NRC Chairman Jaczko and four of his commissioners have been in an extended wrangle over among other things the speed with which the NRC should act on the post Fukushima disaster safety recommendations made by the Near Term Task Force. Obama appointee Jaczko favored an expedited (by NRC standards) implementation and four of his five commissioners balked, favoring more stakeholder input and a different time frame (aka snails’ pace?). This disagreement and other ongoing spats, which Senator Bernie Sanders recently described as an attempted coup against the chairman went high profile this past week in Republican Darryl Issa’s congressional hearings when Jaczko and the NRC commissioners testified.
So when all the dust particles settle, at what speed will the recommendations be moving?
According to the NRC's blog the Near Term Task Force’s recommendations have been handed off to a new group.
[…] The group is called the Japan Lessons-Learned Project Directorate. The directorate will support a steering committee consisting of senior agency managers to coordinate and implement the task force recommendations per with our Commission’s direction, including its goal of striving to implement the recommendations within five years.
An important aspect of our path forward is stakeholder engagement with members of the public. We will seek input through public meetings to help us determine whether changes may be required to improve safety at U.S. nuclear power plants.[added emphasis}
In 2008 candidate Obama called the NRC “a moribund agency…captive of the industry that it regulates.” It still sounds plausible enough three plus years later.
The Huffington Post reports that vocal Jaczko critic NRC Commissioner Bill Magwood did consulting work for the Fukushima plant’s owner Tepco when he was in the private sector. Not that there is anything wrong with that as the information was provided for his NRC confirmation process.
According to Ryan Grim at Huffington:
Magwood, a Democratic appointee, would be the leading candidate to take Jaczko's gavel if the coup succeeds, according to people familiar with the internal workings of the commission (as well as through a simple process of elimination: the other Democratic panel member is not considered a serious candidate for the other Democratic panel member is not considered a serious candidate for the chairmanship).
Come on, the NRC is going to study it for a year to two… wait until the heat is off the industry. Then through the risk perspectives say “nothing ever matter”…safety is irrelevant….do nothing.
not really concerned
never really checked
no reactor (de)commissioned
we need to move education policy to the nrc ‘no reactor left behind…’
when you don’t like the message try changing the messenger.
Dismal.
Vermont State Senator Mark MacDonald had an interesting comment at last Wednesday’s VSNAP meeting. In questioning an NRC regional director of reactor safety, MacDonald likened the Fukushima accident to the arrest of a shoe bomber on an airplane in America, and then noted that within just a few days of that incident the TSA made significant changes system wide. He wondered what changes had been made within the NRC, and specifically at VY, following the March 2011 accidents in Japan. The NRC representative’s answer focused on the review of response plans, but it sounded like there have been very few meaningful structural changes within the industry or at VY as a result of Fukushima, and it sounds like NRC is dragging its feet to minimize industry disruption and cost. The comparison of the TSA response to the shoe bomber to the NRC response to Fukushima makes clear that our government can respond aggressively if needed, and gives rise to deeper questions about the effectiveness of the NRC.