nuclear agent
Trump picks NASA chief, NOAA second-in-command.
President Donald Trump has announced his picks for two prominent science-related positions in his administration.
Breaking: Trump picks NASA chief, NOAA second-in-command
By Science News StaffSep. 1, 2017 , 8:48 PM
President Donald Trump has announced his picks for two prominent science-related positions in his administration.
He intends to nominate Representative James Bridenstine (R-OK) to be the administrator of NASA, the White House announced tonight.
And he wants Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, a former Oceanographer of the Navy, to be assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, the number two job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Both nominees will have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Bridenstine, a member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee of the House of Representatives, has long been rumored to be Trump’s choice to run NASA – and the pick is already attracting criticism from some quarters.
Bridenstine has been a member of Congress since 2012. He is a former Navy pilot who “began his Naval aviation career flying the E-2C Hawkeye off the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier,” according a brief biography released by the White House. It continues:
It was there that he flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. While on active duty, he transitioned to the F-18 Hornet and flew as an “aggressor” at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center. After leaving active duty, Mr. Bridenstine returned to Tulsa, Oklahoma to be the Executive Director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium and flew counter-drug missions in Central and South America in the Navy Reserve. He holds a triple major from Rice University and an M.B.A. from Cornell University. Mr. Bridenstine is currently a member of the 137th Special Operations Wing of the Oklahoma Air National Guard.
Gallaudet, a 32-year Navy veteran, has also served as commander of the Navy’s Meteorology and Oceanography Command. According to his White House biography:
Gallaudet has had experience in weather and ocean forecasting, hydrographic surveying, developing policy and plans to counter illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, and assessing the national security impacts of climate change. Dr. Gallaudet has led teams of Navy Sailors and civilians performing such diverse functions as overseeing aircraft carrier combat operations, planning and conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster response efforts, assisting Navy SEAL Teams during high visibility counter-terrorism operations, and developing the Navy's annual $52 billion information technology, cyber security, and intelligence budget. Dr. Gallaudet holds a bachelor's degree from the U.S. Naval Academy and masters and doctoral degrees from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, all in oceanography.
Science News Staff
Got a tip?
How to contact the news team
ScienceInsider
Trump has picked a politician to lead NASA. Is that a good thing?
By Paul VoosenSep. 1, 2017
Young immigrant scientists anxiously await Trump’s DACA decision
By Maggie KuoSep. 1, 2017
Update: Life after Harvey—scientists take stock of the damage, and their luck
By Science News StaffSep. 1, 2017
A lab flees from Harvey: We were ‘just so damn lucky’
By Carrie ArnoldSep. 1, 2017
Skepticism surfaces over CRISPR human embryo editing claims
By Kelly ServickAug. 31, 2017
More ScienceInsider
Sifter
How blind people use echolocation
Sep. 1, 2017
The average age for new U.S. dads has passed 30
Sep. 1, 2017
How Neandertals made their spear-binding ‘superglue’
Aug. 31, 2017
Hubble teases possibility of water on nearby exoplanets
Aug. 31, 2017
Here’s what the eclipse looked like from the moon
Aug. 31, 2017
More Sifter
Science
1 September 2017
Vol 357, Issue 6354
Asia/Pacific News
Atomic bonding
Ecology
The case of the macho crocs
European News
Reports raise concerns about France's nuclear waste tomb
Asia/Pacific News
India's dark matter quest
Paleontology
Toxic algae may be culprit in mysterious dinosaur deaths
Asia/Pacific News
Science suffers as China plugs holes in Great Firewall
Table of Contents
About us
Journals
Leadership
Team members
Work at AAAS
Advertise
Advertising kits
Custom publishing
For subscribers
Site license info
For members
International
Chinese
Japanese
Help
Access & subscriptions
Reprints & permissions
Contact us
Accessibility
Stay Connected
© 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights Reserved. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, PatientInform, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER.
Terms of Service
Privacy Policy
Contact Us
Keep reading...Show less
Pushing the storage horse with a nuclear waste cart: the spent fuel pool problem.
In June, Energy Secretary Rick Perry gave a case of heartburn to US nuclear reactor operators when he testified before the House Energy and Water Appropriations Committee in support of the department’s proposed budget for fiscal 2018.
Jump to navigation
BE A DONOR
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest YouTube Google+
Search
MENU
The John A. Simpson Archive
About John A. Simpson
Agree to Disagree
Analysis
Columnists
Development and Disarmament Roundtable
Explain This
Multimedia
Nuclear Notebook
Opinion
Reports
Nuclear Roundup
What We're Reading
Voices of Tomorrow
Biosecurity
Climate Change
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Weapons
Background and Mission
Staff
Science and Security Board
Board of Sponsors
Governing Board
Media Center
Columnists
Next Generation Program
2016 Annual Report
2015 Annual Report
Donor Information
Open Positions
Write for The Bulletin
Contact Us
Current time
Timeline
Multimedia
FAQ
Museum exhibit
You are here
Home › Features › Columnists › Pushing the storage horse with a nuclear waste cart: the spent fuel pool problem
COLUMNISTS
9 AUGUST 2017
Pushing the storage horse with a nuclear waste cart: the spent fuel pool problem
Robert Alvarez
AlvarezAdjusted.jpg
ROBERT ALVAREZ
A senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Robert Alvarez served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department's secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and...
More
SUBSCRIBE
In June, Energy Secretary Rick Perry gave a case of heartburn to US nuclear reactor operators when he testified before the House Energy and Water Appropriations Committee in support of the department’s proposed budget for fiscal 2018. To underscore the need to restart the licensing process at the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste site in Nevada, he mentioned how his visit to the Fukushima accident site powerfully affected him. “Having those spent fuel rods in those cooling ponds in a region of the world that's inside that 'Ring of Fire,' as they call it. And the potential to have a geologic event, we could have a repeat of what happened at Fukushima to some degree."
While it appears that Perry has become an unlikely ally, of sorts, of my colleagues and me—we have been warning about the cooling-pond problem for several years—the opening of the Yucca Mountain site will not reduce risky storage practices for US nuclear reactor wastes.
Perry correctly pointed to the vulnerabilities of power reactor spent fuel pools to destructive geologic events. He did not, however, mention key steps that need to be taken to significantly reduce the spent fuel pool hazards, well before a radioactive waste repository can open. The most important: a reduction of the density of spent fuel assemblies now stored in these pools, and an expansion of on-site storage of used fuel in hardened “dry casks.” These moves would return the cooling pools to their original purpose—to hold far fewer used fuel assemblies than they currently do, and to hold them only until the assemblies have cooled sufficiently for other forms of storage. During his visit to the Fukushima site, however, Perry may not have learned a major lesson taught by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima: Despite major damage to the rest of the power plant—including the melt-down of three reactor cores—nine dry casks holding 408 spent nuclear fuel assemblies went unscathed.
The pool problem. For more than 30 years, nuclear safety research has shown that severe accidents can occur if a spent fuel cooling pool loses a significant amount of water. If the fuel assemblies in a pool are exposed to air and steam, their zirconium cladding will react exothermically, after several hours or days catching fire in a burn front, ala a forest fire or a fireworks sparkler. (Because of its high reactivity to heat, zirconium was at one time used as a filament in camera flash bulbs.) Such a fire would release a potpourri of radioisotopes; particularly worrisome is the large amount of cesium 137 in spent fuel. Cesium 137 gives off highly penetrating radiation and has a 30-year half-life, meaning it persists in the environment for a long time. It is absorbed and concentrates in the food chain as if it were potassium.
Currently, about 70 percent of some 244,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies in the United States sit in US power reactor cooling pools, with the remaining 30 percent contained in dry storage casks. About a third of the spent fuel in wet storage sits at decades-old boiling water reactors, in pools built several stories above the ground; the remainder is at pressurized water reactors, where the cooling pools are embedded in the ground.
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, my colleagues and I published a paper warning that acts of malice or accidents could cause drainage of spent nuclear fuel pools in the United States, causing spent fuel cladding to catch fire and release catastrophic amounts of long-lived radioactivity—far more than a reactor melt down. The hazard is made worse because the pools are densely packed with irradiated fuel assemblies.
We pointed out that large-scale land contamination would occur if spent nuclear fuel was exposed by a partial drainage or if the pool went completely dry, causing burning fuel assemblies to release a large amount of cesium 137, a result demonstrated after the 1986 reactor accident at Chernobyl, where, more than 30 years later, cesium 137 continues to poison an area roughly half the size of the state of New Jersey, rendering it uninhabitable. To significantly reduce the probability of such an event, we called for an end of the high-density pool storage of used nuclear fuel and the placement of most spent nuclear fuel in dry, hardened storage containers. This change in fuel storage arrangements could be completed within 10 years, we estimated, at a cost of $3.5 to $7 billion.
