Nevada officials concerned about next NRC chairman

Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 | 9:41 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE SERVICES

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers will be anxiously watching the Bush administration as it seeks a replacement for Richard Meserve, who on Thursday resigned his post as Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman, effective in March.

"Who are they going to get is my concern," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said. "The closeness of the administration to the nuclear power industry is of real concern."

The NRC in the coming years will make important decisions that affect Nevada. The agency, which regulates the nuclear power industry, would be responsible for licensing both the construction and the operation of Yucca Mountain. The Department of Energy aims to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste at the site, beginning as early as 2010.

The department is expected to submit its application for a construction license to the NRC by December 2004.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he hoped Meserve's replacement would be fair and objective about Yucca. But he also said, "I hope that his successor will realize that transporting thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste across the entire country is too dangerous, and that deep geological burial in the Nevada desert is not a viable or safe option."

Meserve was selected for the commission and made chairman by President Bill Clinton in 1999. Meserve said he is leaving the job a year before his term expires to take another one: president of the Carnegie Institution, a prominent research center in Washington.

President Bush will nominate his replacement on the five-member commission and name a new chairman. The nomination requires Senate confirmation.

Reid said there are plenty of candidates in academia who could independently review scientific studies of Yucca to determine whether the site is a safe place to permanently bury nuclear waste. But Reid does not have a candidate in mind.

Meserve, a Democrat, leaves at a time when the agency is facing a range of new challenges that include analyzing Yucca and protecting the nation's 103 operating nuclear power reactors from terrorists.

In remarks Thursday to agency staff, Meserve said he felt "we have responded effectively to the terrorists' challenge to our national security."

Meserve is one of three Democrats on the commission. Commissioner Greta Joy Dicus, a Democrat, is expected to depart in June when her term expires.