But no one mentioned Yucca Mountain, except in passing, at this morning’s hearing to examine NRC chairman Greg Jaczko’s conduct. And when asked about it, even the commissioner who Issa said had been strong-armed said the issue hadn't triggered the discord this time.
“That was a big debate last year, there were clearly different views on both sides. But I don’t think that that’s lingering. It didn’t even come up,” said Commissioner William Magwood, a Democrat appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. “It was an issue, it was a big debate, but I don’t see it as a big debate that broke relationships. I mean after that was done, we moved on to other things and there really was no lasting impact.”
Magwood and three other NRC commissioners wrote a letter to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley in October complaining that Jaczko’s leadership was “causing serious damage to this institution” and that Jaczko had “intimidated and bullied” staff to the degree that he has created a high level of fear and anxiety resulting in a chilled work environment.”
That fueled discontent in Congress with the NRC’s work and Jaczko’s leadership -- frustrations that in earlier hearings focused primarily on Jaczko’s position on Yucca Mountain.
But while that may be what the lawmakers -- mostly Republicans -- cared about. Based on the hearing today it doesn’t seem to be what motivated the NRC commissioners to take a stand against their chairman: What they were most concerned with was Jaczko’s conduct since March's Fukushima Daichi nuclear meltdown in Japan.
Several factors should put people at ease, Orrell said. While the Obama administration has mothballed Yucca Mountain, no process for selecting another site has been created in federal law. The Yucca license withdrawal also is being challenged in court, which could give a glimmer of hope to the project's supporters.
The nation's only active deep underground waste site is the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad, N.M., which is mainly storing plutonium from bomb-making.
Local officials and residents have welcomed the economic development that has come from hosting the site, and community leaders have indicated they are open to expanding it, Orrell said. That makes the salt beds of southeast New Mexico a likely long-term home for the nation's nuclear waste if Yucca Mountain remains out of the picture.
Orrell noted, too, that granite and salt beds are not the only type of environments under study. Sandia teams have launched similar reviews of clay and shale and deeper holes bored into the earth — as far as 3 miles — as potential sites. The studies have been done in part to keep skills sharp among staff who had been working on Yucca Mountain, Orrell said.
But Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry engineer who is now a Vermont-based consultant on nuclear-related issues, called the report on granite sites "ominous." He pointed to factors that he said raise the likelihood of the massive granite outcroppings in rural parts of the Northeast attracting attention as potential waste sites.
Granite would appear to have an advantage over other environments, if the recent development of high-level waste sites in other countries is any guide. Both Finland and Sweden are on track to open waste sites buried deep in granite within the next 14 years.
The Sandia study says that granite's properties as a chemically and physically stable rock, with low permeability, would "strongly inhibit" radiation from reaching the outside environment if waste canisters leaked.
In addition to the Appalachian mountain range and upper Midwest, the study identifies several areas of the West as rich in granite deposits. But the western regions are described as having moderate to high seismic activity.
In contrast, the northern Appalachian and Adirondack region, including upstate New York and New England, as well as the Lake Superior region of Wisconsin and Minnesota, are described as having little to no seismic and volcanic activity.
Vermont is no stranger to the nuclear waste storage debate. It was one of the places Department of Energy surveyed for potential waste sites in the mid-1980s — before Congress targeted Yucca Mountain.
At one public hearing in Wells River, more than 2,000 people turned out to voice their outrage at the idea.
New England has long been a hotbed of opposition to the nuclear industry. Vermont is currently being sued by Entergy Corp. over the state's effort to deny a new 20-year license for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
Madeleine Kunin was governor the last time a nuclear waste storage site search focused on Vermont. The letters she got and wrote in opposition — one resident said the proposal would "use Vermonters as guinea pigs" — fill more than a half-dozen folders in the state archives.
Kunin said recently she doubted the state would be any more welcoming now to the idea.
"Absolutely not," she said. "My gut reaction is this would not be a good place." The waste should go "somewhere really isolated from inhabited land … somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
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