Fiscal compromise sets stage for new year of mini-cliffs
Nancy Cook, Government Executive
January 1, 2013

 

My, my, how far lawmakers' ambitions for the fiscal cliff negotiations have fallen in the past two weeks.

 

Aiming to pull the country back from the fiscal cliff, the Senate early Tuesday easily approved a measure that would delay automatic budget cuts known as the "sequester" and raise taxes on household income above $450,000. The deal, worked out between the White House and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, still needs approval by the House.

 

The measure is a small-bore compromise on a huge array of tax and spending issues that had deadlocked Washington for months. If it passes the House, financial markets will breathe a sigh of relief and the action by politicians could combat a growing perception that they favor  ideology over the economy's health.

 

In addition to delaying the across-the-board spending cuts and agreeing to some tax hikes, the deal would also permanently patch the alternative minimum tax; extend business tax breaks for one year; increase the rate on capital gains and dividends to 20 percent for families that earn more than $450,000; increase the estate tax from its current levels; and extend President Obama's 2009 stimulus tax credits for five years for college students, families with children and low-income families.

 

In the coming days, the Democrats will bill the deal as a historic win for the party by saying it broke the Republicans' no-new-tax orthodoxy. That is true, but the small-scale deal poses its own problems over the long run for the White House and congressional Democrats.

 

Sure, the deal extends the middle class tax cuts permanently, but part of that extension involves accepting a huge swath of the Bush administration's tax policy legacy. The deal also defines the wealthy as those who earn close to half a million a year. That's hardly a tax just to benefit the middle class. Even high-income earners in expensive states like New York or California would be hard-pressed to define anyone making $395,000 as just another hard-working Joe.

 

That's a huge political victory for the Republicans because it ensures that the Bush-era cuts have become part of our accepted reality.

 

"This is now part of the tax code," says Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.€"Any change in taxes is now measured relative to that."

 

The package also does not raise as much revenue as the White House had proposed (just $600 billion to the administration's original request of $1.2 trillion). The small-scale deal in play does little to boost economic growth because the package does not contain stimulus money and quietly does away with the payroll tax holiday. Nor does not it streamline the tax code, the pet project of the business lobbyist groups, or deal with the deficit in a meaningful way, as the Wall Street Journal aptly laid out.

 

The biggest takeaway is that the package shoves many of the tough decisions about long-term tax and spending policy into January and February, when lawmakers will face not only the debt ceiling but also the sequester: a moment that Republicans view as ripe for an overhaul of entitlement programs. And, they're right to anticipate that this will be a time when the Democrats will give ground on spending cuts and potentially the social safety net.

 

The clock already has started ticking on that fight, even though the fiscal cliff saga is not even over yet. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced last week that the federal government would hit the debt ceiling on Dec. 31, requiring Treasury to take â€oeextraordinary measures." Those steps will allow the federal government to pay its bills for about two months.

 

That is a long way of making one major point. The fiscal cliff is not just one mountain but a series of hills that the country will face over and over again in the coming months. If you thought Washington acted in a dysfunctional manner now, give it a few more weeks. At this rate, the same drama will revive itself in time for Valentine's Day: another holiday for lawmakers to spend on Capitol Hill.

 

As the minutes ticked by toward midnight on Monday night, it seemed like the fiscal cliff drama would end in most anti-climatic of ways: A New Year's Eve celebrated on the second floor of the Capitol building, among grumpy security guards, cafeteria workers, and journalists dressed in sequin tops that doubled as evening party wear.

 

Oak Ridge Heritage & Preservation Association's Newsletter
Ray Smith, Oak Ridge Heritage & Preservation Association
December 28, 2012

Hello fellow historic preservationists:

 

Let me introduce you to a new communication tool, Secret City Journal, a quarterly newsletter, being implemented by the Oak Ridge Heritage & Preservation Association. 

The primary purpose for this media tool is to promote historic preservation and heritage tourism.  We desire to increase awareness and promote understanding and appreciation for the Manhattan Project National Historical Park concept and to gain further support for its implementation.  With that thought in mind, we want to invite you to participate in the newsletter by contributing ideas, thoughts, facts, and perceptions regarding our three cities and DOE installations as we move forward toward a most creative and successful national park.

