Confirmation for key figure in Yucca Mountain vote in limbo

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 | 1:15 p.m.

The Senate is revamping its rules for presidential nominations today, an effort to address the backlog of government officials that need Senate confirmation before they can start their jobs.

But the package of resolutions isn’t likely to expedite Senate confirmation of one particularly controversial appointment, especially for Nevada: that of Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner William C. Ostendorff, whose term on the NRC expires Thursday.

President Obama has already renominated Ostendorff, one of the Republican members of the NRC board, to serve a full term that would expire on June 30, 2016. But to get back into his chair after tomorrow, his nomination first has to get the go-ahead from Harry Reid.

Reid has said he won’t block Ostendorff’s nomination, which has been on the Senate’s Executive Calendar since the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee gave its needed thumbs-up to his candidacy on June 9.

But no block doesn’t mean it’s a priority. Ostendorff is one of 52 nominations currently pending before the Senate.

If Ostendorff’s term lapses, his absence potentially rocks the balance of power on the NRC enough to shutter the Yucca mountain operation for good -- if its chairman is willing to go back on his word.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko has been saying for months now that he can’t close a vote on the lifespan of Yucca Mountain because there isn’t the money in the budget to do it, at least not since Reid zeroed out budget funding for fiscal 2011.

With no money to work on Yucca Mountain, Jaczko’s rationale has been, we’re not going to touch it.

But those in favor of storing spent nuclear fuel there suspect Jaczko’s got a different motivation: waiting until he can stack the board for a more favorable vote.

Commissioner George Apostolakis recused himself from the Yucca debate long ago, meaning the decision about whether or not to allow the Department of Energy to pull the licensing application for the site rests in the hands of four commissioners, three of whom must be active and present in order to have a quorum.

Ostendorff is one of the two Republican members of the NRC, and though members (other than Jaczko) haven’t publicly stated their opinion as to whether Yucca can legally be shut down, Ostendorff, it’s known, has already tried to head off at least one of Jaczko’s directives on the subject, leading many to assume he’s in favor of forcing the project to move forward.

When it comes to Yucca, the NRC is in limbo. The commissioners have cast their votes on the DOE’s license application-revoking ability; but that vote hasn’t been “confirmed” by a second, confirmation vote that’s required under NRC rules.

Ties at the NRC go to the runner, as in, the standing preliminary NRC decision that said the DOE didn’t have the ability to withdraw its application.

But without Ostendorff’s expected vote, some speculate, the NRC board could vote against confirmation, effectively scrapping the old vote, and start again with a better-stacked deck -- assuming, that is, that at least one of the two remaining commissioners, other than Jaczko, want to see Yucca fall off the table for good.

When asked by the Environment and Public Works committee member Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming whether he thought the Senate should expedite Ostendorff’s nomination, and reconfirm him before the term expires, Jaczko was not as emphatic as many others have been.

“I would leave it up to the Senate to -- to decide that, but I certainly have had a good and productive relationship with him,” Jaczko said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “And I think he's a valuable member of the commission.”

Reid has not announced a vote on Ostendorff’s nomination, nor any vote on a group of nominations before recess breaks. The next such break begins this weekend, for the Fourth of July.

But Democrats are discussing keeping the Senate in session next week -- a decision they may take in order to keep working on the budget and debt ceiling negotiations. The United States is expect to hit the national debt limit in early August, leaving little more than a month to conclude an agreement on a fiscal way forward.