Thursday, January 20, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENT: Bush names Reid aide to fill NRC spot
Senator's adviser on Yucca Mountain, nuclear proponent's pick both tapped
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- President Bush followed through on a deal Wednesday, appointing an aide to Sen. Harry Reid to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that sets rules for nuclear waste disposal.
Bush filled a vacancy on the commission with Gregory B. Jaczko, 34, Reid's chief adviser on the Yucca Mountain Project, a program the Nevada Democrat opposes and has tried to kill.
At the same time, Bush filled a second vacancy on the five-member NRC with an associate of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a leading nuclear energy proponent in Congress.
The appointee, Peter B. Lyons, is a professional staff member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a senior adviser to Domenici, the panel chairman, on nuclear energy, research and development and hydrogen.
Lyons, 61, joined Domenici's staff in 1997 after a 27-year career at Los Alamos National Laboratory, including stints managing the lab's partnerships with industrial societies and its work supporting the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Bush named Jaczko and Lyons to the NRC using his executive powers to make direct appointments during official Senate recesses, enabling the appointees to bypass formal confirmation that had caused a stalemate over the politically charged posts. The appointments are effective until Congress ends its session late in 2006.
Reid forced the White House into a deal late last year to place Jaczko on the NRC after Reid held up about 175 other appointees to Bush administration jobs.
Reid on Wednesday praised the White House for following through.
Domenici said the joint appointments served to satisfy the White House agreement with Reid while maintaining "balance" at the NRC. The nuclear power industry had fought against Jaczko, claiming he would be biased against the Yucca Mountain Project.
"When (the White House) agreed to put Reid's man on, we were clearly thinking about how do we make sure we still have balance, or we wouldn't have agreed," Domenici said. "A legislative appointment was obviously the way to keep the balance."
Under the terms of the deal, Jaczko would recuse himself for a year from any Yucca Mountain matters. The agency is preparing to review a license application for the repository but Yucca Mountain was not expected to reach the commissioners' agenda in that period.
