Weakening the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be a bad move by Biden administration, Congress

An article last month in the prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists by Dr. Allison Macfarlane, former chairwoman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, should ring alarm bells for Illinois officials — especially those promoting another round of nuclear building in Illinois.

Macfarlane, no anti-nuclear ideologue, expressed shock that the heavily pro-nuclear Biden administration recently withdrew the re-nomination of NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran. His opponents in the nuclear industry and their political allies accused Baran of the heinous offense of — being too concerned about nuclear safety. That Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema agree should send shivers down the spine of any state governor.

One would think that officials from the state with the most operating nuclear reactors — Illinois, with 11 — would express concern if not outrage. Instead, crickets.

Simultaneous with this political capitulation, news accounts described efforts by certain members of Congress to reform the NRC, giving it a new mission — to “fundamentally changing the NRC, in leadership and policy,” according to Politico. The goal is to “streamline regulations at the NRC and potentially adjust the agency’s mission statement” to speed up the development and propagation of new, experimental small modular nuclear reactors.

The universe sometimes has a very perverse sense of humor. On the same day the news of the proposed Congressional “reform” broke, the nose landing gear of a Delta Air Lines jet collapsed on takeoff. What’s the connection?

Weak oversight leads to disasters

The Delta incident is the exclamation point to a litany of disasters that demonstrates the results of weakening regulatory oversight of critical industries, industries where huge numbers of lives might be at stake. What happens when watchdogs become lap dogs for the industries they’re supposed to regulate?

• Two crashed Boeing 737-MAX airliners, result of industry self-regulation; death toll: 346.
• The East Palestine Norfolk Southern train derailment, contaminating an entire community that is still feeling the health effects of the disaster and receiving little compensation, the result of lobbyists and grifting politicians preventing implementation of safety recommendations.
• The in-flight blowout of an emergency exit door on a Boeing 737 airliner — no injuries but revelations that 1,800 reports of shoddy manufacture and maintenance went unheeded by federal regulators.

And now members of Congress are attempting to deregulate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so that it would be easier to construct new reactors with unproven experimental designs.

What could possibly go wrong?

Once again, the response from Illinois officials, both federal and state, has been crickets.

Worse still, the Illinois state legislature recently removed a protective moratorium on the construction of these new, experimental small reactors without doing anything to address the high-level radioactive waste buildup in Illinois. Should the small reactors ever be built (and there is considerable doubt regarding that), they would only increase waste stored in Illinois with no permanent disposal option.

One of the most important messages of the movie “Oppenheimer” is the degree to which enormous or seemingly unlimited power — whether scientific or political — often blinds and overrules good judgment. Allowing the nuclear industry and its political allies to continually erode the regulatory framework turns the NRC into trade show promoters, not regulators.

With the most operating reactors in the nation, and a next-generation of reactors being ramrodded down the throats of Americans, Illinois cannot afford any relaxation of nuclear regulation. With the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster looming in April, such a move has the potential, at worst, of turning this state into the Belarus of North America.

Dave Kraft is director of Nuclear Energy Information Service, a 42-year-old nuclear power watchdog and safe energy advocacy organization based in Chicago.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.

The views and opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Chicago Sun-Times or any of its affiliates.