New US NRC chairman taps Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner to be chief of staff
Published: Tue, 07/10/12
New US NRC chairman taps DOE official to be chief of staff
Platts July 10, 2012 The head of a US Department of Energy working group reviewing recommendations for a new national strategy on nuclear waste will be the chief of staff for US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane.
Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner, senior policy adviser in DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy, is expected to assume his post at the agency in a "couple of weeks," NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said in an email Monday, the same day Macfarlane was sworn in as the agency's new chairman.
Niedzielski-Eichner leads an internal working group at DOE, chaired by Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy Pete Lyons, that is reviewing recommendations the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, or BRC, issued in January on how the country should deal with its growing inventory of utility spent fuel.
Macfarlane was a member of the BRC. Among the panel's recommendations are moving the waste program be out of DOE to a separate entity and using a consent-based process to site one or more interim storage facilities for utility spent fuel and one or more repositories.
DOE spokeswoman Niketa Kumar said in an email Monday that the internal working group led by Niedzielski-Eichner "is coordinating the Department's assessment of the BRC recommendations and will recommend a strategy later this summer for implementation that builds off the Blue Ribbon Commission's work."
Roughly 68,000 metric tons of spent fuel are now stored at power reactor sites around the country and that inventory is growing at a rate of 2,000 mt a year. Energy Secretary Steven Chu appointed the 15-member BRC in 2010 to evaluate alternatives to a nuclear waste repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
DOE dismantled that repository project in 2010, calling the site "unworkable" and noting Nevada's unyielding opposition to the facility. DOE took that action two years after submitting a license application to NRC for a Yucca Mountain repository.
NRC, which is required by federal law to review DOE's Yucca Mountain application, terminated that review in 2011 for lack of funds to continue that work. A lawsuit to force NRC to resume that review is before the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit.
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