 

It is our hope that you will desire to assist us by providing insights and observations of progress in advancing the Park.  We believe that will help our local citizens in all three cities and across the nation better appreciate that the Park is a larger concept than any one of the three cities.  We also hope to promote the idea that we are all in this effort together, along with the national levels of support from the Atomic Heritage Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Parks Conservation Association and others. 

 

Should you desire to do so, you may promote the newsletter to your friends and fellow supporters in each of your locations.  By putting the newsletter online, it is more easily shared.  As Martin schedules your input, you may want to distribute the link to your contacts as well. 

 

Please consider submitting input to Martin for his use in upcoming issues of the Secret City Journal.

 

Thanks for your help,

 

Ray Smith

 

State, feds are extending Hanford cleanup deadlines
John Stang, Crosscut
December 31, 2012

 

B Cell used to be the most dangerous room at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Step inside the three-story-tall chamber's concrete walls filled with nuclear junk without wearing a protective suit for two seconds, and you'd receive a fatal dose of radiation.

 

The chamber is part of an old nuclear laboratory - dubbed the "324 Building" - a  quarter-mile from Richland's city limits and the Columbia River. Two years ago, a big spike of radioactivity was found in the soil beneath the building. It was traced to an earlier leak from the B Cell, which had already been cleaned up before the soil contamination was discovered.

 

That extra contamination in the soil is on the brink of having the state and federal governments agree to delay the completion of environmental cleanup at the 324 Building site in Hanford from Sept. 30, 2015 to Sept. 30, 2018.

 

The U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Ecology want to extend the legal deadline to clean up the immediate area containing B Cell under the Tri-Party Agreement. The Tri-Party Agreement is a legal contract among the three agencies to govern Hanford's cleanup for the next few decades. The three agencies are seeking public comments on their plans to extend the legal deadlines for several Hanford cleanup projects.

 

"We wouldn't be proposing these unless all three agencies had already agreed to them," said David Einan, an official at the EPA's Hanford office.

 

John Price, the state Ecology Department's manager for the Tri-Party Agreement, said, "This is good because taking longer ensures that everything (in the targeted cleanup projects) will be taken care of properly."

 

People  wanting to submit comments on the proposed delays can contact Tifany Nguyen at DOE's Richland office at TPACH@rl.gov prior to Jan. 24, 2013.

 

The leakage from B Cell is by far the most dangerous of the projects facing the new delays in terms of radioactivity, Price said. However, other Hanford problems â€" huge leaking underground waste tanks, a troubled waste glassification plant, a former plutonium storage complex, and several ground water contamination sites  â€" dwarf this list in terms of danger.

 

Here is a rundown of the other to-be-delayed projects:

 

More studies would be conducted along the Columbia River's southern shoreline in Hanford to get a better handle on ground water contamination before future extra fix-it measures are tackled. The current completion date for some ground water fix-it projects is today (Dec. 31, 2012). The three agencies propose extending them to March 31, 2017.

 

This shoreline contains nine partly cleaned-up area that hold nine defunct Cold War plutonium-production reactors plus the 300 Area next to Richland. The 300 Area is a few square miles of old labs including the 324 Building and B Cell. The recent discovery of 154 relatively small waste sites along the shore prompts the delays, which is a good sign to Price because it means previously unknown contamination problems won't be missed by the cleanup work. The biggest known ground water problems have already been tackled over many years.

 

The biggest individual new problem has been extra chromium contamination in the ground around B Reactor and C Reactor, which are the most upstream of the nine reactors. Chromium is not radioactive. But it can bubble up through salmon nests -- dubbed "redds" --  to kill infant salmon before the chemical gets quickly dispersed in the volume of the Columbia. However, the nearest clusters of redds are just upstream of B Reactor and a couple miles downstream of C Reactor.

 

The "cocooning" of the K East and K West reactors would be delayed from 2014 and 2019 to both being completed in 2019. "Cocooning" is the demolition of the reactors' outlying buildings and hauling away the debris, while sealing up the main reactor chamber for several decades until the radioactivity subsides. Six of Hanford's nine defunct reactors have been"cocooned."

 

B, K East and K West are the only remaining uncocooned reactors. B Reactorâ€"the world's first industrial-size reactor, which created the plutonium for Trinity and Nagaskai atomic bombs in World War II" will be kept intact as a national monument.