The receptions of the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to our study ranged from striking us from Christmas card lists to downright hostility. In fact, one NRC commissioner was so upset after we briefed him that he ordered the staff at the Office Regulatory Research to produce “a hard-hitting critique … that sort of undermines the study deeply.”
NRC suppresses the spent fuel pool problem. In the wake of the September 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington, Congress commissioned a National Academy of Sciences review to sort out the controversy generated by our study. When the Academy’s report was finalized in 2005, the NRC unsuccessfully tried to suppress it, and to substitute one with its own analysis, which disputed the Academy’s findings. William Colglazier, executive officer of the Academy, successfully forced a public release of a declassified version of its report and took issue with the NRC’s conduct. He emphasized the public’s right to know, stating that “there are substantive disagreements between our committee’s views and the NRC.”
The academy’s report concluded that “[a] loss-of-pool-coolant event resulting from damage or collapse of the pool could have severe consequences… It is not prudent to dismiss nuclear plants, including spent fuel storage facilities, as undesirable targets for terrorists… [U]nder some conditions, a terrorist attack that partially or completely drained a spent fuel pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and release large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment… Such fires would create thermal plumes that could potentially transport radioactive aerosols hundreds of miles downwind under appropriate atmospheric conditions.”
The academy panel also found that dry-cask storage offered several advantages over pool storage. Dry-cask storage is a passive system that relies on natural air circulation for cooling, rather than requiring water to be continually pumped into cooling pools to replace water lost to evaporation caused by the hot spent fuel. Also, dry-casks divide the inventory of spent fuel among many discrete, robust containers, rather than concentrating it in a relatively small number of pools.
The Fukushima accident in March 2011 made it clear that the hazard of spent fuel pools was not an abstract issue. Following the earthquake and tsunami, an explosion destroyed the reactor building of unit 4, exposing the pool containing an entire core-worth of freshly discharged spent nuclear fuel to the open air. By sheer luck, an accidental leak from a water line not actually intended to serve the cooling pool prevented water levels from dropping in the pool and thereby causing a major radioactive release.
How the spent fuel pool problem arose. The cooling pools at US nuclear power plants are about 40 feet deep and were originally designed for temporary storage terms of about five years. After that, the used irradiated fuel cores would have cooled sufficiently to be shipped to reprocessing plants where plutonium would be extracted to fuel the next generation of reactors. “Neither the [Atomic Energy Commission, now the Energy Department] nor utilities anticipated the need to store large amounts of spent fuel at operating sites,” the owner of the Millstone reactor station in Connecticut said in 2000. “Large-scale commercial reprocessing never materialized in the United States. As a result, operating nuclear sites were required to cope with ever increasing amounts of irradiated fuel... This has become a fact of life for nuclear power stations.”
After the Carter administration banned reprocessing because of nuclear weapon proliferation concerns, the NRC permitted high density storage in pools and the deployment of dry casks until the Yucca Mountain repository could open, supposedly in 1998. In 2010, however, Yucca Mountain was still a work in progress, and President Obama cancelled it. Now, the Trump administration is seeking $120 million in the 2018 fiscal year to restart the NRC licensing process for the site. Under the most optimistic assumptions, a geologic repository would not open for 30 to 50 years.
Meanwhile, the US reactor fleet has maxed out its wet storage capacity and shows no signs of changing the practice of high density pool storage, even after being forced, by sheer lack of room in the pools, to put more waste in dry storage containers.
The dangers of cooling pool storage. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the NRC left it up to reactor operators to provide their own strategies to address what is known as a beyond-design-basis accident, such as a highly destructive earthquake, that caused the loss of water in a spent fuel pool. Some of those strategies seemed less than robust. For instance, the strategy to replace spent fuel pool water at the Columbia Generating Station, a boiling water reactor in Washington that sits in an earthquake prone area, involves connecting a pumper fire truck to two spray ponds, where water is cooled before reuse. More than 600 feet of hosing is required; it would snake from the pumper truck up several flights of steps, reaching the spent fuel pool about 195 feet above the ground and, supposedly, pushing 300 to 600 gallons of water per minute into the pool.
Satisfied with the steps taken by US reactor operators, NRC officials told a panel of the National Academy of Science in 2013 that “no early fatalities are predicted in any scenarios” studied in response to the Fukushima disaster. A pool fire, the NRC said, would result in “exposures to very lightly contaminated areas for which doses are small enough to be considered habitable.”
In 2007, however, the commission provided a radically different assessment to emergency responders seeking to rapidly determine the degree and extent of nuclear accidents. An important part of its preparedness and response capabilities is a computer model that the NRC and emergency responders must rely upon for a rapid evaluation of the radiological impacts from accidents at nuclear power plants, spent fuel storage pools, and casks.
The NRC’s instructional workbook for the model lays out a scenario at Unit 2 of the San Onofre nuclear plant in Southern California. Under that scenario, plant staff report that an earthquake has cracked a spent fuel pool, which is losing water that appears to be flowing into a sink hole. A malfunctioning pump has prevented staff from refilling the pool. “The water dropped to the top of the fuel at 8:49 a.m., and appears likely to continue dropping,” the workbook scenario says. “Estimates are that the fuel will be fully uncovered by 11:00 a.m. The pool has high-density racking and contains one batch of fuel that was unloaded from the reactor only 2 weeks earlier.”
Based on this scenario, the NRC report estimates that within six hours of pool drainage, the spent fuel cladding will catch fire, releasing approximately 86 million curies of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Of that, about 30 percent of the radio-cesium in the spent fuel (roughly 40 million curies) would be released—more than 150 percent of the amount released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. An area within a 10-mile radius—encompassing 314 square-miles of land and offshore waters—could be lethally contaminated, including the world’s largest US Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton and the city of San Clemente. The resulting doses, based on the results from NRC’s model, could be lethal within a 10 mile radius of the power plant—and comparable to those received by the Japanese atomic bomb survivors ten miles away.
The two operating reactors at San Onofre were permanently shut down in 2013. A decommissioning and fuel handling plan filed in 2014 suggests that the 2,668 used fuel assemblies then in wet storage will be transferred to dry storage—but that process would not be complete until 2019.
In May 2016, for the second time, a National Academy of Science panel refuted the NRC’s expressions of confidence in the safety of spent fuel pools. Finding flaws in the agency’s technical assumptions, the panel stated that the loss of spent fuel pool cooling at the Fukushima site “should serve as a wake-up call to nuclear plant operators and regulators about the critical importance of having robust and redundant means to measure, maintain, and, when necessary, restore pool cooling.” The members also urged the NRC to “ensure that power plant operators take prompt and effective measures to reduce the consequences of loss-of-pool-coolant events in spent fuel pools that could result in propagating zirconium cladding fires.”
This was followed up this year by my colleagues, who reported in Science magazine that in its 2014 analysis, the NRC manipulated its modeling to downplay the consequences of a spent nuclear fuel pool fire. If such a fire occurred at the Limerick boiling water reactor near Philadelphia, my colleagues reported, it could release enough radioactive material to contaminate an area twice the size of New Jersey. Radioactive fallout could force approximately eight million people to relocate and result in $2 trillion in damages—making the event an order of magnitude costlier than Hurricane Katrina. Other than a major war, there are few, if any, technological mishaps that can hold a candle to the consequences of a major power reactor spent fuel pool fire.
Naoto Kan, Japan’s prime minister when the Fukushima accident occurred, made this point very clear in a PBS documentary early this year. After being informed about the consequences if the spent fuel in Fukushima Unit 4 pool had caught fire, he said, “[W]e would have to evacuate 50 million people. It would have been like losing a major war… I feared decades of upheaval would follow and would mean the end of the State of Japan.”
What needs to happen now. For all of Rick Perry’s angst over the need to reauthorize Yucca Mountain, the Trump administration zeroed out a $65 million-line item in the Energy Department’s fiscal 2018 budget that would have gone toward improving the safety and security of stored spent nuclear fuel. These funds are needed to deal with critical issues that must be resolved, if the United States is to safely store its used nuclear fuel.
In addition to pushing to reopen the Yucca Mountain site, members of Congress with closed reactors in their states are seeking to establish a consolidated interim storage site. Energy Department-sponsored research indicates that it may take about 15 years after a license application is filed with the NRC before an interim storage site is opened at an expense of $22.3 billion. During this time, it’s likely that more reactors will be shuttered.
Nearly 20 percent of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel is located at closed or soon-to-be closed reactors. Recently, a Bloomberg energy finance report suggested that more reactor closures may be on the horizon: “More than half of America’s nuclear reactors are bleeding cash, racking up losses totaling about $2.9 billion a year.” US commercial power reactors have generated about 75 percent of the global inventory of spent nuclear fuel; the accelerated closure of more US reactors could seriously affect a system that lacks the necessary planning and logistics for the management of a rapidly growing inventory of wastes.
