Nuclear Power Play: Ambition, Betrayal And The 'Ugly Underbelly' Of Energy Regulation [View all]

[kristopher]

Ryan Grim reports on the way the current feud among the Commissioners at the NRC is grounded in documented industry tactics.

Nuclear Power Play: Ambition, Betrayal And The 'Ugly Underbelly' Of Energy Regulation

...For Washington's tight nuclear policy circle, where scientifically trained political operatives move back and forth between the industry, the NRC, the Department of Energy and key congressional committees, it's déjà vu. Interviews with several senior officials who worked on nuclear energy policy in the 1990s reveal that at least two of those operatives -- both with strong ties to the nuclear industry -- were closely involved in the ouster of an earlier reformist regulator and are now involved in the current drama.

What's unfolding at the NRC is a textbook example of a little-discussed corporate tactic that is employed against public officials in extreme situations. Observers of the way Washington works tend to describe the corruption of the political system and the people within it in terms of action and reward: Do what industry wants, and benefit both professionally and personally. But when carrots aren't enough, corporations have sticks to swing, too.

...The Clinton administration's skepticism of nuclear power -- driven in large part by then-Vice President Al Gore -- reached its fullest and earliest expression in 1994 with the installment of Terry Lash at the top of the Department of Energy's nuclear energy program.

Lash was a former staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent environmental group, and his appointment rankled nuclear industry insiders and their Republican supporters on the Hill. It wasn't long, say energy policy staffers involved at the time, before Lash's critics began seeking ways to undermine his position inside the department.

They got their chance ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/nuclear-power-gregory-jaczko-nuclear-regulatory-commission_n_1160711.html



Closer to home this is the way one nuclear supporter posting online sees it:

"I've taken on the real anti-nuke and renewable powerhouses. We're beating back the ones at DOE. Thanks to the Solyndra scandal we got DOE's chief "greenie" Jonathan Silver to resign. If the Congress keeps the pressure on, then we have a shot at clearing out the "renewables rats" that have infested DOE.

If we can clear them out, we can shutdown the subsidies to the so-called "greenie" "solutions". We won't be wasting any more of the taxpayers money on "greenie" solutions that are going nowhere.

If we can kill their subsidies for a year or two, they'll die on the vine."