Posted on 12/15/2016 7:56:56 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
The Obama White House made an unfortunate and ungracious choice in launching a preemptive attack on Rick Perry's nomination this week. Spokesman Josh Earnest did his best deadpan as he disparaged the choice as one based on politics and not merit.
But what about President Obama's appointments of Ken Salazar, Kathleen Sebelius, Tom Vilsack and Janet Napolitano? They were all lawyers without specific expertise in the issue areas of the departments they led. But each, having experience as elected Democratic statewide officials, knew enough about their respective issue areas that their status as non-experts never really mattered.
Perry spent 14 years governing what remains by far the largest energy-producing state in the union. That may not qualify him for an advanced degree in nuclear physics or combustion chemistry, but it does mean he understands how energy markets work.
That's perhaps as much as one can hope for from the Department of Energy, for it is hardly the most vital of federal departments. Ironically, it is one that Perry himself promised to abolish when running for president in 2012.
We doubt that Perry will make himself the last secretary of energy, but his opinion that the department's powers should be limited is something President-elect Trump's team must have viewed as a plus when it selected him, and that is a positive sign.
There is one truly important task that we hope Perry can accomplish. One of the Energy Department's few essential functions (which could easily be shifted to the Defense Department, by the way) is to safeguard and dispose of the nuclear waste produced by America's commercial nuclear power plants. Utility companies across America paid $21 billion to the Energy Department for this appropriate government service, which the Energy Department has completely failed to perform.
Its failure, due to political sabotage, is both dangerous and expensive. The Yucca Mountain repository, in a deserted, uninhabitable section of Nevada, was supposed to begin taking in nuclear waste on New Year's Day 1998, so that the material would not have to be stored in communities across the nation. Nineteen years and countless scientific studies later, Yucca is just a $15 billion hole in the ground, thanks mostly to ferocious opposition from the retiring Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid.
Reid also had a huge assist from the Obama administration, which broke federal law in attempting to close the site for good. Obama went so far as to designate national monuments strategically in areas through which the waste would have to travel by rail on the way to Yucca.
Every year Yucca Mountain fails to take in nuclear waste, taxpayers incur billions in additional penalties to the utilities whose waste the government is not taking as agreed upon. By one 2013 estimate, taxpayers could be on the hook for $50 billion in damages by 2020, on top of the construction costs already incurred.
Hold a ribbon cutting when you deliver the first barrel of nuclear waste and name it the Harry Reid, Jr. Memorial Nuclear Waste Dump.
Okay, folks. No one wants to defend the DOE here. But, we have got to stop holding up the DOD acquisition process as a model for anyone else to imitate. It is really really corrupt and inefficient - because that is where the real money is.
Remember this article $125 Billion Pentagon Coverup Just Discovered, Entire Report Was Buried
How about they build those fuel reprocessing plants that they were talking about building a few years back? Would be a lot better than just stuffing it in a mountain and forgetting about it.
I can see having a place to store non-recoverable elements and contaminated materials, but storing spent fuel is just a waste of money and resources.
Hmmm. Got a feelin’ that hairy screed will by pulling cat cortez mantos’ strings to put a stop to that. Just cause he won’t be in office doesn’t mean he won’t be in control. (Thanks vegas!)
Reprocessing spent rods was made illegal by Carter. That would have to be overturned by Congress, I believe. In the meantime, waste continues to build up in surface storage because Carter and other presidents have cut deals with foreign government to have their spent waste shipped here. Every person, or household, in the USA who pays a utility bill has contributed to the $15 billion dollars that has been spent on Yucca Mountain which Harry Reid shuttered =- sealing up millions of dollars of machinery in the bottom of a mountain. It’s a fraud and a disgrace!
Oooh.
Me like big time.
I forgot about Yucca Mountain and Searchlight Whorehouse Harry Reid.
If Perry can do this, he’d be the BEST DOE director in decades.
>>Reprocessing spent rods was made illegal by Carter. That would have to be overturned by Congress, I believe
IIRC, he did it by E.O. which Reagan repealed. But, in the mean time, all the reprocessing infrastructure was scrapped.
Yeah, I remember the Carter edict. That needs to go away, and our nuclear power industry brought into the 21st century.
I'd also like the DOE to do research on new nuclear reactor designs and extracting uranium from seawater.
Paging Elon Musk!
His stock went up with PEPOTUS Trump.
The secret word for today, “Visionary”!
It’s already got a name...
The Stinking Desert National Indian monument
and Cobalt Testing Range...
Now that is promising!
If you ever worked in the nuclear power industry, you would know that the key nuclear plant builders in the US sold their nuclear business, or formed partnerships, with Japanese and European companies in order to keep them alive.
In the 35 year nuclear plant building hiatus in the US, those companies kept on building and improving nuclear power plants, while we run ours to end of life.
We have some catching up to do here, but it can be done.
Both Yucca and processing plants succumbed to the same politics (green), which states that no nuclear power technology is acceptable....only solar and wind power are suitable.
Designing and running a nuclear waste reprocessing plant requires top-notch engineers, managers, and operators, who can easily find more stable (and probably more lucrative) employment elsewhere. Given the instability of the whole process due to politics, those sorts of techies will look elsewhere.
They need to do something. The tanks at Hanford are being held together with spit, baling wire and duct tape, while taxpayer money is being thrown in to the VIT Plant backhole.
Nevada went for Hillary. I sat stick it to them.
Up until Carter, we actually HAD spent fuel reprocessing plants. The only real problems are the political will, and regaining that technology that was lost two generations ago.
Luckily, the US is about the only country that stopped reprocessing fuel.
The others never stopped.
Finishing and operating the Savannah River Site would do America far more good than opening Yucca Mountain ... although both should be done.
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