Transporting spent nuclear fuel is further complicated because the storage at reactor sites involves a complicated mix of containers; each spent nuclear fuel canister system has its own unique challenges. The NRC has licensed 51 different designs for dry cask storage, 13 which are for storage only and not for transport. As many as 11,800 onsite dry storage canisters may have to be reopened or repackaged before transport to either a centralized interim storage facility or to a permanent repository.
The current generation of dry casks was intended for short-term on-site storage—not for direct disposal in a geological repository. None of the dry casks storing spent nuclear fuel is licensed for long-term disposal. The large storage canisters in use at power plants can place a major burden on a geological repository in terms of handling and emplacement of cumbersome packages with high heat loads and high radioactivity. Indeed, repackaging for disposal may require tens of thousands of smaller canisters, and at an estimated average cost of $50,000 to $87,000 per used fuel assembly, repackaging won’t be cheap. At the same time, spent fuel pools are integral to enable repackaging for transport and geological emplacement.
None of these essential preconditions to a permanent high-level nuclear waste repository—and many more involving transportation arrangements and accommodation for hotter, “high-burnup” spent fuel —is being spelled out to the public or the Congress, even though addressing them will cost billions of dollars. Meanwhile, members of Congress are seeking to transfer ownership of the spent fuel at the reactor sites to the government. Under current law, title to the spent nuclear fuel is transferred to the federal government only after it enters the gate of an opened geologic repository. All expenses before then are to be borne by the reactor owners.
In the rush to move wastes from closed reactor sites, several issues with major financial implications need to be addressed. How much will it cost if the federal government assumes ownership at the reactor site for spent nuclear fuel transportation, storage, repackaging, and disposal?
In January 1959, 15 years after the dawn of the nuclear age, Abel Wolman, a professor at John Hopkins University, described the extraordinary nature of high-level radioactive wastes at the first congressional inquiry into the subject. “Their toxicity in general terms, both radioactive and chemical, is greater by far than any industrial material with which we have hitherto dealt in this or in any other country” he said. “We dispose of the wastes of almost every industry in the United States by actual conversion into harmless material,” Wolman stressed, “This is the first series of wastes of any industry where that kind of disposal is nonexistent.”
Wolman’s observation still holds true. The best we can do is to attempt to contain and isolate these wastes from the human environment on a time scale that transcends the geologic era defining the presence of human civilization. Projecting what might happen at the Yucca Mountain site over the time frame it remains open, given that nothing of this scale has ever been tried, contains formidable elements of speculation.
For instance, it will take about 50 years to fill the repository. After that, according to the Energy Department’s license application for the Yucca Mountain site, the repository will require forced ventilation for 100 years to remove decay heat that could impact waste containers and the geology of the site.
Maintenance of power and rail and other transport systems to support the repository will be required for about 150 years. This support includes the installation, in a dangerous high temperature environment, of more than 11,000 large drip shields, each weighing about five metric tons, to prevent moisture from corroding the waste packaging. The drip shields would require nearly two-thirds of the world’s current annual consumption of titanium.
Despite Perry’s efforts to restart the Yucca Mountain long-term storage project, Senate appropriators were unconvinced. They recently cut the $120 million proposed by the Trump administration to fund the project.
Eventually, the United States will have to create a long-term repository for its high-level commercial nuclear wastes. In the meantime—right now—the United States needs to stop putting the disposal cart before the safe storage horse, and to greatly reduce the amount of used nuclear fuel packed in vulnerable nuclear power plant cooling pools that were never intended to store radioactive waste for long periods of time.
BULLETIN INTERACTIVE
Doomsday Dashboard
Nuclear Notebook
Nuclear Fule Cycle Cost Calculator
Doomsday Clock Timeline
Global Nuclear Power Database
Know the Time
GET INVOLVED
MOST READ STAFF PICKS
North Korea’s “not quite” ICBM can’t hit the lower 48 states
War clouds on the Korean peninsula: What would we do if…?
Urgent necessity: Direct dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang
Talk to North Korea to avert a nuclear disaster: an interview with Siegfried Hecker
Pyongyang can miniaturize, so let’s move on to what’s important: David Wright on the North Korea crisis
BACK TO TOP
Copyright © 2017 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.
RECEIVE UPDATES
Keep reading...Show less
Why the scariest nuclear threat may be coming from inside the White House.
Does anyone in the White House really understand what the Department of Energy actually does? And what a horrible risk it would be to ignore its extraordinary, life-or-death responsibilities?
On the morning after the election, November 9, 2016, the people who ran the U.S. Department of Energy turned up in their offices and waited. They had cleared 30 desks and freed up 30 parking spaces. They didn’t know exactly how many people they’d host that day, but whoever won the election would surely be sending a small army into the Department of Energy, and every other federal agency. The morning after he was elected president, eight years earlier, Obama had sent between 30 and 40 people into the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy staff planned to deliver the same talks from the same five-inch-thick three-ring binders, with the Department of Energy seal on them, to the Trump people as they would have given to the Clinton people. “Nothing had to be changed,” said one former Department of Energy staffer. “They’d be done always with the intention that, either party wins, nothing changes.”
By afternoon the silence was deafening. “Day 1, we’re ready to go,” says a former senior White House official. “Day 2 it was ‘Maybe they’ll call us?’ ”
“Teams were going around, ‘Have you heard from them?’ ” recalls another staffer who had prepared for the transition. “ ‘Have you gotten anything? I haven’t got anything.’ ”
“The election happened,” remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the D.O.E. “And he won. And then there was radio silence. We were prepared for the next day. And nothing happened.” Across the federal government the Trump people weren’t anywhere to be found. Allegedly, between the election and the inauguration not a single Trump representative set foot inside the Department of Agriculture, for example. The Department of Agriculture has employees or contractors in every county in the United States, and the Trump people seemed simply to be ignoring the place. Where they did turn up inside the federal government, they appeared confused and unprepared. A small group attended a briefing at the State Department, for instance, only to learn that the briefings they needed to hear were classified. None of the Trump people had security clearance—or, for that matter, any experience in foreign policy—and so they weren’t allowed to receive an education. On his visits to the White House soon after the election, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, expressed surprise that so much of its staff seemed to be leaving. “It was like he thought it was a corporate acquisition or something,” says an Obama White House staffer. “He thought everyone just stayed.”
Trump’s people “mainly ran around the building insulting people,” says a former Obama official.
Even in normal times the people who take over the United States government can be surprisingly ignorant about it. As a longtime career civil servant in the D.O.E., who has watched four different administrations show up to try to run the place, put it, “You always have the issue of maybe they don’t understand what the department does.” To address that problem, a year before he left office, Barack Obama had instructed a lot of knowledgeable people across his administration, including 50 or so inside the D.O.E., to gather the knowledge that his successor would need in order to understand the government he or she was taking charge of. The Bush administration had done the same for Obama, and Obama had always been grateful for their efforts. He told his staff that their goal should be to ensure an even smoother transfer of power than the Bush people had achieved.
That had proved to be a huge undertaking. Thousands of people inside the federal government had spent the better part of a year drawing a vivid picture of it for the benefit of the new administration. The United States government might be the most complicated organization on the face of the earth. Two million federal employees take orders from 4,000 political appointees. Dysfunction is baked into the structure of the thing: the subordinates know that their bosses will be replaced every four or eight years, and that the direction of their enterprises might change overnight—with an election or a war or some other political event. Still, many of the problems our government grapples with aren’t particularly ideological, and the Obama people tried to keep their political ideology out of the briefings. “You don’t have to agree with our politics,” as the former senior White House official put it. “You just have to understand how we got here. Zika, for instance. You might disagree with how we approached it. You don’t have to agree. You just have to understand why we approached it that way.”
How to stop a virus, how to take a census, how to determine if some foreign country is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon or if North Korean missiles can reach Kansas City: these are enduring technical problems. The people appointed by a newly elected president to solve these problems have roughly 75 days to learn from their predecessors. After the inauguration, a lot of deeply knowledgeable people will scatter to the four winds and be forbidden, by federal law, from initiating any contact with their replacements. The period between the election and the inauguration has the feel of an A.P. chemistry class to which half the students have turned up late and are forced to scramble to grab the notes taken by the other half, before the final. “It’s a source of a lot of the dysfunction in government,” says Max Stier, who runs the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, which, over the past decade, has become perhaps the world’s expert on U.S. presidential transitions. “The wheel comes off the bus at the start of the trip and you never get anywhere.”
WATCH: Meet the People Enabling Donald Trump
Two weeks after the election the Obama people inside the D.O.E. read in the newspapers that Trump had created a small “Landing Team.” According to several D.O.E. employees, this was led by, and mostly consisted of, a man named Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, which, upon inspection, proved to be a Washington, D.C., propaganda machine funded with millions of dollars from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. Pyle himself had served as a Koch Industries lobbyist and ran a side business writing editorials attacking the D.O.E.’s attempts to reduce the dependence of the American economy on carbon. Pyle says that his role on the Landing Team was “voluntary,” adding that he could not disclose who appointed him, due to a confidentiality agreement. The people running the D.O.E. were by then seriously alarmed. “We first learned of Pyle’s appointment on the Monday of Thanksgiving week,” recalls D.O.E. chief of staff Kevin Knobloch. “We sent word to him that the secretary and his deputy would meet with him as soon as possible. He said he would like that but could not do it until after Thanksgiving.”
