Jaczko - Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator

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Copyright 2019 by Gregory B. Jaczko

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2019

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by David Litman

Jacket image from Istock /Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jaczko, Gregory B., 1970author.

Title: Confessions of a rogue nuclear regulator / Gregory B. Jaczko.

Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, [2019] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018013694 | ISBN 9781476755762 | ISBN 9781476755786 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Nuclear energyUnited States.

Classification: LCC HD9698.U5 J33 2019 | DDC 333.792/40973dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013694

ISBN 978-1-4767-5576-2

ISBN 978-1-4767-5578-6 (ebook)

I never planned to be in a position to tell this story. A trained physicist, a Birkenstock-wearing PhD still amazed that a few simple equations could explain something as extraordinary as the northern lights, I never intended to become a nuclear regulator.

Before I came to Washington, I had never heard of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. There are no television shows or movies with dashing federal agents rushing into a nuclear power plant with blue blazers flashing NRC logos. But because of a powerful politician and a right-place-at-the-right-time kind of timing, I became not only a nuclear regulator but the head of the agency.

This is how my first conversation with Harry Reid, the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, who eventually got me on the commission, went back in 2001 when I was interviewing for a job in his office.

As we sat down in his office, he said, in a soft, raspy voice, I would like you to come work for me.

Great, I replied.

You are a physicist, right?

Yes.

Tell me the name of your PhD dissertation.

An Effective Theory of Baryons and Mesons.

He stood up abruptly and asked, pointing at the window, What do you think of my view?

And so I started down the path that would eventually get me the job of commissioner, landing me inside the secret corridors of the agency charged with regulating the nuclear industry. I felt like Dorothy invited behind the curtain at Oz. Then, in another unlikely development for a guy with untested political skills and his basic idealism still intact, I became the agencys chairman.

The problem was that I wasnt the kind of leader the NRC was used to: I had no ties to the industry, no broad connections across Washington, and no political motivation other than to respect the power of nuclear technology while also being sure it is deployed safely. I knew my scientific brain could stay on top of the facts. I knew to do my homework and to work hard. But I could also be aggressive when pursuing the facts, sometimes pressing a point without being sensitive to the pride of those around me. This may have had something to do with why I eventually got run out of town. But I also think that happened because I saw things up close that I was not meant to see: an agency overwhelmed by the industry it is supposed to regulate and a political system determined to keep it that way. I saw how powerful these 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.

B orn in 1970, I discovered the TV program Cosmos at a young age, which led to my fascination with physics. What other discipline could take a complex thing like the movement of the Apollo moon lander and describe it in a few mathematical expressions? But halfway through my five years of work toward a physics doctorate, I began to feel that the abstract world of theoretical particle physics was too removed from the real world. I wanted to use science to improve the world. And I thought there was no better place for doing that than Washington, DC.

Becoming a sharp-elbowed political player, as one magazine later described me, was not a goal of mine. In fact after I moved to Washington, my mother took every opportunity to tell friends, colleagues, and members of Congress that Id once sworn I would never have a job that made me wear a suit.

My ticket to Washington came in the form of a fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For one year, alongside dozens of other scientists and engineers, I would serve as free labor for a member of Congress. So just weeks after defending my dissertation and receiving my PhD, I gave away my car and moved to an apartment in Washington that Id rented sight unseen. It was August 1999.

My first task was to find a congressional office that would take me. Many politicians liked the idea of hiring a highly educated employee who cost nothing more than a desk, a phone, and a computer. But not everyone was willing to take a fellow. While we fellows knew a lot about some very specific branch of science or technology, many of us knew nothing about Congress and how it worked. That was certainly true of me. As a physics and philosophy major in college, I had had little time for classes in American government. Most of what I remembered about the federal government came from the Schoolhouse Rock! cartoons I watched as a kid.