Agency Smackdown, Round 2: A Critique of ‘the Nuclear Party’

From the New York Times:

The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose four fellow commissioners complained about him to the White House, saying that he had been withholding information from them and wielding too much power, drew a spirited defense on Wednesday from a predecessor at the agency.

Peter A. Bradford, who was a commission member from 1977 to 1982, was speaking with reporters in a conference call on another topic, whether the recent approval of a new reactor design by the commission represented a major step toward a “nuclear renaissance.” (It doesn’t, he said.)

Mr. Bradford never led the Nuclear Regulatory Commission but can be considered an expert on multimember agencies; he later served as the chairman of the public utility commissions of New York State and Maine.

In the course of the call, Mr. Bradford said that the four commissioners were trying to give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, “a push toward the door.”

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