Opinion:

Conspiracy At The Highest Levels Charged By Nevada Nuclear Agency

It's High Time For Congressional Investigation That Should Lead To Criminal Charges

by Johnny Gunn

Charges of collusion, conspiracy, even secret negotiations between the regulated and the regulator(s) have emerged in a response issued by Bob Loux of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, the state organization formed to fight the concept of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. Loux's charges even involve the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) getting into the nuclear regulatory business.

A conspiracy in which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (these are the regulators) work with the Department of Energy (DOE) (this is the regulated) to establish the rules under which the Yucca project works is about as close to criminal as it can get.

To put it into terms that might be better understood, this would amount to La Cosa Nostra being tutored by the FBI in how best to get around laws and regulations.

This isn't simply a case of trading information, it is a working conspiracy in which those who are by law deemed the regulators are working to create the rules of operation with the agency they are supposed to be regulating. "Nuclear regulation is supposed to be the public's business." Those are the words of a principle endorsed by the NRC. Secret negotiations are not in the best public interest.

The rules being established will have an affect on life. High level nuclear waste is one of the most dangerous products on earth today and it should be treated with the utmost respect. The DOE, NRC, and EPA, working in collusion are playing with the lives of generations of Americans. Why?

There is no obvious answer to that question. The DOE has made a financial disaster of the Yucca project. According to most reports coming out of Washington, the Yucca project is billions of dollars over budget, and there seems to be no timetable to even get licensing for the project. There are congressional investigations underway to determine if DOE-contracted scientists have been involved in fraudulent activities dealing with water mitigation assertions.

The EPA and NRC standards initially in place for DOE and the Yucca repository were tossed out by a Federal Judge, and it appears that only saving face is involved in the current set of standards as outlined by the conspiracy. In the words of the Nuclear Projects Agency report, "NRC's proposal grew from a closely coordinated and largely secret interagency effort involving DOE, EPA, and NRC to circumvent the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidation of previous EPA and NRC Yucca Mountain standards."

If even the least percentage of these charges is true, a full-scale congressional investigation must take place. This isn't a political football or pork barrel financing, this is a situation in which millions of people's health and safety is at risk. Transportation plans seem to change as radically as the Washoe Zephyr, standards of radiation emissions seem to fluctuate from 10,000 years to one million years, and now we have the OMB, an agency that has never been in the nuclear regulatory business, working in collusion with the DOE to create standards.

How much money has to be flushed down the Yucca Mountain hole before someone with just a tad of empathy for future generations demands a stop to the process?

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