NRC Senate Hearing: Clouds On The Horrizon

update

So Burns is heading towards door. He is a democrat nominee. Anyways, all the democrat commissioners are duds and the democrats on the sub-committee are weak on nuclear safety. There are just enough weak big mouth democrats on the sub committee to give the appearance we are strongly pro safety. 

Who even cares about anything nuclear safety in Trump's America? The Trump show drowns out everything nuclear safety. The system is weakening regulations and safety on a broad scale and our political chaos is putting nuclear safety way way on back burner. The trends are a recipe for disaster. It is the happyland Titanic just before they hit the iceberg.  

The democrats are more captured by the industry as the republican's Trump nominated two commissioner leading to a full set of commissioner since 2016. The republicans denied those nominees to Obama. The NRC recently has gone hard core deregulation and government weakening as a result of Trump's nominees. But you have seen nothing yet. So Burns is heading out the door this summer. There is no reason for Trump to replace Burns...what is the purpose for another democrat on the commission. That position won't be filled until after the next presidential election. That will make the NRC commission MORE hard core regulation weakenors in the worst financial in the history of the Nuclear industry. The commissioners and sub committee politicians are systemically blinding our government from seeing the true conditions in the industry. The decline of the quality with NRC employees identified in this hearing are going intensified the blindness of US government with seeing the real conditions in the nuclear industry. Our world is going increasingly dark on us!!! 

I like Senator Whitehouse. He makes the case the industry has been fiddling with the comissionors nominees in order to weaken regulations...

"Annie Caputo and David A. Wright, nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the US Senate last week, were sworn in on May 30 as commissioners of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Ms. Caputo will serve the remainder of a five-year term ending June 30, 2021, and Mr. Wright will serve the remainder of a five-year term ending June 30, 2020. The Senate also reconfirmed Jeffrey Baran to serve a second term as commissioner, with the new term expiring on June 30, 2023. He will be sworn in at a later date."

***Senate Hearing

What say the House and where do they sit on nuclear safety horizon?

Senator Asks NRC for ‘Game Plan’ on Workforce Stabilization

Sen Ben Cardin, D-Md., today asked leadership of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a “game plan” on workforce stabilization and recruiting after discussing with agency officials the steady reduction of headcount at NRC as the agency’s budget has declined in recent years.

At a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Cardin said NRC’s employee headcount had fallen by 23 percent since FY2010, and agency officials testified that efforts to fill the hiring pipeline with younger people have not borne much fruit.

Kristine Svinicki, chairman of the NRC, said the agency has a “very senior workforce,” with barely two percent of the workforce under the age of 30. “It is a growing concern, the front end of the pipeline,” she said.

NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran said the agency needs to focus on “stabilizing” its workforce, and that it was “harder to retain folks” because NRC is a smaller Federal agency and is unable to offer a larger number of promotion opportunities.

He said NRC staff was “working very hard” on the workforce problem, but added, “as long as our budget keeps declining, it will be very difficult.”

Sen. Cardin said he worried that “attacks” on the Federal government workforce in the form of budget and benefits reductions at some agencies were contributing to the workforce problem at NRC and crimping its ability to attract younger workers.

“We have to pay a little bit of attention to this,” he declared. “We understand size is one thing,” but not having the brightest minds in the field of nuclear safety “is a challenge for us,” the senator said. 

Chairman Svinicki said NRC is making a lot of IT investments “to give people the tools to do things more efficiently,” and added, “we have a lot of mid-career employees who are bringing a lot of energy” to the agency.