Moe Lane

The DC has the scoop*: Congress is now investigating whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) actually had the authority to unilaterally shut down the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility without Congressional authorization, given that Yucca Mountain was authorized under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.  Furthermore, there are now serious questions about whether the NRC’s leadership – and, by extension, the Obama administration – is ignoring the actual science of the situation in favor of petty and crasss partisan politics.

This is the key paragraph, I think: it describes the background to the sudden quashing in November 2010 of a safety report on the facility.

Dr. Janet Kotra, the deputy office director responsible for drafting the [Yucca Mountain] safety evaluation, known as the Safety Evaluation Report (SER), wrote in an internal memo that [NRC Chair {and Reid crony} Gregory] Jaczko unilaterally instructed his staff to “move to orderly closure of NRC’s Yucca Mountain program.” This is despite the fact the Nuclear Waste Policy Act remains in effect and the full commission has yet to rule on whether the Department of Energy can legally withdraw the license application.

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[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I do like what Francis wrote, but I want to really drive it home to my people – which is to say, science fiction geeks. Let me strip this down for you. There was a quote that Jerry Pournelle likes to repeat, from one of the anti-nuclear power people: “The only physics I ever took was Ex-Lax.“ Remember that one? Remember how it made you laugh at the idiot?

Well, did you vote for Obama? – because if you did, you voted for the guy who takes people like that idiot seriously.

And, do you know something? I told you so.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.