 

Hanford has fivebattleship-size defunct chemical processing plants that extracted plutonium from irradiated reactor rods. The first to be tackled is U Plant, which will have cement poured among some radioactive  processing equipment, have debris stored in its cavernous main chamber, and then have the walls caved in. Then an earthen barrier will cover it as a cap. U Plant's work is supposed to be done by 2022.

 

The work on the remaining four plants - dubbed "canyons" because of the massive main chambers running the lengths of the buildings - will be delayed until the U Plant work is done in order to learn lessons from that work. The work on the "canyons" has always been a low-priority in Hanford's cleanup tasks.

 

SRS factory years behind schedule, millions over budget
Sammy Fretwell, The State
January 2, 2013

 

Nearly four years after its expected completion date, a processing plant that is vital to cleaning up deadly nuclear waste near Aiken is only 65 percent finished and hundreds of millions of dollars in the red.

 

The Savannah River Site's salt-waste processing plant originally was scheduled for completion in 2009, but problems with its design and the types of materials needed in the facility have delayed work and sent costs skyrocketing.

 

Early U.S. Department of Energy estimates placed the project's cost at $440 million. The cost later was revised to $900 million, agency records show. Today, it has risen to $1.3 billion, according to a November status report by the Energy Department.

 

That's an important pocketbook issue for taxpayers.

 

But delays in the project also are a concern to the public for environmental and safety reasons. Without the salt-waste processing facility, efforts to clean up some of the world's most dangerous atomic waste could be delayed.

 

The target date for the high-level-waste cleanup is 2027, an Energy Department spokesman said. "That date is going to be in jeopardy based on the delay in the salt-waste processing facility and other fiscal issues," Energy Department spokesman Jim Giusti said.

 

"We ... have to address the cost."

 

SRS is a 310-square-mile federal nuclear weapons complex near Aiken that employs about 12,000 people. Materials produced at the site are key ingredients in nuclear bombs.

 

But the Cold War weapons buildup left a legacy of dangerous atomic waste - and site managers are now working to clean up the toxic mess.

 

The most dangerous waste sits in 47 aging tanks that are prone to leaks. SRS slowly is cleaning out and neutralizing the material in the tanks to reduce its environmental and health threat. The work, however, can't be finished until the salt-waste processing plant is operating.

 

SRS managers say the salt-waste plant likely won't open until at least 2018 - nine years after its initial target date for completion - although that date is tentative and could be pushed back. The completion date depends on more money from the U.S. Department of Energy.

 

"We now have to address the cost increase, as well as the schedule delays, and get a viable baseline together for what it is going to take to complete this facility," said Zack Smith, the Energy Department's deputy manager at the Savannah River Site.

 

During a Dec. 13 meeting with the Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council, Smith said he expects to meet with high-ranking Energy Department officials in Washington during the next three to four months to discuss money for the salt-processing plant.

 

If the Energy Department approves more money to complete the project, the agency still would need approval from Congress in the 2014 budget, Giusti said.

 

Delays threaten larger cleanup?

 

Interest groups that normally clash over SRS issues agree the 142,000-square-foot salt-waste facility needs to be finished as soon as possible.

 

"If the idea is to clean the stuff up, the salt-waste processing facility will certainly accelerate that when it is in business," said Clint Wolfe, director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, an SRS support group.

 

Wolfe and Tom Clements, an official with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, said the Energy Department has made the tank cleanup one of the agency's highest priorities on the Savannah River Site.

Energy Department officials "need to get their eyes on the ball and focus on the tanks and get the money to carry out this program," Clements said.

 

State and federal officials said in 2006 the project's original estimated cost was $440 million, a figure Giusti acknowledged recently. The Energy Department's "Project Dashboard" report from November shows the project budget was $900 million, but the new cost is $1.339 billion.

 

Clements, a longtime SRS critic, said troubles with the salt-waste processing plant could be disastrous.

"That one project's mismanagement and cost overruns are going to have a severe effect on the entire high-level waste (cleanup) program in a very negative way," he said.

 

Litany of woes

 

SRS officials first encountered problems with the salt-waste plant in the mid-2000s. At the time, it was discovered the plant was not designed to safely withstand earthquakes that could hit South Carolina. So it was reconfigured.

