Bloated Bureaucracies

[Charleen Raddatz <CTR@nrc.gov>]

This is only my opinion, and surely one of which my
employer would not approve.  
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Sometimes it amazes me at how such esteemed experts
and professionals can bury thier heads in the sand so easily.
When it comes to analyzing the cause behind the high cost
of disposal of spent nuclear fuel, we have a couple of obvious
possibilities.  

1. Figure out what the problems are and work to solve them.

2. Blame it on someone else and whine about it.

Too often, the second option is being selected by people who
know better.  To believe that government scientists
intentionally subvert the truth to ensure continued
employment is not only naive, it is insulting to the thousands
of hard working health physicists honestly trying to make
things better.

The problems associated with the storage of spent nuclear
fuel are not, were not, will never be ones of scientific or
technical unachievability.  They are political.  As long as
there are environmental organizations, willing to say any
thing to advance their cause of killing nuclear power; and
there are nuclear power operators and professional health
physicists, too cowardly or too lazy to try to balance their
arguments in the press and to the public directly; this
"technical" problem will not be solved.  

It gets a little old sometimes to be criticized on one side by
the environmentalists for killing babies, and on the other side
by our own colleagues for trying to address their concerns.

We are not trying to protect the industry.  We are not even
trying to protect our jobs.  We are trying to do what is best
for our country.  I guess I am getting a bit tired of
appologizing for that.

Again, this is only my opinion.  

Charleen Raddatz
USNRC
Office of Research
CTR@NRC.GOV