President Barack Obama’s pick to head the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said atomic power can’t grow without government subsidies, criticized an industry-supported plan to dispose of spent fuel in Nevada, and said she was drawn to nuclear research because she got bored with geology.
“I would describe myself as agnostic; I’m neither pro-nuclear nor anti-nuclear,” Allison Macfarlane said in a June 2007 interview for the Atomic Show on The Podcast Network. “We’re not going to see a large expansion of nuclear power in this country unless there is a lot of government subsidy.”