 

In recent years, SRS managers learned some of the giant tanks needed in the salt plant did not meet nuclear safety standards. After initial problems with one contractor, the site contracted with a second company to produce the tanks, further delaying the start-up date and sending costs soaring.

 

The salt-processing plant is one of two major facilities needed to clean toxic nuclear waste from the 47 tanks, which contain some 37 million gallons of atomic sludge, water and crust, commonly referred to as salt.

 

Another plant, the defense-waste processing facility, has been processing sludge for nearly 17 years. But the sludge makes up a small percentage of the overall volume of waste in the tanks.

 

The majority of the tank waste would go through the salt plant for processing.

 

The cleanup process involves piping high-level atomic sludge to the already completed defense waste processing plant and turning the refuse into glass. The salt-waste plant is designed to process a different kind of waste than the sludge.

 

When it opens, the salt plant will process a watery, crusty solution that sits atop the sludge in the tanks. The salt process will separate less radioactive waste from more highly radioactive waste. The less radioactive waste will be encased in concrete and buried at SRS. The more toxic high-level waste will be turned into glass, just as the high-level waste sludge has been.

 

Turning the waste into glass makes it less dangerous and easier to dispose of in the future.

 

Until the salt-waste processing plant is finished, the Energy Department is using a temporary processing plant to separate some of the material. But it can handle no more than 1 million gallons a year. The salt-waste processing plant is designed to handle 6 million gallons.

 

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, which issued a permit for the salt plant, is aware of the problems - and agency officials are concerned.

 

A statement from director Catherine Templeton said DHEC still expects the Energy Department to open the plant by October 2015, as stated in the permit. Fines of up to $105,000 a day could be levied for each day the plant is not on schedule, DHEC spokesman Mark Plowden said.

 

"Startup of the salt-waste processing facility, a major treatment facility, is crucial for (the) Department of Energy to treat highly radioactive waste and close aging storage tanks," Templeton's statement said.

^~One-of-a-kind facility"

 

SRS advocate Wolfe and the Energy Department's Giusti emphasized building the salt plant is not an easy task.

 

Wolfe said the facility is a one-of-a kind plant with extensive safety requirements. Because the nuclear industry has not grown substantially for the past 30 years, it was hard for SRS to find all the atomic materials needed for the salt plant, Wolfe said. Manufacturers are just getting up to speed as new nuclear power plants are being built, he said.

 

"There's no cookie cutter here," Wolfe said. "You're taking a unique, one-of-a-kind facility, trying to build it to a standard most people never try to live up to. And you do it in a way where safety cannot be compromised."

 

Clements blamed the salt plant delays and costs on the Energy Department's focus on other projects in recent years.

 

He said the department's new $4.6 billion mixed-oxide fuel plant is a prime example. That factory, still under construction, will turn excess plutonium into nuclear fuel, but it also will create its own waste stream and doesn't have a customer, he said.

 

"SRS management has really lost sight of the priority, which is cleaning up this high-level waste," Clements said.

 

Discussing future nuke activities at INL
Kendra Evensen, Idaho State Journal
December 30, 2012

 

The Snake River Alliance, which has served as the state's nuclear watchdog since 1979, is weighing in on a discussion about the future of nuclear activities at the Idaho National Laboratory and across the state.

 

The Alliance recently submitted a letter to the Leadership in Nuclear Energy (LINE) Commission regarding the Progress Report it released to the public earlier this month; the Commission is currently taking public comment on the document.

 

In the letter, the Alliance cautions the Commission - which has been charged by Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter to suggest polices and actions the state can take to support the viability and mission of the INL and the nuclear industry - against recommending any changes to the 1995 settlement agreement, which was struck to protect the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer from possible contamination, and bans new waste shipments into Idaho.

 

"While the Commission report raises the specter of pitting the 1995 Settlement Agreement banning new waste shipments into Idaho against the future of INL and suggests that a "pilot" waste dump might be explored for Idaho, Gov. Otter has reiterated his opposition to reopening the historic 1995 settlement Agreement," according to a news release from the Alliance regarding its letter. "But the report contains language and recommendations that could lead to opening that door."

 

The Snake River Alliance, which included in its submission a petition signed by 1,500 people who oppose bringing commercial nuclear waste to Idaho, thinks that would be a mistake.