A month after the election Pyle arrived for a meeting with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Deputy Secretary Sherwood-Randall, and Knobloch. Moniz is a nuclear physicist, then on leave from M.I.T., who had served as deputy secretary during the Clinton administration and is widely viewed, even by many Republicans, as understanding and loving the D.O.E. better than any person on earth. Pyle appeared to have no interest in anything he had to say. “He did not seem motivated to spend a lot of time understanding the place,” says Sherwood-Randall. “He didn’t bring a pencil or a piece of paper. He didn’t ask questions. He spent an hour. That was it. He never asked to meet with us again.” Afterward, Knobloch says, he suggested that Pyle visit one day each week until the inauguration, and that Pyle agreed to do it—but then he never showed up, instead attending a half-dozen meetings or so with others. “It’s a head-scratcher,” says Knobloch. “It’s a $30-billion-a-year organization with about 110,000 employees. Industrial sites across the country. Very serious stuff. If you’re going to run it, why wouldn’t you want to know something about it?”
There was a reason Obama had appointed nuclear physicists to run the place: it, like the problems it grappled with, was technical and complicated. Moniz had helped lead the U.S. negotiations with Iran precisely because he knew which parts of their nuclear- energy program they must surrender if they were to be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon. For a decade before Knobloch joined the D.O.E., in June 2013, he had served as president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “I had worked closely with D.O.E. throughout my career,” he says. “I thought I knew and understood the agency. But when I came in I thought, Holy cow.”
Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood- Randall has spent her 30-year career working on reducing the world’s supply of weapons of mass destruction—she led the U.S. mission to remove chemical weapons from Syria. But like everyone else who came to work at the D.O.E., she’d grown accustomed to no one knowing what the department actually did. When she’d called home, back in 2013, to tell them that President Obama had nominated her to be second-in-command of the place, her mother said, “Well, darling, I have no idea what the Department of Energy does, but you’ve always had a lot of energy, so I’m sure you’ll be perfect for the role.”
The Trump administration had no clearer idea what she did with her day than her mother. And yet, according to Sherwood-Randall, they were certain they didn’t need to hear anything she had to say before they took over her job.
Pyle, according to D.O.E. officials, eventually sent over a list of 74 questions he wanted answers to. His list addressed some of the subjects covered in the briefing materials, but also a few not:
Can you provide a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon meetings?
Can you provide a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any of the Conference of the Parties (under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in the last five years?
That, in a nutshell, was the spirit of the Trump enterprise. “It reminded me of McCarthyism,” says Sherwood-Randall.
It says a great deal about the mind-set of career civil servants that the D.O.E. employee in charge of overseeing the transition set out to answer even the most offensive questions. Her attitude, like the attitude of the permanent staff, was We are meant to serve our elected masters, however odious they might be. “When the questions got leaked to the press, she was really upset,” says the former D.O.E. staffer. The only reason that the D.O.E. did not serve up the names of people who had educated themselves about climate change, and thus exposed themselves to the wrath of the new administration, was that the old administration was still in charge: “We aren’t answering these questions,” Secretary Moniz had said, simply.
After Pyle’s list of questions wound up on Bloomberg News, the Trump administration disavowed them, but a signal had been sent: We don’t want you to help us understand; we want to find out who you are and punish you. Pyle vanished from the scene. According to a former Obama official, he was replaced by a handful of young ideologues who called themselves “the Beachhead Team.” “They mainly ran around the building insulting people,” says a former Obama official. “There was a mentality that everything that government does is stupid and bad and the people are stupid and bad,” says another. They allegedly demanded to know the names and salaries of the 20 highest-paid people in the national-science labs overseen by the D.O.E. They’d eventually, according to former D.O.E. staffers, delete the contact list with the e-mail addresses of all D.O.E.-funded scientists—apparently to make it more difficult for them to communicate with one another. “These people were insane,” says the former D.O.E. staffer. “They weren’t prepared. They didn’t know what they were doing.”
“We had tried desperately to prepare them,” said Tarak Shah, chief of staff for the D.O.E.’s $6 billion basic-science program. “But that required them to show up. And bring qualified people. But they didn’t. They didn’t ask for even an introductory briefing. Like ‘What do you do?’ ” The Obama people did what they could to preserve the institution’s understanding of itself. “We were prepared for them to start wiping out documents,” said Shah. “So we prepared a public Web site to transfer the stuff onto it—if needed.”
department of energy
The James V. Forrestal Building, home of the Department of Energy, in Washington, D.C.
By Genevieve Cocco/Sipa Press/Newscom.
The one concrete action the Trump administration took before Inauguration Day was to clear the D.O.E. building of anyone appointed by Obama. Even here it exhibited a bizarre ham-handedness. For instance, the Trump White House asked the D.O.E.’s inspector general to resign, along with the inspectors general of the other federal agencies, out of the mistaken belief that he was an Obama appointee. After members of Congress called to inform the Trump people that the inspectors general were permanent staff, so that they might remain immune to political influence, the Trump people re-installed him.
But there was actually a long history of even the appointees of one administration hanging around to help the new appointees of the next. The man who had served as chief financial officer of the department during the Bush administration, for instance, stayed a year and a half into the Obama administration—simply because he had a detailed understanding of the money end of things that was hard to replicate quickly. The C.F.O. of the department at the end of the Obama administration was a mild-mannered civil-servant type named Joe Hezir. He had no particular political identity and was widely thought to have done a good job—and so he half-expected a call from the Trump people asking him to stay on, just to keep the money side of things running smoothly. The call never came. No one even let him know his services were no longer required. Not knowing what else to do, but without anyone to replace him, the C.F.O. of a $30 billion operation just up and left.
This was a loss. A lunch or two with the chief financial officer might have alerted the new administration to some of the terrifying risks they were leaving essentially unmanaged. Roughly half of the D.O.E.’s annual budget is spent on maintaining and guarding our nuclear arsenal, for instance. Two billion of that goes to hunting down weapons-grade plutonium and uranium at loose in the world so that it doesn’t fall into the hands of terrorists. In just the past eight years the D.O.E.’s National Nuclear Security Administration has collected enough material to make 160 nuclear bombs. The department trains every international atomic-energy inspector; if nuclear power plants around the world are not producing weapons-grade material on the sly by reprocessing spent fuel rods and recovering plutonium, it’s because of these people. The D.O.E. also supplies radiation-detection equipment to enable other countries to detect bomb material making its way across national borders. To maintain the nuclear arsenal, it conducts endless, wildly expensive experiments on tiny amounts of nuclear material to try to understand what is actually happening to plutonium when it fissions, which, amazingly, no one really does. To study the process, it is funding what promises to be the next generation of supercomputers, which will in turn lead God knows where.
The Trump people didn’t seem to grasp, according to a former D.O.E. employee, how much more than just energy the Department of Energy was about. They weren’t totally oblivious to the nuclear arsenal, but even the nuclear arsenal didn’t provoke in them much curiosity. “They were just looking for dirt, basically,” said one of the people who briefed the Beachhead Team on national-security issues. “ ‘What is the Obama administration not letting you do to keep the country safe?’ ” The briefers were at pains to explain an especially sensitive aspect of national security: the United States no longer tests its nuclear weapons. Instead, it relies on physicists at three of the national labs—Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia—to simulate explosions, using old and decaying nuclear materials.
This is not a trivial exercise, and to do it we rely entirely on scientists who go to work at the national labs because the national labs are exciting places to work. They then wind up getting interested in the weapons program. That is, because maintaining the nuclear arsenal was just a by-product of the world’s biggest science project, which also did things like investigating the origins of the universe. “Our weapons scientists didn’t start out as weapons scientists,” says Madelyn Creedon, who was second-in-command of the nuclear-weapons wing of the D.O.E., and who briefed the incoming administration, briefly. “They didn’t understand that. The one question they asked was ‘Wouldn’t you want the guy who grew up wanting to be a weapons scientist?’ Well, actually, no.”
In the run-up to the Trump inauguration the man inside the D.O.E. in charge of the nuclear-weapons program was required to submit his resignation, as were the department’s 137 other political appointees. Frank Klotz was his name, and he was a retired three-star air-force lieutenant general with a Ph.D. in politics from Oxford. The keeper of the nation’s nuclear secrets had boxed up most of his books and memorabilia just like everyone else and was on his way out before anyone had apparently given the first thought to who might replace him. It was only after Secretary Moniz called a few senators to alert them to the disturbing vacancy, and the senators phoned Trump Tower sounding alarmed, that the Trump people called General Klotz, on the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, and asked him to bring back the stuff he had taken home and move back into his office. Aside from him, the people with the most intimate knowledge of the problems and the possibilities of the D.O.E. walked out the door.
