Following a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector general’s report, Republican House members, and a few Democrats, are concerned that the commission’s chair did not follow the law when he terminated Yucca Mountain’s waste repository review. They voiced alarm during a House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Environment & Economy hearing June 14 after also receiving a staff memorandum that questioned the “legitimacy of the commission’s work.” “It’s not a crime to mislead, but it’s not a good way of doing business,” Hubert Bell, NRC inspector general, told the subcommittee under oath June 14. Commission chair Greg Jaczko was found in the inspector’s report to have avoided fully disclosing his plan to other commissioners to cease NRC operations surrounding the facility. “It’s outright malfeasance,” said Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL). The Department of Energy halted work on the high-level radioactive waste facility last year. The NRC followed with a review of the withdrawal. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said there’s “no evidence of lawbreaking,” but that the commission should “function as fairly as possible.” The hearing follows a similar one May 4 before the subcommittee. Then, Republican leaders accused the White House of closing down the Yucca Mountain project as a political, not a scientific move. They advocate putting the facility back on track to receive the nation’s nuclear waste. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) defended Jaczko’s move. Markey noted the history of finding a repository in which leading politicians refused to have it placed in their states. “So it ended up on a political basis in Nevada,” he observed. “If you make a political decision, you’re going to end up with a big scientific problem.” Elaborating, he said, the political decision to place the site at Yucca Mountain ignored that the area is seismically active and has a water table which has allowed plutonium to migrate. California law prevents any new nuclear power plant from being constructed until there is a federal high-level waste repository. The plants in the state have temporary on-site dry cask storage for their wastes.
