The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been stacked to make sure that nuclear power in America is hindered as much as possible. Without a proper storage policy, nuclear power is barely a blip on America's radar as a solution to creating clean energy.
And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is being run, for the second time, by a non-physicist who got the job because they were opposed to the solution that decades of scientists agreed was the best method for storage of nuclear waste.
In arguably the biggest bit of politicization of science in modern memory, President Obama replaced Harry Reid's former assistant - who knew nothing about nuclear physics - as head of the NRC with another non-physicist, this one whose claim to fame was writing a book arguing against the Yucca Mountain plan.
But the administration must be worried that a science-based solution could still happen at the NRC, because Democrats are trying to make sure no nuclear waste storage solution ever comes out of committee - by creating yet another committee to study the issue that has been studied for decades.
Yes, they want a Nuclear Waste Administration.
How would it be different? Well, it wouldn't be. This brand new morass would have a leader appointed by the President, just like the NRC, and be approved by the Senate, just like the NRC.
But it insures a site can never be created because the entire process is designed to stall waste decision-making: first, a state would have to volunteer, obtain consent to even be studied, obtain consent to have the site and hold multiple public meetings before it studies or selects a site and then, if they somehow get all of that after meeting the technical guidelines to even be evaluated, they would have to obtain a license from...the same Nuclear Regulatory Commission that is against the best nuclear waste option in America.
This isn't all Democrats, defenders of the 'science registers for our party' contingent will argue. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is going along with it because she seems to recognize that the best solution has been hijacked. "While I continue to support Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository site, I also recognize the current realities that make that outcome unlikely at this time."
In other words, Harry Reid and Barack Obama and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission they control will continue to block it. But why unlikely? Yucca Mountain will be there long after Sen. Reid and President Obama are gone. It would be cheaper and more efficient to just let Yucca Mountain sit there until anti-science people are out of office and then restart it. A new layer of bureaucracy is the worst of all possible worlds.
At the Department Of Energy's Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, 6 underground storage tanks were found to be leaking radioactive waste in February. That's our future, because no modern, consolidated nuclear storage facility is getting built as long as environmental activists insist that nuclear physicists are out to kill us all.
Senators propose independent Nuclear Waste Administration By Zach Rausnitz, FierceHomelandSecurity