It was early June when I walked through those same doors, to see what was going on. The D.O.E. makes its home in a long rectangular cinder-block-like building propped up on concrete stilts, just off the National Mall. It’s a jarring sight—as if someone had punched out a skyscraper and it never got back on its feet. It’s relentlessly ugly in the way the swamps around Newark Airport are ugly—so ugly that its ugliness bends back around into a sneaky kind of beauty: it will make an excellent ruin. Inside, the place feels like a lab experiment to determine just how little aesthetic stimulation human beings can endure. The endless hallways are floored with white linoleum and almost insistently devoid of personality. “Like a hospital, without the stretchers,” as one employee put it. But this place is at once desolate and urgent. People still work here, doing stuff that, if left undone, might result in unimaginable death and destruction.
By the time I arrived the first eighth of Trump’s first term was nearly complete, and his administration was still, largely, missing. He hadn’t nominated anyone to serve as head of the Patent Office, for instance, or to run FEMA. There was no Trump candidate to head the T.S.A., or anyone to run the Centers for Disease Control. The 2020 national census will be a massive undertaking for which there is not a moment to lose and yet there’s no Trump appointee in place to run it. “The actual government has not really taken over,” says Max Stier. “It’s kindergarten soccer. Everyone is on the ball. No one is at their positions. But I doubt Trump sees the reality. Everywhere he goes everything is going to be hunky-dory and nice. No one gives him the bad news.”
“The risks of mistakes being made and lots of people being killed is increasing dramatically.”
At this point in their administrations Obama and Bush had nominated their top 10 people at the D.O.E. and installed most of them in their offices. Trump had nominated three people and installed just one, former Texas governor Rick Perry. Perry is of course responsible for one of the D.O.E.’s most famous moments—when in a 2011 presidential debate he said he intended to eliminate three entire departments of the federal government. Asked to list them he named Commerce, Education, and … then hit a wall. “The third agency of government I would do away with ... Education ... the … ahhhh … ahhh … Commerce, and let’s see.” As his eyes bored a hole in his lectern, his mind drew a blank. “I can’t, the third one. I can’t. Sorry. Oops.” The third department Perry wanted to get rid of, he later recalled, was the Department of Energy. In his confirmation hearings to run the department Perry confessed that when he called for its elimination he hadn’t actually known what the Department of Energy did—and he now regretted having said that it didn’t do anything worth doing.
The question on the minds of the people who currently work at the department: Does he know what it does now? D.O.E. press secretary Shaylyn Hynes assures us that “Secretary Perry is dedicated to the missions of the Department of Energy.” And in his hearings, Perry made a show of having educated himself. He said how useful it was to be briefed by former secretary Ernest Moniz. But when I asked someone familiar with those briefings how many hours Perry had spent with Moniz, he laughed and said, “That’s the wrong unit of account.” With the nuclear physicist who understood the D.O.E. perhaps better than anyone else on earth, according to one person familiar with the meeting, Perry had spent minutes, not hours. “He has no personal interest in understanding what we do and effecting change,” a D.O.E. staffer told me in June. “He’s never been briefed on a program—not a single one, which to me is shocking.”
Since Perry was confirmed, his role has been ceremonial and bizarre. He pops up in distant lands and tweets in praise of this or that D.O.E. program while his masters inside the White House create budgets to eliminate those very programs. His sporadic public communications have had in them something of the shell-shocked grandmother trying to preside over a pleasant family Thanksgiving dinner while pretending that her blind-drunk husband isn’t standing naked on the dining-room table waving the carving knife over his head.
rick perry
Former Texas governor and current U.S. secretary of energy Rick Perry.
By Scott W. Coleman/Zuma Wire/Alamy.
Meanwhile, inside the D.O.E. building, people claiming to be from the Trump administration appear willy-nilly, unannounced, and unintroduced to the career people. “There’s a mysterious kind of chain from the Trump loyalists who have shown up inside D.O.E. to the White House,” says a career civil servant. “That’s how decisions, like the budget, seem to get made. Not by Perry.” The woman who ran the Obama department’s energy-policy analysis unit recently received a call from D.O.E. staff telling her that her office was now occupied by Eric Trump’s brother-in-law. Why? No one knew. “Yes, you can notice the difference,” says one young career civil servant, in response to the obvious question. “There’s a lack of professionalism. They’re not very polite. Maybe they’ve never worked in an office or government setting. It’s not hostility so much as a real sense of concern with sharing information with career employees. Because of that lack of communication, nothing is being done. All policy questions remain unanswered.”
The D.O.E. has a program, for example, to provide low-interest loans to companies to encourage risky corporate innovation in alternative energy and energy efficiency. The loan program became infamous when one of its borrowers, the solar-energy company Solyndra, was unable to repay its loan, but, as a whole, since its inception in 2009, the program has turned a profit. And it has been demonstrably effective: it lent money to Tesla to build its factory in Fremont, California, when the private sector would not, for instance. Every Tesla you see on the road came from a facility financed by the D.O.E. Its loans to early-stage solar-energy companies launched the industry. There are now 35 viable utility-scale, privately funded solar companies—up from zero a decade ago. And yet today the program sits frozen. “There’s no direction what to do with the applications,” says the young career civil servant. “Are we shutting the program down?” They’d rather not, but if that’s what they are going to do, they should do it. “There’s no staff, just me,” says the civil servant. “People keep bugging me for direction. It’s got to the point I don’t care if you tell me to tear the program down. Just tell me what you want to do so I can do it intelligently.” Another permanent employee, in another wing of the D.O.E., says, “The biggest change is the grinding to a halt of any proactive work. There’s very little work happening. There’s a lot of confusion about what our mission was going to be. For a majority of the workforce it’s been demoralizing.”
Over and over again, I was asked by people who worked inside the D.O.E. not to use their names, or identify them in any way, for fear of reprisal. “People are heading for the doors,” says Tarak Shah. “And that’s really sad and destructive. The best and the brightest are the ones being targeted. They will leave fastest. Because they will get the best job offers.”
There might be no time in the history of the country when it was so interesting to know what was going on inside these bland federal office buildings—because there has been no time when those things might be done ineptly, or not done at all. But if you want to know how the D.O.E. works—the problems it manages, the fears that keep its employees awake at night, the things it does you just sort of assume will continue being done—there’s no real point in being inside the D.O.E. Anyone who wants a blunt, open assessment of the risks inherent in the United States government now has to leave it to find it.
The First Risk
By the time I reached John MacWilliams’s kitchen table, in Quogue, Long Island, I knew about as much about the D.O.E. as he had when he’d started there, back in 2013. MacWilliams had spent a lot of his life pursuing and obtaining a place in the world that he actually hadn’t wanted. In the early 1980s, after graduating from Stanford and Harvard Law School, he took a coveted job at a prestigious New York law firm. Seeing that the action was not in law but in finance he jumped to Goldman Sachs, where, as an investment banker specializing in the energy sector, he rose quickly. Six years into his career as a Goldman banker he realized he didn’t want to be a banker any more than he’d wanted to be a lawyer. He was actually seriously interested in the energy sector—he could see it was on the cusp of a great transformation—but he didn’t particularly care for Wall Street or the effect it was having on him. “One day I looked in the mirror shaving and there was this haggard face and I said, ‘But for the money would you do this?’ ” What he wanted, he thought, was to be a writer—but when he shared his secret ambition with his Goldman boss, his boss just looked at him pityingly and said, “John, you have to have talent to write a book.” He wasn’t rich at that point—he had a few hundred grand to his name—but, at the age of 35, he quit his Goldman job and set out to be a novelist.
For the next year he wrote the novel he had imagined—The Fire Dream, he called it—and, despite the indifference of the publishing industry, he began another one. But while the first story had come naturally to him the second one felt forced. He sensed that he probably didn’t want to be a writer much more than he had wanted to be a lawyer or an investment banker. “The hardest part was admitting to myself in my black blue jeans that I missed my old life,” he said. He set out to raise money for a fund that would invest in energy companies—at which point an editor from Random House called and said he couldn’t get The Fire Dream out of his head and regretted having rejected it. MacWilliams sensed absurdity in his situation: he’d already abandoned his literary ambition. “I can’t be a novelist trying to raise an equity fund,” he said, so he stuck his novel back in the drawer and became a founding partner of the Beacon Group, a private investment firm, and also within that group was co-head of a Beacon fund that specifically invested in the energy field. Seven years later he and his partners sold the Beacon Group to JPMorgan Chase for $500 million.
