This tale begins in 2008, when candidate Obama was determined to win Nevada, a crucial electoral state. Catering to locals, Mr. Obama promised to kill plans-approved by Congress-to make the state's Yucca Mountain the repository for spent nuclear fuel. He was backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevadan who has made Yucca's demise an overriding priority.
Shortly after inauguration, Messrs. Obama and Reid teamed up to elevate Gregory Jaczko to chair the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nation's independent regulator. Mr. Jaczko was anything but a neutral designee, having served for years on the staffs of both Mr. Reid and Massachusetts' antinuke Rep. Edward Markey. As a Reid adviser, Mr. Jaczko headed up opposition to Yucca. The clear intent in making him chairman was to ensure Yucca's demise.
Toward that end, the Obama Department of Energy quickly filed a formal request with the NRC to revoke the license application for Yucca. A coalition of states and industry groups-drowning in spent fuel-then petitioned to prevent the department from doing so. The issue was thrown to a panel of NRC administrative judges. Much to the administration's frustration, they ruled unanimously in June of last year that the Energy Department lacked the authority to "singlehandedly derail" a policy that had been directed by Congress.
Enter the brass knuckles.
The panel's decision was appealed to the five-member NRC board. This was Mr. Jaczko's moment to finally tank Yucca, only he ran into problems. While the board officially contains three Democrats and two Republicans, it has tended toward nonpartisanship and has in the past proved unwilling to overturn panel rulings. Worse for Mr. Jaczko, one of the board's Democrats recused himself from the vote. A 2-2 board decision is not enough to override the judges' verdict.
All four commissioners had voted by September of last year. Yet in an unprecedented display of political partisanship, Mr. Jaczko ultimately withdrew his vote, held open the process, and didn't revote until just before the November election. Why? The chairman had obviously lost the vote and didn't want the bad news hitting his former boss, Mr. Reid, before the polls closed in his hard-fought Nevada re-election. To this day, Mr. Jaczko has refused to close out the process and release the votes.
This latest foot-dragging appears related to the fact that the term of one of the Republicans on the board, William Ostendorff, expires in just a few weeks. Mr. Ostendorff has been renominated and boasts bipartisan support. Then again, should his term just happen to expire, Mr. Jaczko can hold a revote and potentially win on Yucca. And guess who gets to decide when Mr. Ostendorff's nomination comes up for full Senate approval? Mr. Reid.
The Yucca vote is hardly the only place Mr. Jaczko has been abusing his "independent" authority on behalf of the president and Mr. Reid. NRC staff have for years been working on a critical Yucca safety report, which includes conclusions on whether Yucca can safely hold radioactive waste for up to a million years. Environmentalists have used the million-year unknown as their main argument against the site, and the findings are crucial.
The documents are finished, yet Mr. Jaczko has used every means to keep them secret. When the agency finally answered a Freedom of Information request to release the documents, it blacked out all the staff's findings and conclusions on long-term safety.
Mr. Jazcko has been unilaterally closing down agency work on Yucca, even as the Energy Department's actions remain in adjudication. He's overridden fellow commissioners on Yucca decisions. He recently gave himself extraordinary emergency powers in the wake of the Japanese nuclear incident-without informing fellow commissioners or Congress. Mr. Jaczko has yet to make clear whether those powers are ongoing, when they will cease, or what actions he's taken with them.
All of this has inspired a revolt among agency staff and commissioners, and it's undermining the body's other work. Only this week, the NRC's inspector general finished an investigation into the chairman's actions. Mr. Jaczko claims the report vindicates him (though he refuses to release the report). House Energy and Commerce Republicans have their own copy (which they intend to release), and they'll be telling a starkly different story come Tuesday, when they hold a hearing on the report's gory details.
Mr. Obama has every right to try to convince the legislative branch to change the directives of past bipartisan Congresses on Yucca. Instead, he and Mr. Reid have teamed up to install a regulator whose only mission is to abuse his independent agency's authority and bypass Congress to accomplish a partisan political promise.