 

"Idaho does not need to restart a statewide 'conversation' about whether the state should reverse the will of Idahoans by rethinking whether we should accept new shipments of spent nuclear fuel or turning the Idaho National Laboratory into a de facto waste dump," according to the news release.

 

The federal government recently ended its plans to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to store spent nuclear fuel, and the Blue Ribbon Commission, which was created to review current policies and come up with a new strategy, has since suggested the need for consolidated storage and disposal facilities for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. Some Idahoans - including mayors in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Blackfoot, Rexburg, Ammon and Chubbuck, who recently submitted a letter of their own to the LINE Commission - think the state should at least study the environmental and economic impacts of siting an interim storage facility for commercial used nuclear fuel in east Idaho to meet that need. And the LINE Commission itself has suggested that changes may need to be made to the 1995 Settlement Agreement if Idaho wants to safeguard the INL's future as the nation's lead nuclear energy laboratory.

 

But the Snake River Alliance considers that questions asked and answered.

 

"The Progress Report and discussions at LINE Commission meetings have attempted to bolster a narrative that 'everything has changed' since the 1995 Settlement Agreement. Claimed 'game changers' include the designation of INL as the lead nuclear  energy and spent fuel national lab. Another seems to be when Battelle was named the contractor for the INL laboratory and CWI was named cleanup contractor in 2005. Yet another was the Obama administration's decision to end development of a high level waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada," according to the letter. "All these milestones are most certainly important, but they do not mean that everything has changed, nor that the environmental challenges at INL have disappeared."

 

The Snake River Alliance also addressed several other issues in its letter, including the need for more transparency in the LINE Commission's decision making process.

 

"The LINE Commission itself has characterized its work as the beginning of a 'conversation.'€As such, the contributions of all Idahoans - Commission members and not - must be open, and public input must be accessible to the public. Any 'conversation' depends on all of us knowing what our neighbors are thinking,"according to the letter, which goes on to say, "It would doom the LINE Commission's work to failure if we did not know how the final recommendations to the governor were crafted."

 

Officials from Oak Ridge area attend DOE intergovernmental meeting
Oak Ridge Today
December 28, 2012

 

State and local officials from Oak Ridge and Anderson and Roane counties recently attended the U.S. Department of Energy's Annual Intergovernmental Conference in New Orleans. Participants met with federal, state, and local leaders from DOE sites across the nation, including top managers overseeing DOE's Environmental Management, or EM, program.

 

Two senior DOE officials were keynote speakers at the conference. David Huizenga, senior advisor for DOE's Office of Environmental Management, provided an update on the EM program, which is responsible for environmental restoration, waste management, and long-term stewardship at DOE sites across the complex.

 

Neile Miller, recently named acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and acting undersecretary for nuclear security, addressed the relationship between NNSA and EM, and how the programs work together at sites with multiple missions like Oak Ridge.

 

The conference was sponsored by DOE's Office of Intergovernmental Programs, which supports DOE's EM mission through liaison, communications, coordination, and interaction with state, tribal, city, and county governments.

 

Intergovernmental groups represented at the conference included: Energy Communities Alliance, Environmental Council of the States, National Association of Attorneys General, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, and DOE's State and Tribal Government Working Group.

 

"It is important that our state and local officials working with the Department of Energy stay informed about the programs that affect our communities," said Oak Ridge Mayor and Energy Communities Alliance Chairman Tom Beehan. "We also need to communicate to DOE and its intergovernmental partners our local priorities for economic growth and quality of life for our citizens."

 

Travel expenses for local participants were paid through cooperative agreements among the DOE EM program, National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislators, and the Energy Communities Alliance.

 

Congress Has Outsized Influence Over Obama's Cabinet
Reid Wilson, National Journal
December 25, 2012

 

Robert Bork's 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court, and the uproar over his ideology that ultimately led to his defeat, forever changed the process by which the Senate confirms judges. In the 25 years that have followed Bork's nomination, the two parties have fought increasingly bitter battles over high court picks in an effort to tilt the third branch of government their way. In 2002, the Oxford English Dictionary added the verb "to bork" -- to systematically defame or vilify a person, especially in the mass media -- to their lexicon.

