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  1. Or vote for a psycho like Sarah Palin, and get nuclear)-weapon) Armageddon. A two-party political system is dreadful if one of the parties (in the US case, the Republicans) is taken over by psychos.

    The situation is reminiscent of the Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1992, or the French presidential election run-off of 2002.

  2. Policy formulated by White House staff and approved by President Obama is followed in such detail by NRC and DoE Department Heads it begs the question about an assumed Monarchy in Washington, DC. The sad fact remains that the financial and technical systems that this country depends on have been bought “Lock Stock and Barrel” by funny money and corruption. What is wrong with this picture?

    How much to fuel Air Force One every time a meeting is called when a telconference would get the job done. Well, it is obvious many more than one agenda is being worked at each destination. After all, The New World Order, and deals worked out of public view need to be done regardless of fuel cost to the Tax Payer. Classified Department of State documents that are classified only to cover up unilatoral actions by this administration need overview by the Congress. But how much corruption and abuse of power can the Congress investigate? I have concluded that writting to ones Congressman is a waste of effort. I can’t compete with Exxon’s “Ideas” and who has the favor of the Administration by whatever leverage.

    I was robbed once and found my options for recovery were nil. Damn!… if it hasn’t happend again an by the government I trusted. Exposure of what is going on is our only recourse….How do you expose corruption and abuse of power as a citizen in the dark?

  3. My contention is that Mr. Jaczko is using the Union of Concerned Scientists’ playbook for his position on the AP 1000 and Yucca Mt. It is an opinion I have been considering for some time. However, after the latest round of press releases by Mr. Jaczko, I now firmly believe Mr. Jaczko is using the UCS playbook as his guide for running the NRC. To that end I have listed several points and warn upfront this is a long comment.

    Point #1:

    From Mr. Ed Lyman’s testimony in his latest appearance before Congress:

    “The Union of Concerned Scientists is neither pro nor anti-nuclear power, but has served as a
    nuclear power safety and security watchdog for over 40 years”

    That statement is total bunk. Everything Mr. Lyman and the UCS do is anti-nuclear. One just has to look at their Climate 2030 plan to know they are anti-nuclear. Mr. Lyman’s professional work is devoted to putting the nuclear “safety” bar so high that nuclear power becomes impossible to use (or any other power generation source for that matter if the similar “safety” rules where applied to non-nuclear sources).

    Consider the fact that Mr. Jaczko got his political start as a staff member for Congressman Markey who is as anti-nuclear a politician as they come. Also consider the fact that UCS is headquarted near Representative Markey’s district. And add in the TMI issues that both UCS and Representative Markey worked on years ago, it is hard to dispute the ties between Markey and the UCS stretch back decades.

    Therefore, it shouldn’t be a great surprise to see Mr. Jaczko speaking the same language as the UCS. It is very disappointing for the current leader of the NRC to use the same language but not a surprise considering those long-term connections. The one question about this connection between Mr. Jaczko and the UCS I have concerns the time the two parties spent discussing nuclear “safety”.

    In other words, how much time did Mr. Jaczko, Mr. Lyman and Mr. Lochbaum spend in meetings together when Mr. Jaczko was working as a staff member for Representative Markey? Those kind of professional and personal relationships are not automatically shut off when one gets a political promotion, as did Mr. Jaczko. In fact, if Washington DC politics teaches nothing else it teaches how to use political connections to their fullest to achieve one’s goals. So do those ties continue to this day and are they affecting Mr. Jaczko’s decisions on how he is running the NRC? I believe so.

    UCS is in the business of obstructing nuclear power in every conceivable way. Why wouldn’t they want a person on the NRC commission who supports their objectives and why wouldn’t they be cheering right now after Mr. Jaczko’s latest string of press releases about the AP 1000?

    Point #2:

    Yucca Mountain is legally required to consider the feasibility of retrievability of the spent fuel. UCS is against recycling or reprocessing nuclear fuel since their driving belief system assumes reprocessing automatically leads to nuclear weapons. The UCS also assumes United States still has superiority and control of reprocessing technology so by stopping reprocessing here it will be stopped elsewhere in the world. These ideas are very outdated since the US has little to no operating knowledge of reprocessing while France and others have achieved decades of experience.

    Various nations have progressed both with their reprocessing technology and their nuclear weapon paths independent of US governmental actions in the reprocessing realm or in this case US government inaction.

    In fact, one could argue that our inaction in this arena because of politically active groups like UCS, the United States has lost the will and ability to lead these types of discussions. That is another comment for another day though.

    What Mr. Jaczko did by backdooring the closure of Yucca Mt. is hand the UCS a great big shiny present. They are now potentially sitting in the driver’s seat on the issue of recycling and reprocessing since they get to claim the head of the NRC is on board with their position against Yucca Mt and the chairman is speaking their language about nuclear safety. Especially after the BRC waffled by kicking the can down the road on this issue.

    The hope of the UCS, and apparently Mr. Jaczko through his actions since he became chairman, is that by forcing the nuclear power plants to continue to store the spent fuel on-site without a definitive long-term plan despite the US legal obligation to do so, they will begin to hammer on the issue of long-term “safety” of the stored fuel. The goal of that UCS end game is to shut down the remaining 104 operating reactors by trying to portray dry spent fuel storage as a terrorist threat in their ongoing efforts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about nuclear power despite no evidence and vague “facts” to support their position.

    What is entirely wrong is for Mr. Jaczko to appear as if he is taking his walking orders from a known anti-nuclear group instead of following the rules and regulations governing his position as congressionally appointed leader of the NRC. No matter how the anti-nuclear wolf is clothed, it is still an anti-nuclear wolf. It appears Mr. Jaczko is that wolf and is now in charge of a governmental organization that has the power to affect billions invested in the power generation marketplace as well as the operations of all 104 operating nuclear reactors here in the United States.

    That wolf seems to be doing everything in his power to make sure future investments in the power generation market here in the United States are spent in accordance with the UCS Climate 2030 plan even if that means violating the intent of the regulations set forth by Congress for running the NRC.

  4. At the risk of veering off into ad hominem territory here the thing that always kills me is that in every picture I’ve seen of Jaczko he even LOOKS like a devious bureaucratic weasel.

  5. “psycho”

    Not nice, Carty. You usually are more calm than this. The impolite “Ioannes” aside, you sound like Phil Collins and Genesis ca. 1982.

  6. Rod Adams wrote:
    He (Jaczko) keeps claiming that he is passionately interested in “nuclear safety” but based on his actions, I suspect that his personal view is that the only way to achieve that goal is to prevent humans from taking any advantage of the incredible capabilities offered by nuclear energy.

    It is quite possible that Jaczko is indeed passionately interested in “nuclear safety”. Problem is, though, that one can take too narrow a view. Since we are going to use energy, we need to be passionately interested in energy safety. If we focus exclusively on “nuclear safety”, that it be 100% safe come what may, and at the same time let other more dangerous sources of energy just slide by without equal safety requirements, we have not done any favor for the public.

    Unfortunately, bureaucracies seems to have a way of nurturing public officials with narrow points of view who passionately believe their view is correct. And politicians have a way of taking advantage of such officials.

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