Along the way he’d come to know a nuclear physicist, Ernie Moniz, who asked him to join an M.I.T. task force to study the future of nuclear power. In early 2013, when Moniz was named energy secretary, he called MacWilliams and asked him to come to Washington with him. “I recruited him because my view was you should collect talent,” says Moniz. “And it’s unusual to have someone willing to work in government who has been so deeply involved in private-sector investment.”
“I always wanted to serve,” says MacWilliams. “It sounds corny. But that’s it.” Still, he was an odd fit. He’d never worked in government and had no political ambition. He thought of himself as “a problem solver” and a “deal guy.” “I’d been investing in energy since the mid-1980s and never once went to the D.O.E. and didn’t think I needed to,” he said. “I was just wrong.”
In the beginning he spent much of his time bewildered. “Everything was acronyms,” he said. “I understood 20 to 30 percent of what people were talking about.” He set out, aggressively, to educate himself, pulling people from every nook and cranny and making them explain until he understood what they did. “It took me about a year to understand it all,” he said (which raises the question of how long it would take someone who wasn’t so curious). Anyway, he figured out soon enough that the D.O.E., though created in the late 1970s, largely in response to the Arab-oil embargo, had very little to do with oil and had a history that went back much farther than the 1970s. It contained a collection of programs and offices without a clear organizing principle. About half its budget (in 2016 approximately $30 billion) went to maintaining the nuclear arsenal and protecting Americans from nuclear threats. It sent teams with equipment to big public events—the Super Bowl, for instance—to measure the radiation levels, in hopes of detecting a dirty bomb before it exploded. “They really were doing things to, like, keep New York safe,” said MacWilliams. “These are not hypothetical things. These are actual risks.” A quarter of the budget went to cleaning up all the unholy world-historic mess left behind by the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The last quarter of the budget went into a rattlebag of programs aimed at shaping Americans’ access to, and use of, energy.
There were reasons these things had been shoved together. Nuclear power was a source of energy, and so it made sense, sort of, for the department in charge of nuclear power also to have responsibility for the weapons-grade nuclear materials—just as it sort of made sense for whoever was in charge of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium to be responsible for cleaning up the mess they made. But the best argument for shoving together the Manhattan Project with nuclear-waste disposal with clean-energy research was that underpinning all of it was Big Science—the sort of scientific research that requires multi-billion-dollar particle accelerators. The D.O.E. ran the 17 national labs—Brookhaven, the Fermi National Accelerator Lab, Oak Ridge, the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, and so on. “The office of science in D.O.E. is not the office of science for D.O.E.,” said MacWilliams. “It’s the office of science for all science in America. I realized pretty quickly that it was the place where you could work on the two biggest risks to human existence, nuclear weapons and climate change.”
WATCH: Donald Trump vs. the Environment
He was surprised—a little shocked even—by the caliber of the civil servants working on these problems. “This idea that government is full of these bureaucrats who are overpaid and not doing anything—I’m sure that in the bowels of some of these places you could find people like that,” he said. “But the people I got to work with were so impressive. It’s a military-like culture.” Federal employees tended to be risk-averse, the sort of people who carry an umbrella around all day when there’s a 40 percent chance of rain. But, then, sometimes, they weren’t. In 2009, during the chaos of Libya’s bloody civil war, a young woman who worked for him went into the country with Russian security forces and removed highly enriched uranium. The brainpower still willing to enter public service also surprised him. “There were physicists everywhere. Guys whose ties don’t match their suits. Passive nerds. Guys who build bridges.”
Ernie Moniz had wanted MacWilliams to evaluate the D.O.E.’s financial risks—after all, that’s what he’d done for most of his career—but also, as Moniz put it, to “go beyond financial risks to all the other risks that weren’t being properly evaluated.” To that end Moniz eventually created a position for MacWilliams that had never existed: chief risk officer. As the D.O.E.’s first-ever chief risk officer, MacWilliams had access to everything that went on inside of it and a bird’s-eye view of it all. “With a very complex mission and 115,000 people spread out across the country, shit happens every day,” said MacWilliams. Take the project to carve football-field-length caverns inside New Mexico salt beds to store radioactive waste, at the so-called WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) facility. The waste would go into barrels and the barrels would go into the caverns, where the salt would eventually entomb them. The contents of the barrels were volatile and so needed to be seasoned with, believe it or not, kitty litter. Three years ago, according to a former D.O.E. official, a federal contractor in Los Alamos, having been told to pack the barrels with “inorganic kitty litter,” had scribbled down “an organic kitty litter.” The barrel with organic kitty litter in it had burst and spread waste inside the cavern. The site was closed for three years, significantly backing up nuclear-waste disposal in the United States and costing $500 million to clean, while the contractor claimed the company was merely following procedures given to it by Los Alamos.
The list of things that might go wrong inside the D.O.E. was endless. The driver of a heavily armed unit assigned to move plutonium around the country was pulled over, on the job, for drunken driving. An 82-year-old nun, along with others, cut through the perimeter fence of a facility in Tennessee that housed weapons-grade nuclear material. A medical facility ordered a speck of plutonium for research, and a weapons-lab clerk misplaced a decimal point and FedExed the researchers a chunk of the stuff so big it should have been under armed guard—whereupon horrified medical researchers tried to FedEx it back. “At D.O.E. even the regular scheduled meetings started with ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ ” says former chief of staff Kevin Knobloch.
In his four years on the job MacWilliams had come to understand the D.O.E.’s biggest risks, the way a corporate risk officer might understand the risks inside a company, and had catalogued them for the next administration. “My team prepared its own books. They were never given to anybody. I never had a chance to sit with [the Trump people] and tell them what we’re doing, even for a day. And I’d have done it for weeks. I think this was a sad thing. There are things you want to know that would keep you up at night. And I never talked to anyone about them.”
It’s been five months since he left government service, and I’m the first person to ask him what he knows. Still, I think it is important, as I pull my chair in to his kitchen table, to conduct the briefing in the spirit the Trump people might have approached it—just to see how he could have helped even those who thought they didn’t need his help. I assume the tone and manner befitting a self-important, mistrustful person newly arrived from some right-wing think tank. And so I wave my hand over his thick briefing books and say, “Just give me the top five risks I need to worry about right away. Start at the top.”
Right away we have a problem. At the very top of his list is an accident with nuclear weapons, and it is difficult to discuss that topic with someone who doesn’t have security clearance. But the Trump people didn’t have it, either, I point out, so he’ll just need to work around it. “I have to be careful here,” he says. He wants to make a big point: the D.O.E. has the job of ensuring that nuclear weapons are not lost or stolen, or at the slightest risk of exploding when they should not. “It’s a thing Rick Perry should worry about every day,” he says.
“Are you telling me that there have been scares?”
He thinks a moment. “They’ve never had a weapon that has been lost,” he says carefully. “Weapons have fallen off planes.” He pauses again. “I would encourage you to spend an hour reading about Broken Arrows.”
“Broken Arrow” is a military term of art for a nuclear accident that doesn’t lead to a nuclear war. MacWilliams has had to learn all about these. Now he tells me about an incident that occurred back in 1961, and was largely declassified in 2013, just as he began his stint at D.O.E. A pair of four-mega-ton hydrogen bombs, each more than 250 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, broke off a damaged B-52 over North Carolina. One of the bombs disintegrated upon impact, but the other floated down beneath its parachute and armed itself. It was later found in a field outside Goldsboro, North Carolina, with three of its four safety mechanisms tripped or rendered ineffective by the plane’s breakup. Had the fourth switch flipped, a vast section of eastern North Carolina would have been destroyed, and nuclear fallout might have descended on Washington, D.C., and New York City.
“The reason it’s worth thinking about this,” says MacWilliams, “is the reason that bomb didn’t go off was [because of] all the safety devices on the bombs, designed by what is now D.O.E.”
The Department of Energy, he continues, spends a lot of time and money trying to make bombs less likely to explode when they are not meant to explode. A lot of the work happens in a drab building with thick concrete walls at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory, in Northern California—one of the three nuclear-weapons research sites funded and supervised by the D.O.E. There a nice mild-mannered man will hand you a softball-size chunk of what seems to be a building material and ask you to guess what it is. And you might guess it is about $10 worth of ersatz marble from Home Depot. But under certain conditions what appears to be Home Depot marble becomes an explosive powerful enough to trigger a chain reaction in a pile of plutonium. The secret that the mild-mannered man would get thrown in jail for sharing is how you set it off.
That was another thing that had surprised MacWilliams when he went to work at the D.O.E.: the sheer amount of classified information. You couldn’t really function without being cleared to hear it. There were places in the building where you could share national secrets, and places where you could not. The people from the F.B.I. who had vetted him for his security clearance had made it very clear that they would excuse many foibles—affairs, petty crimes, drug use—but they could not excuse even the most trivial deception. They asked a battery of questions on the order of “Have you ever known anyone who has advocated the violent overthrow of the United States government?” They’d asked him to list every contact with foreigners he had had in the past seven years, which was absurd, as he had spent a career in global finance and lived in both London and Paris. But the people who handed out security clearances failed to see the humor in it. They wanted to know everything. There was no way anyone who obtained a security clearance would find it not worth mentioning that, say, he’d recently dined with the Russian ambassador.
