Republicans like to make a big deal about how they support nuclear power, but the Trump administration has been gutting the technical and financial infrastructure needed to support that industry’s growth.
Keystone Cops approach to energy dominance not likely to succeed.
A White House executive order issued last month targeting the independence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees the safety and security of U.S. commercial nuclear facilities and materials, as well as the possibly illegal firing earlier this month of Commissioner Christopher Hanson by President Donald Trump, are raising serious concerns about the agency’s effectiveness as a regulator going forward. While I’ve often been a critic of the NRC for taking actions favoring the nuclear industry at the expense of public health and safety, preserving the NRC in its current form is the best hope for heading off a U.S. nuclear plant disaster like the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdowns in Japan.
My long-standing beef with the NRC has primarily been with its political leadership, not with the rank-and-file staff of highly knowledgeable inspectors, analysts and researchers committed to helping ensure that nuclear power remains safe and secure. These professionals are well aware how quickly things can go south at a nuclear power plant without rigorous oversight. They know from experience what obscure corners to look in and what questions to ask. And they can tell — and are not afraid to push back — when they are getting sold snake oil by fly-by-night startups looking to make easy money by capitalizing on the current nuclear power craze. Technical rigor and expert judgment form the bedrock of this work.
But when staff are compelled to sweep legitimate safety concerns under the rug in the interest of political expediency, many will leave rather than compromise their scientific integrity. So there is little wonder that a wave of experienced personnel is headed out the door in the wake of the executive order on NRC “reform,” which strips the NRC of any vestige of independence, forces it to engage in the promotion of nuclear power and imposes mandatory deadlines for regulatory reviews with little regard for the quality and the complexity of the applications the NRC receives.
By the end of this month, numerous senior managers are reportedly retiring, including the highly competent executive director of operations, the general counsel and the heads of many divisions, resulting in what some are calling a “complete decapitation” of the agency. The sudden loss of so much expertise cannot be readily replaced and will jeopardize the NRC’s ability to effectively oversee the nuclear power fleet. Moreover, it will undoubtedly slow down the agency’s licensing of new facilities to a crawl — politically mandated timelines or not. Although this will be damaging to the nuclear enterprise, the industry has been largely silent, afraid to upset the applecart of tax credits and other subsidies for both operating and new reactors that it hopes will emerge intact from the budget battles on Capitol Hill. But such incentives will be of little use if there is an accident that scares private capital away from making its own investments in nuclear power projects.
Nearly 60 percent of staff at the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear-friendly Loan Programs Office may be lost through President Trump’s deferred resignation program, the Washington Examinerreported.
According to the news outlet, 123 of the 210 current LPO employees have opted into the retirement buyout, which would amount to a 58.5 percent staffing cut in the office that helps finance new nuclear projects among other energy proposals. There is a 45-day period for federal employees older than 40 to change their minds, which could impact the final number of exiting staff.
These potential losses prompted Thomas Hochman, director of infrastructure policy for the nonprofit Foundation for American Innovation, to organize a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, cosigned by dozens of organizations, including nuclear companies, advocacy groups, and labor organizations.
As of April 11, the extended deadline for the deferred resignation program, the DOE did not have final numbers to report on how many people had opted into the retirement program, according to the Washington Examiner.
The letter: Signatories asked the Trump administration to consider the importance of the LPO’s work and its impact as it weighs budget and staffing decisions across the DOE.
“The office’s ability to underwrite and monitor large-scale energy projects depends on specialized technical staff and institutional capacity. Without them, the federal government risks slowing or stalling the diverse mix of energy projects that serve national priorities, such as new nuclear energy development for powering AI data centers—undermining investment certainty and weakening American competitiveness,” the letter states.
Nuclear-specific examples of recent LPO funding efforts include the long-standing loan for Plant Vogtle’s AP1000 reactors in Georgia, the only new commercial nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in the last 30 years; and a $1.56 billion loan guarantee to Holtec in support of the restart of Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan.
Nuclear energy is an important technology for U.S. energy security and competitiveness, and the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) is essential to nuclear energy’s success. By investing in early-stage projects, the LPO accelerates technological advancement, attracts private capital, and ensures U.S. leadership in meeting rapidly growing global energy demand, enhancing our economic competitiveness, geopolitical influence and national security.
Hmm… It wasn’t the earthquake but the tsunami:
Events at Fukushima Daiichi 1-3 & 4
It appears that no serious damage was done to the reactors by the earthquake, and the operating units 1-3 were automatically shut down in response to it, as designed. At the same time all six external power supply sources were lost due to earthquake damage, so the emergency diesel generators located in the basements of the turbine buildings started up. Initially cooling would have been maintained through the main steam circuit bypassing the turbine and going through the condensers.
Then 41 minutes later, at 3:42 pm, the first tsunami wave hit, followed by a second 8 minutes later.