These people are not operating with our interests in mind. Take this comment from Rod Adams, Publisher, Atomic Insights:
Here are the specific actions that Senator Reid has taken to hamstring the continued operation and future development of nuclear energy.
He personally intervened and delayed numerous judge confirmations in order to install one of his staff members as a commissioner on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
He then included a demand for promotion of that staff member to the Chairmanship of the NRC as part of the price for his support of Senator Obama’s election to President.
During his 7 years and 2 months on the NRC, Greg Jaczko, the former Reid staff member, led the effort to write a new rule requiring nuclear power plants to be able to withstand direct attack by large aircraft and new interpretations of enforcement for fire protection rules.
He used the events at Fukushima to take total control of the NRC for about half a year and implemented several negative policies unilaterally.
His illegal action – under Senator Reid’s direction – to halt the completion of licensing review for the Yucca Mountain project not only deflected that project from being completed in Nevada, but it called into question a whole series of actions under the category of “waste confidence.”
Eliminating “waste confidence” led to a 2 year moratorium on both new nuclear power plant licenses and extensions of existing licenses. It has also ensured that states whose statutes include a provision prohibiting new nuclear plants until the waste issue is settled at the federal level would continue waiting.
After Jaczko was asked to resign because of the “chilled work environment” that he established as Chairman, Senator Reid once again dictated the selection of the new Chairman, a woman who had no experience in managing any agency or even a work group of more than a few academics.
The serving members of the Commission were passed over as the new member was directly appointed as Chairman.
The new Chairman has led an effort to require most of the existing nuclear plants in the US to conduct expensive and scarce resource consuming evaluations of their seismic design, even though there has never been a nuclear plant whose seismically qualified safety-related structures, systems and components have been damaged by an earthquake – even one that exceeded the plant’s design basis.
Energy politics is financially important. Halting or even delaying nuclear energy projects invariably increases the sales revenues of all other energy sources by restricting the overall supply of energy. In each case, there is usually a specific fuel supplier who benefits more directly to the tune of a million or more dollars in additional revenue for every day that a 1000 MWe nuclear plant does not operate.
Yet another reason why Dingy Harry needs to resign and get out of Washington. He is not acting for us, he is only acting for his own personal gain.
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