 

Now there are signs that amid a growing atmosphere of poisonous partisanship, what happened to Bork, who died last week at the age of 85, is beginning to bleed into fights over other nominees.

 

In just the past two weeks, President Obama's first choice to head the State Department after Hillary Clinton retires has withdrawn her name from consideration, while the candidate most likely to be named Secretary of Defense is left twisting in the wind, his impending nomination losing momentum fast.

 

There has long been a general consensus on Capitol Hill that, barring a nominee's significant legal, ethical or moral pothole, a president should be able to run his administration with the personnel he chooses. But as he builds a team for his second term, President Obama has allowed Congress to influence his choices.

 

While Supreme Court nominees now must undergo all but guaranteed political fights, Cabinet nominees have rarely had to sweat out a close Senate vote. And almost none have had to overcome a filibuster; even arch-conservative Republican John Ashcroft, picked to become George W. Bush's attorney general, avoided a filibuster and won confirmation with just 55 votes. In American history, before Obama took office, only seven Cabinet appointees have been rejected, and another thirteen have been withdrawn before the Senate turned them away.

 

But the pace is picking up; seven of those unlucky 20 nominees have occurred under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. Clinton tried four times to pick an attorney general after his first choice, Zoe Baird, withdrew just five days after she was nominated; his second and third picks demurred even before they were officially nominated. Anthony Lake, Hershel Gober, Linda Chavez, Bernie Kerik, Bill Richardson and Tom Daschle all pulled the plug on their own nominations.

 

The increasing frequency of a president's personnel picks who can't win confirmation could be a symptom of an increasingly partisan Senate, where 60 votes are required to overcome more common filibusters, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution and The George Washington University.

 

"The pattern of challenging would-be nominees is consistent with Republicans' willingness to exploit their procedural rights across the president's agenda," Binder said. "When the parties aren't so polarized, it's easier to find a nominee acceptable to your own party and to some centrist members of the opposition. When the parties polarize, it's not so easy to find acceptable nominees, particularly if senators are willing to flex their parliamentary muscles."

 

As Clinton prepared to leave her perch in Foggy Bottom, all signs suggested Obama was leaning toward appointing Susan Rice, his ambassador to the United Nations, to take over. But Rice's misinformed comments in the immediate aftermath of the attack on a consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens made her a target for Republican senators angry at the administration's handling of the situation. Rice's own abrasive style hurt her relations with those senators -- personal meetings with Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and even moderate Susan Collins failed to assuage their concerns. After initially defending his potential nominee, Obama ultimately accepted her decision to withdraw from consideration in the face of an almost-certain filibuster.

 

And with Leon Panetta preparing to leave the Pentagon, Obama appeared set to tap former Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Republican Vietnam veteran who left the Senate in 2008. But Hagel has come under assault for his past comments about what he termed the "Israel lobby" and for his comments about an openly gay nominee he opposed in 1998. But the White House has left Hagel's not-yet-nomination twisting in the wind as President Obama delays a final decision. And the opposition, from gay rights activists and Israel's closest allies in Congress, has gone from a whisper to a roar. A once-certain nomination now looks tenuous at best, and dead in the water at worst.

 

In both cases, the nominees-in-waiting have come under fire for their ideology and public positions, rather than for any personal sins. Susan Rice does not have an undocumented worker for a nanny, and Chuck Hagel is current on his taxes, as far as anyone can tell.

 

In both cases, it's not simply Republicans standing in the way of President Obama's nominees. Some on the left began to question Rice's tenure overseeing African affairs during Bill Clinton's administration, a time when the United States stood by while dictators and militias hacked a bloody path through their countries. And the harshest blow to Hagel's potential nomination came Sunday, when New York Democrat Charles Schumer pointedly refused to endorse his old colleague's nomination on NBC's Meet The Press.

 

And in both cases, a qualified alternative who has his or her own allies in Congress has waited in the wings. With Rice out of the picture, Obama turned to Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who won praise from McCain, Graham and other colleagues even while Rice looked like the more likely pick. And if Hagel isn't Obama's pick, he would likely turn to Michele Flournoy, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, who has her own fans on Capitol Hill and within the defense and military communities.