Sitting at his kitchen table with me, MacWilliams picks up his cell phone. “We’re a major target of espionage,” he says. “You just have to assume that you are being monitored all the time.” I look around. We’re surrounded by a lot of green Long Island tranquility.
“Who by?,” I say with what I hope is a trace of scorn.
“The Russians. The Chinese.”
“How?”
“Every phone I have. Every computer.”
Outside, on his back lawn, overlooking a lovely estuary, MacWilliams had placed silhouettes of wild beasts to deter Canada geese from landing. I laugh.
“You seriously think someone might be listening to us right now?”
“I may have dropped off their radar,” he says. “But you are definitely monitored while you are there.”
I check my watch. I have important op-eds to write, and perhaps a few meetings with people who might know people who might know the Koch brothers. If I’m a Trump person I’m going to assume the people in charge of the nuclear weapons are sufficiently alive to the risks around them that they don’t need Rick Perry’s help. After all, the only thing Trump had to say publicly about Rick Perry during the campaign was that he “should be forced to take an I.Q. test” and that “he put glasses on so people think he’s smart.”
WATCH: Donald Trump’s Most Sinister Friends
Risks Two and Three
“What’s the second risk on your list?,” I ask.
“North Korea would be up there,” says MacWilliams.
Why do I, as an incoming official at the D.O.E., need to be worried about North Korea?
MacWilliams explains, patiently, that there lately have been signs that the risk of some kind of attack by North Korea is increasing. The missiles the North Koreans have been firing into the sea are not the absurd acts of a lunatic mind but experiments. Obviously, the D.O.E. is not the only agency inside the U.S. government trying to make sense of these experiments, but the people inside the national labs are the world’s most qualified to determine just what North Korea’s missiles can do. “For a variety of reasons the risk curve has changed,” says MacWilliams guardedly. “The risks of mistakes being made and lots of people being killed is increasing dramatically. It wouldn’t necessarily be a nuclear weapon they might deliver. It could be sarin gas.”
As he doesn’t want to go into further detail and maybe divulge information I am not cleared to hear, I press him to move on. “O.K., give me the third risk on your list.”
“This is in no particular order,” he says with remarkable patience. “But Iran is somewhere in the top five.” He’d watched Secretary Moniz help negotiate the deal that removed from Iran the capacity to acquire a nuclear weapon. There were only three paths to a nuclear weapon. The Iranians might produce enriched uranium—but that required using centrifuges. They might produce plutonium—but that required a reactor that the deal had dismantled and removed. Or they might simply go out and buy a weapon on the open market. The national labs played a big role in policing all three paths. “These labs are incredible national resources, and they are directly responsible for keeping us safe,” said MacWilliams. “It’s because of them that we can say with absolute certainty that Iran cannot surprise us with a nuclear weapon.” After the deal was done, U.S. Army officers had approached D.O.E. officials to thank them for saving American lives. The deal, they felt sure, had greatly lessened the chance of yet another war in the Middle East that the United States would inevitably be dragged into.
At any rate, the serious risk in Iran wasn’t that the Iranians would secretly acquire a weapon. It was that the president of the United States would not understand his nuclear scientists’ reasoning about the unlikelihood of the Iranians’ obtaining a weapon, and that he would have the United States back away foolishly from the deal. Released from the complicated set of restrictions on its nuclear-power program, Iran would then build its bomb. It wasn’t enough to have the world’s finest forensic nuclear physicists. Our political leaders needed to be predisposed to listen to them and equipped to understand what they say.
Yeah, well, never mind science—we’ll deal with Iran, I could hear some Trump person thinking to himself.
Risk Four
By early summer I had spoken with 20 or so of the people who had run the department, along with a handful of career people. All of them understood their agency as a powerful tool for dealing with the most alarming risks facing humanity. All thought the tool was being badly mishandled and at risk of being busted. They’d grown used to the outside world not particularly knowing, or caring, what they did—unless they screwed up. At which point they became the face of government waste or stupidity. “No one notices when something goes right,” as Max Stier put it to me. “There is no bright-spot analysis.” How can an organization survive that stresses and responds only to the worst stuff that happens inside it? How does it encourage more of the best stuff, if it doesn’t reward it?
The $70 billion loan program that John MacWilliams had been hired to evaluate was a case in point. It had been authorized by Congress in 2005 to lend money, at very low interest rates, to businesses so that they might develop game-changing energy technologies. The idea that the private sector under-invests in energy innovation is part of the origin story of the D.O.E. “The basic problem is that there is no constituency for an energy program,” James Schlesinger, the first secretary of energy, said as he left the job. “There are many constituencies opposed.” Existing energy businesses—oil companies, utilities—are obviously hostile to government-sponsored competition. At the same time they are essentially commodity businesses, without a lot of fat in them. The stock market does not reward even big oil companies for research and development that will take decades to pay off. And the sort of research that might lead to huge changes in energy production often doesn’t pay off for decades. Plus it requires a lot of expensive science: discovering a new kind of battery or a new way of capturing solar energy is not like creating a new app. Fracking—to take one example—was not the brainchild of private-sector research but the fruit of research paid for 20 years ago by the D.O.E. Yet fracking has collapsed the price of oil and gas and led to American energy independence. Solar and wind technologies are another example. The Obama administration set a goal in 2009 of getting the cost of utility-scale solar energy down by 2020 from 27 cents a kilowatt-hour to 6 cents. It’s now at seven cents, and competitive with natural gas because of loans made by the D.O.E. “The private sector only steps in once D.O.E. shows it can work,” said Franklin Orr, a Stanford professor of engineering who has just finished a two-year leave of absence, while he oversaw the D.O.E.’s science programs.
John MacWilliams had enjoyed success in the free market that the employees of the Heritage Foundation might only fantasize about, but he had a far less Panglossian view of its inner workings. “Government has always played a major role in innovation,” he said. “All the way back to the founding of the country. Early-stage innovation in most industries would not have been possible without government support in a variety of ways, and it’s especially true in energy. So the notion that we are just going to privatize early-stage innovation is ridiculous. Other countries are outspending us in R&D;, and we are going to pay a price.”
Politically, the loan program had been nothing but downside. No one had paid any attention to its successes, and its one failure—Solyndra—had allowed the right-wing friends of Big Oil to bang on relentlessly about government waste and fraud and stupidity. A single bad loan had turned a valuable program into a political liability. As he dug into the portfolio MacWilliams feared it might contain other Solyndras. It didn’t, but what he did find still disturbed him. The D.O.E. had built a loan portfolio that, as MacWilliams put it, “JPMorgan would have been happy to own.” The whole point was to take big risks the market would not take, and they were making money! “We weren’t taking nearly enough risk,” said MacWilliams. The fear of losses that might in turn be twisted into anti-government propaganda was threatening the mission.
ernest moniz
Nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz, the former secretary of energy.
From Rex Features/A.P. Images.
In late June I went for a long drive in hopes of getting a clearer picture of Risks Four and Five, which MacWilliams had gone on to describe for me at greater length—urgent threats to American life that might just then have been keeping the leadership of Trump’s D.O.E. awake at night, if there had been any leadership. I started out in Portland, Oregon, heading east, along the Columbia River.
An hour or so into the drive, the forests vanish and are replaced by desolate scrubland. It’s a startling sight: a great river flowing through a desert. Every so often I pass a dam so massive it’s as if full-scale replicas of the Department of Energy’s building had been dropped into the river. The Columbia is postcard lovely, but it is also an illustration of MacWilliams’s fourth risk. The river and its tributaries generate more than 40 percent of the hydroelectric power for the United States; were the dams to fail, the effects would be catastrophic.
The safety of the electrical grid sat at or near the top of the list of concerns of everyone I spoke with inside the D.O.E. Life in America has become, increasingly, reliant on it. “Food and water has become food and water and electricity,” as one D.O.E. career staffer put it. Back in 2013 there had been an incident in California that got everyone’s attention. Late one night, just southeast of San Jose, at Pacific Gas and Electric’s Metcalf substation, a well-informed sniper, using a .30-caliber rifle, had taken out 17 transformers. Someone had also cut the cables that enabled communication to and from the substation. “They knew exactly what lines to cut,” said Tarak Shah, who studied the incident for the D.O.E. “They knew exactly where to shoot. They knew exactly which manhole covers were relevant—where the communication lines were. These were feeder stations to Apple and Google.” There had been enough backup power in the area that no one noticed the outage, and the incident came and went quickly from the news. But, Shah said, “for us it was a wake-up call.” In 2016 the D.O.E. counted half a million cyber-intrusions into various parts of the U.S. electrical grid. “It’s one thing to put your head in the sand for climate change—it’s like mañana,” says Ali Zaidi, who served in the White House as Obama’s senior adviser on energy policy. “This is here and now. We actually don’t have a transformer reserve. They’re like these million-dollar things. Seventeen transformers getting shot up in California is not like, Oh, we’ll just fix the problem. Our electric-grid assets are growingly vulnerable.”
