On December 15, 2011, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing titled “Review of the NRC’s Near-Term Task Force Recommendations for Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century”. Instead of remaining on that topic, the hearing turned into a story where he said ‘A’, another guy said ‘A’, a woman said ‘A’, and a [...]
Boxer defends Jaczko’s harassing behavior with classic anecdotal quotes from anonymous women
As the father of two professional daughters, one of whom has spent the past ten years in the male dominated US Navy, I have been taken aback by the way that the Democratic Party leaders have reacted to testimony from four appointed Commissioners on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. These four experienced, mature professionals took the [...]
Jaczko hearings a depressing example of partisan power politics
I am a deeply disappointed supporter of many Democratic platform planks who strongly believes in protecting the environment, building a strong educational system that is freely available to all comers, enabling workers to earn a decent wage for their hard work, increasing the number of jobs available to all residents of the United States, building [...]
Hearing on Jaczko’s leadership at Nuclear Regulatory Commission
I have spent the past several hours viewing and clipping highlights from an extraordinary hearing conducted yesterday by the House Oversight Committed on “Leadership at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”. If you want a similar experience, you can find the complete hearing video – of both panels – at http://youtu.be/qEduKirfpTY. In the next several days, I [...]
UK nuclear regulation gaining ground as a gold standard in effectiveness
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has often described itself as “the gold standard” in nuclear reactor regulation. Sometimes that view has been reinforced by the nuclear industry by comments along the lines of “if you can license your design in the US, you can license it anywhere.” I am not sure if that is because [...]
Jaczko must go
My professional work habits and standards were formed by 33 years in the US naval service, an organization with a proud tradition of developing independent decision makers who could be entrusted with billions of dollars worth of national assets and thousands of lives. Our tradition includes demanding training, strong mentoring programs, regular competitive evaluations and [...]
Congressional reform act might help to prevent another Jaczko fiasco
I rarely, if ever, open email that is obviously part of a chain letter. I have never ever, passed them along to anyone else. However, this morning I received the following message that seems quite timely because if it was in effect, people like Harry Reid and Ed Markey would have never developed the clout [...]
Please sign petition at Change.org to ask President Obama to remove Gregory Jaczko from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
John Wheeler who blogs at This Week in Nuclear started a petition on Change.org titled President Barack Obama: Remove Gregory Jaczko from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Here is the description from the “why this is important” tab on the petition page. Gregory Jaczko, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has lost the confidence of [...]
Smoking Gun: ExxonMobil admits plan to take advantage of Fukushima to market gas
As an undergraduate, I was trained to read between the lines and to interpret the words on the page in context with the author’s background and intent. With that in mind, I see an interesting marketing plan in between the following words from page 31 of ExxonMobil’s 2012 The Outlook for Energy: A View to [...]
Open warfare: four NRC commissioners versus Chairman Jaczko
It is a four against one war. On one side is the Chairman, a man armed with essentially no experience or professional training associated with the effective use of the gift of nuclear energy. On the other side are four experienced and well-educated nuclear energy professionals who among them can count close to 100 years [...]