain, and added urgency to the mission of the 15-member commission Obama directed to evaluate options for 65,000 metric tons of radioactive fuel rods being held at 76 locations in 35 states. A draft report from the waste commission is due July 29.
House Republicans have proposed allocating $35 million in the 2012 budget to revive the Yucca Mountain project.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Wingfield in Washington at bwingfield3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
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