| CONFESSIONS OF A ROGUE NUCLEAR REGULATOR Gregory B. Jaczko New York: Simon & Schuster, January 2019 |
Rating: 3.0 Fair |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-4767-5576-2 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-4767-5576-0 | 196pp. | HC | $26.00 | |
Dr. Jaczko beginning his title with the word "confessions" invites the thought that his book is similar to John Perkins's purported exposé Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. And so it is — but only to a point. Having read it, I consider it largely a true and accurate account — but an incomplete one.
Jaczko, a Ph.D. physicist, begins by telling us he had never heard of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before he came to Washington. According to his Prologue, it was Senator Harry Reid (then the Democratic Whip) who offered him a position as an NRC commissioner. He related a suspiciously cursory conversation with the veteran politician, and closes the Prologue by telling of his conversion to a "no nukes" protestor.
But I also think that happened because I saw things up close I was not meant to see: an agency overwhelmed by the agency it is supposed to regulate and a political system determined to keep it that way. I saw how powerful those forces were under the generally progressive policies of the Obama administration. These concerns are even more pressing under the Trump administration, in which companies have even more power. I was willing to describe this out loud and to do something about it. And I was especially determined to speak up after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan, which happened while I was chairman of the NRC. This cataclysm was the culmination of a series of events that changed my view about nuclear power. When I started at the NRC, I gave no thought to the question of whether nuclear power could be contained. By the end, I no longer had that luxury. I know nuclear power is a failed technology. This is the story of how I came to this belief. – Pages viii-ix |
Dr. Jaczko was NRC commissioner for three and one-half years.1 The last year of his tenure spanned roughly the time from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster to the granting of licenses for new nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina. By his telling, it was a time of political infighting, with industry lobbyists and members of Congress influencing the other commissioners against him and working to undercut his push for Fukushima-inspired safety improvements. As I say, I think his account is largely true but not complete. It is incomplete in several ways. His descriptions of the Davis-Besse and Brown's Ferry accidents are sketchy. Parts of the Fukushima story are omitted; he never mentions the massive tank farm built to hold the contaminated water, nor the attempt to freeze the ground around the destroyed reactors to prevent it reaching the sea. I think he leaves out important parts of the battle over Yucca Mountain as well, though I don't remember much about that. Even in his chapter on the future of nuclear power, he barely mentions the alternatives to standard, water-cooled reactor designs.2 His Appendix, which he devotes to a summary of reactor science, is cursory and at places incorrect.
Along with that, there are a few instances of illogical statements, and a general sense that he is overly critical of the nuclear industry. So I consider this a one-sided account overall. It's worth reading, but definitely not a keeper. I'll give it a 3.0.
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