 

Whether by dint of an unwillingness to fight for his nominees, because he has other priorities or because he sees more important fights coming down the pike, President Obama is allowing the personnel moves that will become critical in forming his foreign policy legacy to be influenced -- even decided -- by Congress. But unlike Baird, or Kerik, or Daschle, Rice and Hagel are in trouble for their policy views, not their personal sins. The borking, in other words, is no longer confined to the Supreme Court.

 

Opinion: DOE funding decision blow to SRS future
Danny Black, Aiken Standard
December 28, 2012

 

The Department of Energy's recent decision to pour millions into a new small modular reactor project in Tennessee is yet another blow to local efforts to save the Savannah River Site from what many fear may ultimately be permanent closure.

 

Encouraged by DOE and working with the private sector, the SouthernCarolina Alliance and other economic development groups mounted an aggressive campaign to locate SMR research and demonstration projects at SRS. However, DOE's most recent decision to fund the SMR project in Tennessee instead indicates that this common sense approach to deploy this new technology and create jobs here in our region is not to be.

 

Instead, DOE has announced it will make a "significant investment" estimated to be hundreds of millions in Tennessee in first-of-a-kind engineering, design certification and licensing for SMRs. The funding is part of a five-year cost share agreement with Babcock & Wilcox in partnership with the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bechtel. The investment is geared toward helping B&W obtain Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing and achieve commercial operation by 2022.

 

Small Modular Reactors hold great promise for the nation's energy future. They are about one-third the size of current nuclear power plants, have compact, scalable designs and offer safety, construction and economic benefits.

 

They can also be made in factories and transported to sites where they would be ready to "plug and play" upon arrival, reducing both capital costs and construction times.

 

SMRs can also be a major economic boon to communities where they are built and operate, creating jobs, tax revenues and a heightened reputation for technological leadership.

 

Regrettably, the government's decision to support SMR work in Tennessee brings into question DOE's long-term plans for the Savannah River Site. New missions are critical to the future viability of SRS as the cleanup of the Site's Cold War legacy winds down.

 

The announcement came days after the local DOE management was chastised by senior officials in the Department's Environmental Management (EM) division the current SRS "landlord" for their ambitious plan, which called for devoting cleanup funds to grow Site missions, including SMRs. The plans were outlined in a comprehensive vision document called "Enterprise SRS" prepared by DOE and its primary operating contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.

 

While we applaud the recent Memorandums of Agreement SRS signed with three SMR manufacturers, these agreements do not include a federal funding commitment. Rather, unlike its Tennessee investment, DOE says it envisions private sector funding will be used to support the SRS partnerships and any resulting deployment plans.

 

Based on these events, our region has every reason to be concerned about the future of the Savannah River Site. With its significant employment and sizable federal investment, SRS has been the chief driver of our regional economy for more than 60 years.

 

We know of no one who would not like to see the SRS record of achievement and economic benefits continue for decades into the future, taking the site to the century mark and beyond. Just as it would be difficult to assemble the SRS 310-square-mile land mass again, it will be just as challenging to recreate its unparalleled pool of human talent which has addressed some of the most complex and challenging technological issues of our time.

 

But without the federal government's continued commitment and support for something besides "cleanup and close down", many see the handwriting on the wall. Simply put, unless something changes soon, the future of SRS and the communities surrounding the site is not bright.

 

Twenty years ago, renowned physicist Dr. Edward Teller, the acknowledged Father of the H-bomb, told a local audience "it would a shame if thousands of talented SRS workers lost their jobs because the government failed to harness their unique capabilities for important new national missions."

 

His comments were alarming then. Let's hope they weren't also prophetic. Whether it's small modular reactors or some other technology, the Department of Energy needs to take a fresh, hard look at the impressive capabilities at SRS before it's too late.

 

As stakeholders in the regional economies surrounding DOE's Savannah River Site, we need to take action as well, bringing all of our political, business, financial and community assets together to petition for new missions at SRS.

 

Once the brick and mortar assets are dismantled and the collective, uniquely qualified workforce is dispersed, we will never again have the opportunity to produce the prosperity our region so desperately needs and deserves.

 

The loss of the SMR project to Tennessee should be a wake-up call to all of us. We must take steps now to transform our regional economy by fighting for these new missions, and our communities' business leaders and elected officials should lead this charge.

 

Danny Black is president and CEO of SouthernCarolina Alliance, the regional economic development organization representing the six South Carolina counties of Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper.