ECA Update: February 11, 2013
Published: Mon, 02/11/13
Obama to Renew Drive for Cuts in Nuclear Arms
David E. Sanger, The New York Times February 10, 2013 WASHINGTON -- President Obama will use his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to reinvigorate one of his signature national security objectives -- drastically reducing nuclear arsenals around the world -- after securing agreement in recent months with the United States military that the American nuclear force can be cut in size by roughly a third.
Mr. Obama, administration officials say, is unlikely to discuss specific numbers in the address, but White House officials are looking at a cut that would take the arsenal of deployed weapons to just above 1,000. Currently there are about 1,700, and the new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia that passed the Senate at the end of 2009 calls for a limit of roughly 1,550 by 2018.
But Mr. Obama, according to an official who was involved in the deliberations, "believes that we can make pretty radical reductions -- and save a lot of money -- without compromising American security in the second term. And the Joint Chiefs have signed off on that concept."
The big question is how to accomplish a reduction that Mr. Obama views as long overdue, considering that Republicans in the Senate opposed even the modest cuts in the new arms reduction treaty, called Start. The White House is loath to negotiate an entirely new treaty with Russia, which would lead to Russian demands for restrictions on American and NATO missile-defense systems in Europe and would reprise a major fight with Republicans in the Senate over ratification.
Instead, Mr. Obama is weighing how to reach an informal agreement with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for mutual cuts within the framework of the new Start -- but without the need for ratification. Mr. Obama's national security adviser, Tom Donilon, is planning to travel to Russia next month, officials say, to lay the groundwork for those talks. Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin will hold two summit meetings in the early summer.
Even as he revives a nuclear agenda that has been nearly moribund for two years, Mr. Obama is also expected to try to address new threats.
Within days of the State of the Union address, officials say, he plans to issue a long-anticipated presidential directive on combating cyberattacks aimed at American companies, financial institutions and critical infrastructure like the electric grid. The announcement comes at a moment of heightened attacks from China and, most recently, from Iran.
A lobbying effort by American companies last year defeated a bill in Congress that, in some versions of the legislation, would have required private companies to meet minimum standards of protection and to report attacks to the government. It died over objections that the bill would incur huge new costs and involve the government more deeply into private computer networks.
While Mr. Obama cannot impose the failed bill's mandates by executive order, he is expected to give companies that control "critical infrastructure" access to an experimental government program that has been aimed at protecting defense contractors. The directive will also require the government to inform industry officials of cyberthreats detected by American intelligence agencies; that, in turn, may create some liability for companies that fail to react to the warnings.
The nuclear reduction plan has been debated inside the administration for two years, and the options have been on Mr. Obama's desk for months. But the document was left untouched through the presidential election. The president wanted to avoid making the reductions a campaign issue with Mitt Romney, who declared at one point that Russia was now America's "No. 1 geostrategic foe," a comment that Mr. Obama later mocked as an indication that Mr. Romney had failed to move beyond the cold war.
Mr. Romney, in turn, leapt on a remark that Mr. Obama intended to make privately to Russia's then president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. He was picked up by an open microphone telling Mr. Medvedev that "after my election I have more flexibility" on missile defense, which Republicans said was evidence that he was preparing to trade away elements of the arsenal.
Among the most outspoken advocates of a deep cut has been a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James E. Cartwright, whom Mr. Obama continues to turn to on strategic issues. General Cartwright has argued that a reduction to 900 warheads would still guarantee American safety, even if only half of them were deployed at any one time.
"The world has changed, but the current arsenal carries the baggage of the cold war," General Cartwright said last year. The challenges of North Korea, which is preparing a third nuclear test, and the possibility that Iran will get the bomb pose very different kinds of threats to the United States, and do not require the ability to deliver the kind of huge first strike that was the underlying logic of a large arsenal to face off against the Soviet Union.
"What is it we're really trying to deter?" General Cartwright asked. "Our current arsenal does not address the threats of the 21st century."
It is unclear how much money would be saved by the nuclear reduction plan that Mr. Obama is about to endorse; partly that depends on how the cuts are spread among the three elements of America's nuclear "triad": land-based missiles in silos, missiles aboard hard-to-find nuclear submarines, and nuclear bombers.
"These cuts don't require a radical change in the triad, and that makes it politically easier," said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, which has argued for deep cuts. General Cartwright's more radical plans, by some estimates, would have saved at least $120 billion over the next two decades.
But Mr. Obama is already moving quietly, officials acknowledge, to explore whether he can scale back a 10-year, $80 billion program to modernize the country's weapons laboratories.
The White House agreed to the spending on the weapons labs as the price of winning Republican votes on the new Start three years ago, but one senior defense official said late last year that "the environment of looking for cuts in the national security budget makes this an obvious target."
Mr. Obama's advisers have said he is unlikely to simply announce American cuts unilaterally, though President George W. Bush took a similar step his first year in office before negotiating a short treaty with Mr. Putin that passed the Senate with little rancor.
Along with the executive order on cybersecurity, the administration plans to try again this year to get comprehensive cyberlegislation passed by Congress.
Last month, Senators Tom Carper, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced a cybersecurity bill similar to the one that administration had hoped to pass in 2012.
"We want to foster notice and we want to foster information-sharing requirements," Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a recent interview on the legislation. "We want to take care of some of the nuts and bolts like relaxing Civil Service requirements so we can hire more competitively. Really the things that can't be done by an executive order."
Ms. Napolitano said that she hoped it would be a high priority for Congress. But "in the meantime we can't stand still," she said.
2014 budget to be released in mid-March, memo says Sean Reilly, Federal Times February 11, 2013 President Obama will not release his proposed fiscal 2014 budget for at least another month, according to a memo last week from Defense Department Deputy Comptroller John Roth.
"We understand that the President intends to submit the top-level budget to the Congress in mid-March, with the delivery of all justification material later in the month," Roth said in a Feb. 5 memo to senior financial managers outlining the steps needed to wrap up work on DoD's portion of the request.
The fiscal 2014 request was legally supposed to go to Capitol Hill on Feb. 4.
The White House notified lawmakers last month that it would miss that deadline, but administration officials have not said when they will release it.
The top-level version of the budget would likely include the amount the administration wants next year for each agency, accompanied by numbers spelling out what the White House is seeking for personnel, operations and maintenance and other "functional areas," said Stan Collender, a former congressional budget committee staffer now at Qorvis Communications.
An Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman did not respond to a request for confirmation late last week.
Obama considering MIT physicist Moniz for energy secretary - sources Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason, Reuters February 6, 2013 President Barack Obama is considering naming nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz, one of his science and energy advisers, as the next energy secretary, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
Moniz, who was undersecretary at the Energy Department during the Clinton administration, is a familiar figure on Capitol Hill, where he has often talked to lawmakers about how abundant supplies of U.S. natural gas will gradually replace coal as a source of electricity.
Moniz is director of MIT's Energy Initiative, a research group that gets funding from industry heavyweights including BP, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco for academic work on projects aimed at reducing climate-changing greenhouse gases.
He did not respond to an e-mail request for comment on Wednesday evening.
Obama gave a speech at MIT early in his first term where he praised the Energy Initiative's research and spoke about the urgent need to address climate change - a cause he has pledged to elevate again as a top priority for his second term.
Obama is in the process of reshaping his energy and environmental policy team.
Earlier on Wednesday he nominated Sally Jewell, chief executive of outdoor retailer REI, to be interior secretary, overseeing the national parks and vast U.S. energy reserves.
He is also expected to name a new leader of the Environmental Protection Agency. Sources told Reuters Gina McCarthy, a top official in charge of air quality at the EPA, is the leading candidate for the job.
Moniz is a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a group that gives Obama recommendations on the role of science and innovation in the economy.
Moniz would replace Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who announced last week he plans to step down.
Chu had been criticized for ignoring the huge U.S. boom in oil and gas development as he focused on spurring renewable energy.
Moniz would bring scientific acumen to the job, but he also has worked closely with industry and promoted natural gas as a "bridge fuel" to lower carbon pollution while new innovative forms of energy are being developed.
In July 2011, Moniz told the Senate Energy committee that he believes the water and air pollution risks associated with hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" were "challenging but manageable" with appropriate regulation and oversight.
From his time in the Clinton administration, he has experience managing the department's oversight of a chain of national laboratories and the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons.
After Obama made good on a first-term campaign promise to shut down the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada, he named Moniz to a "Blue Ribbon" panel that looked for a new approach for storing toxic nuclear waste.
Lawmakers Request Strong New NNSA Administrator With Commitment to Reform Sen. Tom Udall Press Release February 8, 2013 WASHINGTON - Members of the NM Congressional Delegation, Tom Udall, Martin Heinrich, Ben Ray Luján and Michelle Lujan Grisham, are asking President Obama to nominate a candidate to lead the Nuclear National Security Administration (NNSA) who will work with Congress to reform the agency and maintain the highest scientific and technical capabilities at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.
In a letter to President Obama, the federal lawmakers who represent the two labs say, "The NNSA has recently suffered from a series of ongoing management, security and budgetary problems and effective new leadership is needed now to restore the confidence of the public and of their representatives in Congress."
"We believe there is an opportunity now to make substantial improvement in NNSA's management and oversight responsibilities and we urge you to nominate someone with the leadership ability to help guide the transformation."
In their request, they emphasize the need to maintain adequate budgets for LANL and SNL in light of current federal budget constraints to support and grow the missions of the labs, maintain a strong employee workforce and complete environmental cleanup.
"In particular, we expect the new administrator will share our commitment to maintaining the National Security Laboratories' lead role in our nation's weapons and national security programs," they wrote. "In the face of growing fiscal constraints we believe it will be essential that the labs continue to diversify their efforts, especially in the area of advanced energy and environmental technologies. Finally, the new administrator must share our commitment to assuring resources are available to meet all obligations and deadlines for environmental cleanup."
In December 2012, Udall and former Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) gained passage of an amendment to the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to establish an advisory panel that will make recommendations to Congress on how best to reform the NNSA's organization and examine its relationship to the Department of Energy and other federal agencies.
In the House, Luján successfully offered an amendment to the NDAA that called for a study of a new governance structure that would broaden the ownership of the NNSA national laboratories across multiple federal agencies and expand the scope of their national security mission.
A new NNSA administrator must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Acting Administrator Neile L. Miller took over the position following Thomas P. D'Agostino's retirement in January.
Congress Faces Contentious Week as Sequester Deadline Creeps Closer Billy House, National Journal February 10, 2013 With 18 days left before the budget sequestration cuts are scheduled to hit, congressional Republicans and Democrats barrel into a contentious week, with President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday expected to shape not just his agenda for the year, but the stretch run of this latest budget showdown.
But while Obama's address Tuesday night will dominate the week, legislative floor maneuverings and hearings will also draw attention. Highlights of the week include:
Despite that action, the White House says Obama will be proposing a 1 percent pay increase for federal civilian employees in the administration's spending plan for fiscal 2014, expected to be released in mid-March.
Obama's address before a joint session will provide him with a prime-time national TV audience to lay out a road map for the fifth year of his presidency, which he says will touch on topics such job creation and the economy, gun control, education, immigration reform, clean energy, and climate change. Sen Marco Rubio, R-Fla., will deliver the Republican response, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will give a "Tea Party Response."
But Obama will also be delivering another call for congressional Republicans to pass a temporary budget plan to deal with the roughly $85 billion in sequestration spending cuts for 2013 divided between defense and discretionary programs slated to take effect on March 1. The notion is that it would provide more time to do a bigger, longer-term budget package that could also resolve the need for another stopgap bill to keep government funded at the end of March--and end the chronic budget showdowns and crisis.
The rub is that Obama and congressional Democrats insist new revenues must be part of any such agreement, and most Republicans are opposed to that. Obama told congressional Democrats last week that he is more than willing to fight in the "court of public opinion." But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, says, "Americans do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes."
Reid announced last week that the Senate on Monday would again take up the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization. The Senate passed a version last session, but final passage was blocked by differences with House Republicans over extending new protections for gays and immigrants and whether to allow tribal courts to prosecute cases of alleged abuse to Native American women by those not living on reservations.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last week unveiled a video accusing Majority Leader Eric Cantor of stalling last year's reauthorization. But Cantor said on the House floor last week, "We want to protect the women who are subject to abuse on tribal lands. And, unfortunately, there are issues that don't directly bear on that that have come up that have complicated it." Cantor added that he's had "daily meetings to try and get to a point where we can bring this forward." A Cantorc spokesman, Douglas Heye, added on Friday, "Instead of playing politics, the House continues to work with VAWA advocates so we can reach agreement and protect women."
Lew's confirmation hearing comes as Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., has been alleging that Lew, when head of the Office of Management and Budget, violated the law by failing to propose Medicare cost-containment legislation when the program had predicted financial problems. The White House has defended his actions, but questions may come up at the hearing.
The legislation to extend the current pay freeze that has been in place since 2011 was actually passed by the House on Jan. 1. But the Senate adjourned the session of the 112th Congress without taking up the measure. The nation's largest federal employees union--the American Federation of Government Employees--has been lobbying against the bill, and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., whose Washington-area district is home to thousands of federal workers, has been among the most vocal opponents of the ongoing pay freeze.
Not only is the AFGE lobbying against the GOP bill to extend the freeze, the union's president, J. David Cox, on Saturday issued a statement saying Obama's plans to propose a 1 percent adjustment for federal employees in 2014 is not enough "to make up lost ground from two-plus years of frozen pay."
Sequester Deadline Looms
Budget issues return to the forefront in Congress this week, as the federal government approaches the deadline for the roughly $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts for 2013, slated to take effect March 1 under sequestration.
Senate Democrats are busy working on legislation to undo the sequester for a yet-to-be determined length of time. Their proposal involves a mix of new taxes on Wall Street and oil and gas companies, as well as spending cuts to items such as farm subsidies. One of the tax ideas involves raising rates on private-equity and hedge-fund managers, who currently take advantage of the so-called carried-interest provision that allows them to pay a lower rate on their income that's more in line with taxes on investments. Senate Democrats hope to begin discussion on a bill next week, though it's unclear they will be able to take any votes until after the President's Day weeklong recess.
Republicans, meanwhile, remain loathe to accept any tax increases as part of a deal to stall the sequester cuts. Apart from the defense hawks in the Senate, many Republicans would prefer to see the sequester happen. It's the only way, they say, they'll enact any meaningful spending cuts.
Both sides will spend this week trying to blame the other for the potential cuts. Part of this public messaging war will involve highlighting all of the ways Americans will be hurt by spending cuts, a sideshow that will culminate in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the sequester on Thursday.
Also, on the docket are a number of hearings that will show off the emerging contours of the upcoming budget debates. The director of the Congressional Budget Office will appear before both the Senate and House budget panels to discuss the CBO's new outlook for 2013. Expect both Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to use the sessions to highlight data from the CBO that bolsters their political visions for their upcoming budget blueprints.
Jacob Lew, the nominee for Treasury secretary, will also appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday. Most likely, Republicans will confirm him but not without grilling him on his plans for Treasury, tax reform, and future fiscal battles.
DOE considers furloughs as part of sequestration plan Zack Colman, The Hill February 7, 2013 The Energy Department (DOE) is considering furloughing employees to reduce costs if automatic spending cuts from sequestration occur, according to an internal memo obtained by The Hill.
"With respect to furloughs, should we have to pursue this unfortunate course of action, let me assure you that all affected employees would be provided at least 30 days' notice prior to executing a furlough. We will also continue to engage in discussions with employee unions as appropriate, to ensure that any furloughs are applied in a fair and appropriate manner," Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman said in a Thursday email to staff.
The email underscores the uncertainty federal agencies face with $85 billion of cuts scheduled to take effect March 1. The cuts would slash discretionary spending government-wide by 8.2 percent.
Lawmakers are working on a package of cuts to offset the sequester, but have so far failed to produce a plan. President Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to delay the sequester if it cannot strike a long-term deal.
Republicans have balked at raising taxes as part of a pact to replace the sequester, preferring instead to rely on spending reductions. Obama and Democrats, meanwhile, believe a mix of cuts and tax code changes is the best path.
Bloomberg BNA was the first to report on the memo, which outlined a series of cost-cutting measures the department could pursue.
Other options included reexamining contracts and grants, slashing administrative costs such as travel, training and facilities, and possibly "making cuts to vital programs."
Poneman said DOE must prepare for the possibility that Congress misses the March deadline.
"[G]iven that less than one month remains until these cuts would take effect and given that the delay enacted by Congress would give us less time in which to make the required cuts, our senior leadership team is engaged in extensive planning efforts to determine how we would deal with sequestration," he said in the email.
Appropriators preparing stopgap bill to avoid government shutdown in March Erik Wasson, The Hill February 6, 2013 The House Appropriations Committee has started writing a stopgap spending bill as part of an effort to avert a government shutdown after March 27, when the current continuing resolution expires.
The move is a strong signal that House and Senate deals on more detailed appropriations bills -- deals that were close to being finished last December -- are unlikely.
Work on the stopgap bill is technical at this point, and it's unclear how long the stopgap bill would fund the government. The most likely scenario is a six-month bill to finish out the fiscal year.
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that the top-line spending level in the bill -- a source of friction between the parties in previous fights over government funding -- is up in the air.
"We are beginning to write a CR, so we'll see," he said.
Rogers has difficulty proceeding because he does not know whether the $85 billion cut to spending from sequestration will take effect on March 1. President Obama on Tuesday called for Congress to delay those cuts and find an alternative.
The challenge for Rogers is that, of the $85 billion in sequester cuts for 2013, $70 billion would come from discretionary appropriations that are the purview of his committee.
Rogers blasted the sequester on Wednesday.
"I think it the stupidest way to do business that we have ever had," he said. "I don't like any across-the-board cuts. That's what people elected us to do, to make decisions about where money should be spent. When we abdicate that responsibility and allow across-the-board cuts, it's not smart."
The continuing resolution now funding the government has authorized a total level of spending at $1.047 trillion. Under the fiscal-cliff deal, that number must be reduced to $1.043 trillion. The figure is expected to drop to around $980 billion if the sequester and other changes are taken into effect, a source said.
Senate Democrats are likely to insist on keeping spending at current levels and are working on a sequester replacement that includes tax increases.
Rogers is still holding out hope that the current stopgap can be replaced with at least some of the regular 12 full-length appropriations bills. He said it is time to focus on entitlement spending rather than talking about new taxes or more cuts to appropriations.
"Now is the time to talk about cutting spending, mandatory spending. That's where the money is," he said.
Murkowski explains her 'Pollyanna' optimism on energy bills Ben Geman, The Hill February 11, 2013 Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the top Republican on the Senate's Energy Committee, is under no illusion about how tough it will be to steer legislation through a divided Congress.
But she's convinced that there's an opening. Murkowski, in an interview with The Washington Post, explains why she's hopeful that energy proposals won't end up in the legislative graveyard that has been growing for years.
She notes that lawmakers will inevitably get "stuck" on some topics, but adds: "[L]et's agree that the partisan back-and-forth is not going to hold us back. We'll put together a good product. And my hope is that the House will embrace it accordingly. Signed, Pollyanna."
Murkowski is promoting a wide-ranging energy "blueprint" that she believes can help inform smaller, discrete bills to move through the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Here's more from Murkowski in the Post on the "new territory" of outreach to the House:
Sen. Wyden and I have already reached out to our counterparts. We got a good reaction from them. The four of us -- (including House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (Mich.) and Rep. Ed Whitfield, chairman of the subcommittee on energy and power) -- have agreed that we'd like to have occasional breakfasts and talk. That's new territory, which is a good thing.
And why she's optimistic:
I'm a firm believer that if you put together a good product that is just good policy, that is embraced by both sides so that it is seen as politically advantageous to the Republicans or Democrats, that even in this very polarized partisan world that you can advance legislation. I have to believe that or I wouldn't want to get up every morning.
Check out the whole interview here.
Senior House GOP lawmaker says nuclear waste bill without Yucca will fail Zack Colman, The Hill February 6, 2013 A leading House GOP member on nuclear issues said Wednesday that Senate nuclear waste management legislation that does not identify Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository will not pass the House.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said such a bill would not pass because the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act named the Nevada site as the nation's permanent waste storage location.
"Under my dead body will anything be moved through our chamber without a Yucca component," Shimkus, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, told The Hill at a Washington, D.C., event hosted by Bloomberg Government and the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told Greenwire on Tuesday that he is preparing a bipartisan nuclear waste management bill. Committee ranking member Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and energy appropriators Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are also involved.
Framework for nuclear waste legislation in the Senate last year did not include Yucca, and probably won't this session either.
Part of the reason is because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has railed against Yucca throughout his political career, making it unlikely that he would call such a bill for a vote. On top of that, President Obama campaigned on shutting the site down during his first presidential election.
Obama, with the support of Reid, pulled the plug in 2010 on Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews of the Energy Department's application for using Yucca as a permanent repository.
Shimkus has said that move was illegal, citing the 1982 nuclear waste law.
"Read my lips -- Yucca Mountain is the law of the land," Shimkus said.
Shimkus also refuted Wyden's comments that the Oregon Democrat was sensing progress in nuclear waste management discussions with top House energy Republicans. Shimkus said he would have been involved in those conversations, as nuclear waste management is his subcommittee's jurisdiction.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) "said they really didn't talk about nuclear waste at all," Shimkus said. "It's all on generic energy policy. Not on nuclear waste."
Still, Shimkus said the upper chamber's discussions are "interesting," noting that some lawmakers appear committed to moving high-level nuclear waste out of their states.
Wyden is one of those senators. He has said he is open to moving some of that waste stored near risky spots -- such as along fault lines -- to interim storage facilities.
While House Republicans are resolute on using Yucca, Murkowski has embraced moving ahead with other sites.
Murkowski has said she still holds out hope for Yucca. But she said the findings of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future -- an expert panel on nuclear waste formed by Obama in 2009 -- should serve as the foundation for Senate legislation.
That commission, among other suggestions, said states that want a nuclear repository should be allowed to apply for that distinction rather than forcing it on Nevada through Yucca. "I don't want to give up on Yucca because of what has been invested in it, but I also don't want to waste another decade and get nowhere," Murkowski said last month in a pen and pad briefing with reporters.
Heinrich and Udall Request Funding For Cleanup Efforts At Los Alamos National Laboratory And WIPP Sens. Heinrich and Tom Udall Press Release February 4, 2013 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Feb. 4, 2013) - U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall sent a letter to President Obama today requesting that the administration include federal funding in the Department of Energy's Defense Environmental Cleanup 2014 budget for at least $255 million for cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory and $222 million to operate and maintain the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The president is in the final stages of finalizing his FY 2014 budget, which he will send to Congress in the coming weeks.
"The completion of the cleanup of defense legacy at Los Alamos is an important commitment that Congress and DOE have made to the community and the State of New Mexico, and we believe it should remain a top funding priority for DOE. To make the most efficient use of available resources, the New Mexico Environment Department and DOE agreed to focus environmental priorities on areas that pose the greatest risk, including the removal of the 3,706 cubic meters of above-ground TRU waste from the Area G by June 39, 2014. Environmental protection also remains a high priority, including protection of water resources and monitoring of area groundwater and storm-water runoff flows to the Buckman Direct Drinking Water Diversion on the Rio Grande," the Senators wrote to the President. Senators Heinrich and Udall also requested funding for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). As the only active facility in the United States that disposes defense-generated transuranic (TRU) waste, WIPP has received and safely disposed of over 80,000 cubic meters of defense TRU waste. "To continue to meet DOE's cleanup requirements, preserve a high level of safety and compliance, and to maintain vital plant equipment and infrastructure, we believe WIPP will need at least $222, million for fiscal year 2014," continued the Senators in the letter. S.C. nuke site floated for 'interim' storage Bruce Henderson, Charlotte Observer February 4, 2013 South Carolina's Savannah River Site is emerging as a potential storage depot for used fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants, stirring old fears the state could become a radioactive dumping ground.
Choosing the Cold War-era "bomb plant" could put Charlotte, the crossroads of two north-south interstate highways, along a corridor for shipments of the highly radioactive waste from power plants to the north.
With no permanent burial site for spent commercial fuel on the horizon, the government has proposed finding one or more "interim" storage sites. Spent fuel is now kept at the nuclear plants where it was used.
A decision is likely to be years away. It will rest largely on the willingness of communities like the Savannah River region around Aiken, S.C., to accept more nuclear waste without a clear exit time.
But wheels are turning that could lead to SRS. In December, a Charlotte-based official of the French nuclear company Areva pitched a proposal to the S.C. Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council. The plan, while not identifying SRS as a target, called for interim used-fuel storage, research and recycling facilities that could create thousands of jobs.
This month, an SRS economic development group will release a $200,000 study of fuel disposal options.
"The way I see it, if the community wants it, they've got it," said Clint Wolfe, executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, an Aiken group that promotes new missions for SRS.
"For anybody who looks at the assets around the country and looks at the places that could be an interim storage site, SRS is the place." SRS already stores used nuclear fuel, although none from commercial reactors. Its H Canyon nuclear-materials reprocessing plant is unique in the nation and could be reconfigured for new uses. The site has already expressed research interest in nuclear fuels recycling. And its nearly 12,000 workers have technical skills and deep experience with nuclear materials.
A fresh infusion of nuclear waste would translate into more jobs and extended life for the 60-year-old site. But the issue also reopens past wounds about South Carolina's toxic legacy.
The ever-present fear is that, like a party guest who refuses to go home, the waste that comes in would never leave.
"The big concern is what is meant by the term 'interim,' " said Republican state Sen. Tom Young, who represents Aiken County. "We've asked that repeatedly and haven't gotten a definitive answer."
The Department of Energy's projects at SRS have often stumbled. High-level radioactive waste immobilized in glass at the site still hasn't been delivered to a burial site in New Mexico. A new plant under construction at the site to blend surplus weapons plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel faces large cost overruns.
A few miles to the Southeast is the 42-year-old Barnwell disposal site for low-level nuclear waste. One of only three such sites in the nation, it lends credence to South Carolina's reputation as a dumping ground.
"There's a perception we fight in South Carolina that we are the nation's paid toilet - you pay the money and we take the waste," said Ann Timberlake, executive director of Conservation Voters of South Carolina, which opposes importing more nuclear waste.
Competition Observers say several states are competing to become the interim storage site.
"The twist about South Carolina that I don't think other states appreciate is that we are well aware that (the Department of Energy) has a very hard time executing their plans," said Karen Patterson, who chairs the Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council.
Patterson suspects the Department of Energy will offer SRS as a temporary storage site because it already hosts so much nuclear waste. But she doesn't predict anything to happen soon.
Congress would first have to come up with the money for a storage site and change a federal law that says a permanent repository has to be licensed before an interim site could open.
"I think it will be many years, four or five years, before this is resolved," she said.
A Department of Energy report released in January set a goal of opening by 2021 a pilot interim-storage site to take the 3,000 tons of used fuel from 11 closed nuclear reactors. A larger site, to open in 2025, would store 22,000 tons or more of fuel from operating plants.
"We haven't heard anything that says we're going to be the place," said SRS spokesman Bill Taylor. "This site and other sites have been mentioned as potential sites."
Utilities say the commercial fuel is safe where it is, stored in pools or steel casks at nuclear plants. But they would prefer the government take responsibility for it as promised decades ago.
"We support a centralized interim storage facility for plants that have shut down, and to ultimately relieve some of the expense and responsibility of storing at those sites," said Duke Energy spokesman Tim Pettit. "We're not really in the business of prescribing where that is sited."
Tom Clements, an advocate in Columbia with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, says moving the fuel from nuclear plants to SRS isn't necessary and would expose workers to radiation risks.
"If there were interim storage from operating reactor sites, there would be a massive amount of transfers of highly radioactive waste fuel," Clements said. "A reprocessing plant would have to be fed by spent fuel. That would guarantee that spent fuel would be moving through North Carolina on a consistent basis."
New missions would also translate into jobs at SRS, which is already one of South Carolina's top employers with an economic impact of $2.6 billion a year.
"As the site winds down and the cleanup process continues, those workers will continue to dwindle," said Rick McLeod, executive director of the SRS Community Reuse Organization, an economic development agency. "This may help backfill some of those jobs that you might lose."
The group plans to release results this month of a $200,000 study on fuel disposal at SRS. The study will be "something for the folks to start thinking about," McLeod said, with a more detailed plan to come later.
Aiken resident Connie Darden-Young has heard enough.
Her father was an SRS physicist during the Cold War, and she remembers the government's promises to clean up the site. Word that SRS could take in more waste prompted Darden-Young and her husband, musician Jesse Colin Young, to form Don't Waste Aiken to fight more waste imports.
"Somehow it seems when it has anything to do with waste, our country pretends like it's not there," she said.
Storage/recycling
The French-owned nuclear company Areva, which has offices in Charlotte, believes interim storage of nuclear fuel could be combined with fuel recycling.
The company has long experience in France with recycling, in which enriched uranium is removed from spent fuel for reuse. It plans to apply for a license for a U.S. recycling plant in 2019 but for now carefully avoids proposing SRS or any specific location.
"We have so much used nuclear fuel and we have so many options of what to do with it," said Paul Murray, the Charlotte-based technology director for strategic projects at Areva Federal Services.
Murray appeared before the S.C. Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council in December, describing a tiered approach to dealing with used fuel.
Apart from storing the fuel, a research center could assess the long-term safety of the casks that often house it. Another facility could reduce the size of fuel packaging. And a recycling plant, he said, could deal with the 25,000 tons of spent fuel stored in the Southeast.
The plan has economic-development appeal, SRS observers say.
But recycling used fuel is likely to run into opposition. Recycling separates not only uranium that can be reused in reactors but also plutonium, a potential bomb material. The United States has banned recycling since the late 1970s because terrorists and other enemies might obtain it.
"At the end of the day, it's going to come down to a business case, to be honest," Murray said. "Ultimately, somebody is going to have to pay for this. Is it cheaper to send it to interim storage, repackage it and then send it to a geological repository? Or cheaper to send it to a recycling plant and then dispose of the waste?"
Hanford Advisory Board wants to speed cleanup of highly radioactive waste spill Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 10, 2013 The Department of Energy should not delay work to clean up the highly radioactive spill from a hot cell in a Hanford building just north of Richland, the Hanford Advisory Board said Friday.
DOE and its regulators, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency, have proposed revised deadlines to the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement.
They include extending the deadline for tearing down the 324 Building, where concentrated cesium and strontium spilled into the soil beneath it, for three years past the current deadline of September 2015.The deadline had been set before workers discovered the highly contaminated soil in 2010. The lining of a sump at the bottom of a hot cell in the building had cracked, allowing radioactive material to leak into the soil, possibly when a large spill of cesium and strontium happened in the hot cell in 1986.Radioactivity has been measured at 8,900 rad per hour, which would be about 10 times the lethal dose on contact, according to Hanford officials.
"This is extremely high radiation. Nothing else compares in the river corridor," said Mark French, DOE project director for environmental cleanup in the river corridor, when the spill was discovered. The river corridor encompasses 75 square miles of the nuclear reservation along the Columbia River.
Now radiation from the spill is shielded by the building above it and there is no evidence the spill has reached the groundwater, which is about 42 feet below the bottom of the hot cell. The worst of the contaminated soil is believed to be 5 to 6 feet beneath the hot cell.
However, there is a concern that two water lines have broken near the contaminated soil, said Pam Larsen, who represents the city of Richland on the board.
Although the water is not believed to have hit the spill, if it did it could have spread the cesium and strontium toward the groundwater. The 324 Building is 1,000 feet from the Columbia River.
"There is a risk. It is very near town," Larsen said.
The board also is concerned that leaving the 324 Building standing with the leak beneath it will further delay completion of the cleanup and closure of the Hanford 300 Area just north of Richland, which had been planned to be finished in 2015."Having a building there puts a screeching halt to cleanup of the 300 Area," said Dick Smith, who represents the city of Kennewick on the board.
Given the already tight Hanford budget, the board said DOE should seek additional money to clean up the contaminated soil.
Chances of getting the money are slim, but the board still should be on record as requesting it, Smith said.
Other changes to Tri-Party Agreement deadlines also have been proposed because of other newly discovered contamination, such as extensive chromium contamination down to groundwater near the river, and to build experience before tackling some challenging central Hanford work.
The board did not object to the other proposed deadline changes.
"Although the board does have some concerns about an established pattern of delaying cleanup activities through changes to the Tri-Party Agreement, we recognize that the modifications contained within this proposed change package represent the reality of where we are today," the board said in a document to be sent to DOE and its regulators.
"While milestones are the very backbone that supports strategically planned cleanup work and tracks progress as the cleanup activities continue to completion, the ultimate goal is safe and effective Hanford cleanup," it said.
More radioactive scraps discovered in Hanford's K West basin Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 7, 2013 More scraps of irradiated reactor fuel have been found in Hanford's K West Basin, where it was stored at the end of the Cold War.
The three newly discovered scraps -- broken off of uranium fuel rods -- are small, but highly radioactive."
The significance comes down to worker protection," said Tom Teynor, Department of Energy project director for the K Basins Closure Project. "We do not want them unknowingly exposed to pieces of fuel. They are high-dose items."
The last of the known fuel was removed from the basin attached to the K West Reactor last year. Work has started to deactivate the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility, which had been used to prepare fuel and scrap fuel from the K Reactor basins for storage in central Hanford's Canister Storage Building.
The additional fuel scraps were discovered with the help of new high-definition color TV cameras and monitors, and it is possible that more scraps yet may be discovered, Teynor said.
The cooling basins attached to the K East and K West reactors were used to hold irradiated fuel at the end of the Cold War that had not been processed to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
Between 2000-04, about 2,300 tons of irradiated fuel were removed from the K Basins and taken to central Hanford. Removing the fuel removed 95 percent of the radioactivity from the areas along the river where nine reactors operated.
But left in the basins was radioactive sludge formed from corroding fuel, dust and bits of concrete. Hidden in the sludge were more fragments of irradiated fuel, which were gathered and temporarily stored in containers in the K West Basin, shielded by 17 feet of water to protect workers.
In addition, stray fuel pieces and fragments were found when debris burial grounds were dug up near reactors. That fuel also was stored in the K West Basin, along with containers of radioactive sludge vacuumed up in both basins.
The last of that stored fuel was removed from the basin last year, and on May 1 workers gathered to watch the last shipment of known irradiated fuel leave for the Canister Storage Facility.
More recently, workers were measuring the depth of residual sludge in the K West Basin that remains after the basin's underwater floor has been vacuumed several times.
The first scrap was found just outside what workers call the "weasel pit," an area where equipment and fuel suspected of being cracked or damaged were placed for inspection. The area had been passed over several times, but by chance, light reflected off the fuel scrap, Teynor said.
Workers started looking for more and found two additional pieces. The largest measured 1.5 inches by 0.5 inch and the others were about 0.5 inch by 0.5 inch. The scraps would not have been visible with the former black and white video system and lighting, he said.
An inspection plan has been developed to sample more areas to check for additional scraps.
The three fuel pieces have been placed in a canister in the west part of the basin. If any more fuel scraps are found, including among the equipment still in the basin, they will be stored there also.
After fuel pieces first were found in reactor burial grounds in 2004, Washington Closure Hanford was designing a dry storage cask for them. Those efforts ended when plans switched to store the pieces underwater temporarily in the K West Basin.
With the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility being deactivated, DOE's contractor for K Basin work, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., will continue development of the dry storage cask, Teynor said.
The fuel scraps are not expected to be removed until after sludge held in containers in the basin is removed.
The K East Basin already has been demolished and no fuel scraps were found in it. The Environmental Protection Agency has been notified that fuel scraps have been found in the K West Basin and is waiting to see if any more are found, said Rod Lobos, an EPA engineer.
Hanford soil cleanup hole looks like open pit mine Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 6, 2013 RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Dump trucks carrying 32 tons each of freshly dug soil rolled through the dirt west of Hanford's D Reactor Tuesday.
By August, they should have carried away enough soil to leave a pit 85 feet deep, stretching over the size of seven and a half football fields.
Hanford officials believe the dirt, which once was beneath a system used to distribute sodium dichromate, is a major source of the contamination reaching the groundwater near the horn of the Columbia River as it crosses Hanford.
The chemical, which was added as a corrosion inhibitor to river water used to cool Hanford reactors, was brought in by railcar in massive quantities and then distributed through a system of piping and fill stations. Over time it leaked and spilled into the soil.
A new water treatment system there is removing chromium from the groundwater to prevent it from reaching the river, where it could harm young fish. Chromium is toxic to aquatic life at very low levels, including levels that meet drinking water standards.
But to keep the chromium in the soil from continually recontaminating the groundwater, the Department of Energy must remove it from the soil.
"Groundwater contamination is really expensive to treat compared to digging," said Cameron Hardy, DOE spokesman.
Washington Closure Hanford and subcontractor TerranearPMC are loading 300 to 450 truckloads a day, said Scott Myers, Washington Closure project manager for field remediation at the D, DR and H reactors. Terranear has a $12.3 million subcontractor to remove 2.5 million tons of material near the three reactors, including chromium-contaminated soil down to groundwater in three places.
Work began in December on the first deep hole near D Reactor and nearby DR Reactor after a 230 kilovolt power line was relocated and the infrastructure for three monitoring wells was removed.
An initial hole already had been dug to learn the extent of the contamination. It showed the green and yellow staining of chromium contamination at 15 feet, again at 30 feet when more digging was done and finally at 50 feet, when work stopped about 35 feet above groundwater with extensive contamination showing on the floor of the dig.
The hole being dug now will have a floor that's expected to be the size of a football field and to be large enough to have clean soil at its edges. But to safely dig a hole that deep, the hole must be much wider at the top.
"Essentially it is an open pit mine," Myers said.
Its engineered design calls for gently sloped sides at the top, with steeper slopes about halfway down, to prevent cave-ins, said Scott Parnell, Washington Closure deputy director of field remediation. It's built in lifts or layers of 15 to 18 feet, each with a safety shelf to catch any falling rocks.
Soil samples are collected and checked along the sides at each elevation, to confirm that soil at the pit's edges are clean before the hole gets deeper and sampling is more dangerous for workers.
Similar work was done to clean up soil contaminated with chromium down to 85 feet near Hanford's C Reactor, and workers picked up tips that will be used again. That includes using thick pads to link together and create roads to keep truck tires from becoming contaminated, said Clint Adamson, Washington Closure subcontracts technical representative for D Area.
About 750,000 tons of clean and contaminated soil will be removed at the pit being dug now. Initially the clean soil is being moved to a nearby shallower site excavated as part of earlier environmental cleanup work. That should save about $300,000 because soil will only have to be handled once.
But eventually, tall piles of clean soil will be made and held until it's time to back fill the pit, Adamson said. Contaminated soil will be hauled to the central Hanford landfill for radioactive or hazardous chemicals, the lined Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. Soil with the heaviest contamination will have to be mixed with cement to contain the chromium before it is added to the landfill.
A second deep dig will start near the D and DR Reactors in May, where more chromium is expected to contaminate soil down to groundwater.
In addition, soil is expected to be dug up down to groundwater near H Reactor, the other reactor near the horn of the Columbia River, to remove suspected chromium. However, groundwater there is expected to be just 40 to 45 feet deep.
Line Commission: Idaho Should Exercise Leadership in Protecting the INL as a Significant State Asset State of Idaho Press Release February 6, 2013 (BOISE) - Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter today applauded the effort of his Leadership in Nuclear Energy (LINE) Commission in conducting an extensive review of the Idaho National Laboratory and nuclear-related activities in Idaho.
After nine public meetings, dozens of presentations and several hundred comments from the public, the LINE Commission's final report was unveiled today at a special joint meeting of the Senate Resources and Environment and House Environment, Energy and Technology committees as part of the Idaho Council on Industry and the Environment's "Gold Room Workshop" series.
"I concur wholeheartedly with the Commission's assessment that the Idaho National Laboratory is a significant state asset," Governor Otter said. "The State of Idaho should take immediate and long-term steps to enhance the future of the nation's lead nuclear research and development laboratory that is responsible for over 24,000 jobs and has an annual economic impact on Idaho of more than $3.5 billion."
One of the immediate action items recommended by the Commission is creation of a Nuclear Advisory Council that would ensure Idaho's interests are protected and that the nation continues to benefit from Idaho's 60-plus years of experience in nuclear energy, research, development, demonstration and deployment.
"Practically every segment of Idaho's economy has a council or commission dedicated to enhancing opportunities within that sector," said LINE Commission Chairman Jeff Sayer, director of the Idaho Department of Commerce.
