Nuclear, nuclear, who's got the nuke?

You've heard a lot about Energy Central's EnergyBiz Leadership Forum in Washington already this week.  I also was there and was assigned specifically to cover two sessions, an address by Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, followed by a panel entitled: "Nuclear and Coal - will the next generation ever get built?

After listening to Jaczko, my immediate reaction to the question posed to the panel was, "Are you kidding me? No way!" For some 20-25 minutes, Jaczko spoke exclusively about the inner workings of the NRC. I mean, the real nitty gritty aspect of his talk was about how he has managed to add 500 people dedicated to dealing with the huge influx of 13 pending applications for approval to build nuclear plants. "Overall, the agency has grown by 25% and the budget by 50%," he bragged.

"The influx of new staff has been difficult, but represents a tremendous opportunity," he went on. "We've learned new creative ways to do things. One of the challenges is trying to educate and teach the new workforce about 30 years of regulation. We're really working on knowledge management issues at the agency.

"A lot of what we have to do as an agency is to teach new people why we do things certain ways," Jaczko continued. "We will be working on that for the next several years."

You notice that he did not mention anything about getting any of those 13 applications for new nuclear plants approved so they can be built. In fact, he didn't mention that issue anywhere in his speech. He did admit that 18 applications had been submitted, but five of those have been "pulled back." Is that any great surprise? People probably have literally died waiting for the bureaucracy of which Jaczko is so proud of growing by 500 people. It takes 500 people to consider 13 applications?

If it wasn't so tragic, the NRC situation and Jaczko himself would be hilarious. A "nuclear renaissance" is being proposed and talked about. Congress has even approved back-up funding for two reactors in Georgia and ground is being broken and yet Georgia Power does not have an approved permit to begin construction.

Talk about bureaucracy absolutely gone mad - 500 people to review 13 applications - and the agency hasn't approved one in how many years? Since the 1970s, was it?

I was talking with a nuclear engineer afterwards and pointed out the absurdity of Jaczko's address mentioning that I wasn't aware that an application for a new plant has been approved by the NRC since the 1970s. Apparently a Kool-Aid drinker himself, he insisted that that is not the case. "There were a couple left over ones approved in the 1980s, and I think the last one in the 1990s," he said.  I really wasn't in a position to argue with a nuclear engineer, not being one myself. But if there were "left-over" applications approved by the NRC as late as the 1990s, exactly where are those plants today?

The United States is going to be starved for base-load generation in the very near future and the NRC is going to spend the "next several years" training 500 new employees in the intricacies of its massively bloated and exponentially growing bureaucracy? Meanwhile, where are the permits to build any real plants?

There is an old saying that Americans have had a very hard time learning, but was never more true than now. Another saying that might fit: "The worst possible way to get anything accomplished is to let the government do it." Five-hundred new employees for 13 pending applications is just a tragic example of a bureaucrat adding more bureaucrats to his bureau, but accomplishing nothing. And then bragging about it! God help us all.