"The Department of Environmental Quality and the INL Oversight Office deserve great accolades for successfully guiding the cleanup efforts at INL," Sayer said. "With that success, we see equal value in establishing a council to advise the state on nuclear research and industry opportunities and help the public understand these complex and critical issues based on balanced and accurate information."
The LINE Commission had significant discussions about Idaho's landmark 1995 settlement agreement with the federal government on removing radioactive waste from the state. And while no immediate changes were recommended to the agreement, the Commission identified a number of provisions that warrant further consideration. The Commission identified potential areas of opportunity that could fundamentally advance the mission of the lab, but only if the state engages in discussions or considers possible changes to benefit Idaho.
Throughout its nearly yearlong public process, the LINE Commission heard several recurring themes that resulted in four significant findings in the report:
1. Safety and environmental protection are non-negotiable 2. Nuclear storage and disposal technologies have markedly improved 3. The decision on Yucca Mountain demands Idaho's attention 4. A significant industrial opportunity exists in nuclear energy Based on those findings, the Commission made six broad recommendations for the state to consider as it works to promote and enhance the INL's mission:
address remaining environmental risks and continue cleanup at the INL site. management policies. businesses, the corresponding infrastructure, and the attraction of new nuclear businesses. global research opportunities. resource for nuclear energy research. Within those recommendations, 13 immediate actions were recommended in the Commission's final report. An executive summary is posted online at http://gov.idaho.gov/pdf/LineSummary.pdf.
The Nuclear Power and Natural Gas Equation Jon Hurdle, The New York Times February 6, 2013 Duke Energy is weighing the issue of how to replace the power generated by its troubled Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida, which the company has announced that it will permanently shut down.
One option is the construction of a new plant fired by natural gas, given the low price and abundant supply of that fuel source. Such a plant could come online as early as 2018, Duke said on Tuesday.
The Crystal River plant, in Citrus County, Fla., has been closed since 2009, when a crack was found in a concrete containment barrier when the plant was undergoing refueling and the replacement of its steam generators. More cracks were caused by repair work in 2011, leading the company to evaluate the risks, costs, and scope of any further repairs, Progress Energy Florida, a Duke subsidiary, said in a statement.
In 2012, a report commissioned on the plant found that while it would be technically possible to complete the repairs, any such work would carry increased risks, delays and much higher costs. "This has been an arduous process of modeling, engineering, analysis and evaluation over many months," Jim Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, said in a statement. "The decision was very difficult but it is the right choice."
In a post-Fukushima world in which regulators are tasked with rigorously policing nuclear safety, ailing plants like Crystal River are less likely to survive than they once were, one analyst suggested on Wednesday. "It's very reflective of the increased stringency with which existing plants are being looked at," said John Dean, president of JD Energy, an energy and environmental forecasting firm based in Frederick, Md. "We are seeing a level of scrutiny that we've never seen before."
Duke faced potential costs of more than $3 billion to repair Crystal River, Mr. Dean said, setting the plant apart from other older nuclear stations. But even if it had restarted, it would have faced the same regulatory rigor and some local opposition. Similar concerns have arisen about plants like Vermont Yankee, which the Vermont Senate voted to have shut down, a move blocked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Indian Point in New York, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he wants closed.
The 2011 accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant has led to more stringent safety testing at nuclear plants in the United States under changes adopted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "It increased the level of scrutiny," said Dave McIntyre, a commission spokesman.
On Wednesday, for example, Representatives Barbara Boxer of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expressing concern about documents indicating that utilities have long since been aware of design problems with steam generators at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California, completed two decades ago. The waterfront plant has been shut down for production for more than a year, since a radiation leak led inspectors to discover that hundreds of steam generator tubes were damaged.
Concern about the age of many American nuclear plants is exacerbated by the fact that 72 of them have had their original 40-year operating licenses extended for another 20 years, Mr. McIntyre of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted. The oldest plant is Oyster Creek in New Jersey, which began operating in 1969; the newest is Watts Bar in Tennessee, which went online in 1996.
Nationally, four new units are under construction: two at the Southern Company's Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, Ga., in Georgia, and two at South Carolina Electric and Gas's V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in Sumner, S.C.
Despite increasing demand for carbon-free power generation, the future of nuclear plants is clouded by the abundance of domestic natural gas, which has led many utilities to embrace that fuel for power generators. That has eased the pressure on operators to keep nuclear plants open, especially if there are questions about their safety.
"There is more of a feeling that because you have very low natural gas prices, there is another alternative out there," Mr. Dean said.
Energy chief plays along with report of 'carousing' in The Onion Zack Colman, The Hill February 7, 2013 Energy Secretary Steven Chu may or may not have had sexual relations with that solar panel -- but those rumors didn't lead to his resignation.
The departing Energy Department (DOE) chief played along Thursday with a story by jokester The Onion that said, "following a long night of carousing at a series of D.C. watering holes, Energy Secretary Steven Chu awoke Thursday morning to find himself sleeping next to a giant solar panel he had met the previous evening."
He joked about the nonsensical allegation on his personal Facebook page:
"I just want everyone to know that my decision not to serve a second term as Energy Secretary has absolutely nothing to do with the allegations made in this week's edition of the Onion. While I'm not going to confirm or deny the charges specifically, I will say that clean, renewable solar power is a growing source of U.S. jobs and is becoming more and more affordable, so it's no surprise that lots of Americans are falling in love with solar."
As of publishing time, the post had collected 689 "likes" from Chu's 19,690 subscribers, and had also been shared 226 times.
Chu has been quite the comedian of late.
Last week at the Washington Auto Show, Chu joked that DOE hasn't "been smoking anything" when it comes to the department's optimism in the electric vehicle industry.
Chu announced the next day that he would leave DOE once his successor is named.
A Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Chu has been an advocate of clean-energy technology -- and helped defend it against GOP attacks -- during his stay in the Obama administration. He oversaw the disbursement of the low-carbon energy portion of the 2009 federal stimulus, and overhauled the departments research and development efforts.
He told DOE staff last week that he is likely to return to academic life and move back to the West Coast.
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