In his briefings on the electrical grid MacWilliams made a specific point and a more general one. The specific point was that we don’t actually have a national grid. Our electricity is supplied by a patchwork of not terribly innovative or imaginatively managed regional utilities. The federal government offers the only hope of a coordinated, intelligent response to threats to the system: there is no private-sector mechanism. To that end the D.O.E. had begun to gather the executives of the utility companies, to educate them about the threats they face. “They all sort of said, ‘But is this really real?’ ” said MacWilliams. “You get them security clearance for a day and tell them about the attacks and all of a sudden you see their eyes go really wide.”
His more general point was that managing risks was an act of the imagination. And the human imagination is a poor tool for judging risk. People are really good at responding to the crisis that just happened, as they naturally imagine that whatever just happened is most likely to happen again. They are less good at imagining a crisis before it happens—and taking action to prevent it. For just this reason the D.O.E. under Secretary Moniz had set out to imagine disasters that had never happened before. One scenario was a massive attack on the grid on the Eastern Seaboard that forced millions of Americans to be relocated to the Midwest. Another was a Category Three hurricane hitting Galveston, Texas; a third was a major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest that, among other things, shut off the power. Yet, even then, the disasters they imagined were the sort of disasters that a Hollywood screenwriter might imagine: vivid, dramatic events. MacWilliams thought that, while such things did happen, they were not the sole or even the usual source of catastrophe. What was most easily imagined was not what was most probable. It wasn’t the things you think of when you try to think of bad things happening that got you killed, he said. “It is the less detectable, systemic risks.” Another way of putting this is: The risk we should most fear is not the risk we easily imagine. It is the risk that we don’t. Which brings us to the fifth risk.
The Fifth Risk
When you set out to list the major risks inside a place with a mission as nerve-racking as the D.O.E.’s, your mind naturally seeks to order them. One crude way that MacWilliams ordered the 150 or so risks on his final list was to plot them on a simple graph, with two axes. On one axis was “probability of an accident.” On the other axis was “consequences of an accident.” He placed risks into one of the graph’s four quadrants. A nuclear bomb exploding in an assembly plant and blowing up the Texas Panhandle: high consequence, low probability. A person hopping a perimeter security fence at one of the D.O.E. facilities: low consequence, high probability. And so on. Mainly, he wanted to make sure the department was paying sufficient attention to the risks that fell into the graph’s most unpleasant quadrant—high probability of an accident/big consequences if it happens. He noticed that many of the risks that fell into this quadrant were giant multi-billion-dollar projects managed by the D.O.E. MacWilliams coined his own acronym: BAFU. Billions and All Fucked Up.
Anyway, when I had asked him for the fifth risk he thought about it and then seemed to relax a bit. I realized later that the fifth risk did not put him at risk of revealing classified information. To begin, he said simply, “Project management.”
Four hours out of Portland I arrive at what is maybe the single finest case study of the problem. In December 1938, German scientists discovered uranium fission. Physicist Enrico Fermi’s report on the Germans’ work made its way to Albert Einstein, and in 1939 Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt. That letter is the founding document of the Department of Energy. By the early 1940s the United States government understood that for democracy to survive it needed to beat Hitler to the atom bomb, and that the race had two paths—one required enriched uranium, the other plutonium. In early 1943, the United States Army was evicting everyone from an area in Eastern Washington nearly half the size of Rhode Island and setting out to create plutonium in order to build a nuclear bomb. The site of Hanford was chosen for its proximity to the Columbia River, which could supply the cooling water while its dams provided the electricity needed to make plutonium. Hanford was also chosen for its remoteness: the army was worried about both enemy attacks and an accidental nuclear explosion. Hanford was, finally, chosen for its poverty. It was convenient that what would become the world’s largest public-works project arose in a place from which people had to be paid so little to leave.
From 1943 until 1987, as the Cold War was ending and Hanford closed its reactors, the place created two-thirds of the plutonium in the United States’ arsenal—a total of 70,000 nuclear weapons since 1945. You’d like to think that if anyone had known the environmental consequences of plutonium, or if anyone could have been certain that the uranium bomb would work, they’d never have done here what they did. “Plutonium is hard to produce,” said MacWilliams. “And hard to get rid of.” By the late 1980s the state of Washington had gained some clarity on just how hard and began to negotiate with the U.S. government. In the ensuing agreement the United States promised to return Hanford to a condition where, as MacWilliams put it, “kids can eat the dirt.” When I asked him to guess what it would cost to return Hanford to the standards now legally required, he said, “A century and a hundred billion dollars.” And that was a conservative estimate.
More or less overnight Hanford went from the business of making plutonium to the even more lucrative business of cleaning it up. In its last years of production the plutonium plant employed around 9,000 people. It still employs 9,000 people and pays them even more than it used to. “It’s a good thing that we live in a country that cares enough to take the time it will take, and spend the money it will spend, to clean up the legacy of the Cold War,” said MacWilliams. “In Russia they just drop concrete on the stuff and move on.”
The Department of Energy wires 10 percent of its annual budget, or $3 billion a year, into this tiny place and intends to do so until the radioactive mess is cleaned up. And even though what is now called the Tri-Cities area is well populated and amazingly prosperous—yachts on the river, $300 bottles of wine in the bistros—the absolute worst thing that could happen to it is probably not a nuclear accident. The worst thing that could happen is that the federal government loses interest in it and slashes the D.O.E.’s budget—as President Trump has proposed to do. And yet Trump won the county in which Hanford resides by 25 points.
108538.FI.0320.forever.10.BRV
Radioactive waste, stored in a salt bed near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
By Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images.
The next morning, with a pair of local guides, I drive into the D.O.E. project most direly in need of management. In my lap is a book of instructions for visitors: “Report any spill or release,” it says, among other things. “Nobody in the world has waste like ours,” says one of my guides as we enter the site. No one has so much strontium 90, for instance, which behaves a lot like calcium and lodges inside the bones of any living creatures it penetrates, basically forever. Along with chromium and tritium and carbon tetrachloride and iodine 129 and the other waste products of a plutonium factory it is already present in Hanford’s groundwater. There are other nuclear-waste sites in the United States, but two-thirds of all the waste is here. Beneath Hanford a massive underground glacier of radioactive sludge is moving slowly, but relentlessly, toward the Columbia River.
The place is now an eerie deconstruction site, with ghost towns on top of ghost towns. Much of the old plutonium plant still stands: the husks of the original nine reactors, built in the 1940s, still line the Columbia River, like grain elevators. Their doors have been welded shut, and they have been left to decay—for another century. “Cold and dark is a term we like to use,” says one of my guides, though he adds that rattlesnakes and other living creatures often find their way into the reactors. Of the settlement that existed before the government seized the land, there remain the stumps of trees from what were once orchards and the small stone shell of the town bank. There are older ghosts here, too. What looks like arid scrubland contains countless Indian burial grounds and other sites sacred to the tribes who lived here: the Nez Perce, the Umatilla, and the Yakama. For the 13,000 years or so prior to the white man’s arrival the place had been theirs. To them the American experiment is no more than the blink of an eye. “You have only been here 200 years, so you can only imagine 200 years into the future,” as a Nez Perce spokesman put it to me. “We have been here tens of thousands of years, and we will be here forever. One day we will again eat the roots.”
Three years ago the D.O.E. sent the local tribes a letter to say they shouldn’t eat the fish they caught in the river more than once a week. But for the longest time, the effects of radiation on the human body were either ignored or insincerely explored: no one associated with the business of creating it wanted the knowledge that might disrupt it. Downwind of Hanford, people experienced unusually high rates of certain kinds of cancer, miscarriages, and genetic disorders that went largely ignored. “It’s easy to have no observable health effects when you never look,” the medical director of the Lawrence Livermore lab said, back in the 1980s, after seeing how the private contractors who ran Hanford studied the matter. In her jaw-dropping 2015 book, Plutopia, University of Maryland historian Kate Brown compares and contrasts American plutonium production at Hanford and its Soviet twin, Ozersk. The American understanding of the risks people ran when they came into contact with radiation may have been weaker than the Soviets’. The Soviet government was at least secure in the knowledge that it could keep any unpleasant information to itself. Americans weren’t and so avoided the information—or worse. In 1962 a Hanford worker named Harold Aardal, exposed to a blast of neutron radiation, was whisked to a hospital, where he was told he was perfectly O.K. except that he was now sterile—and back then it didn’t even make the news. Instead, Hanford researchers in the late 1960s went to a local prison and paid the inmates to allow the irradiation of their testicles, to see just how much radiation a man can receive before the tails fall from his sperm.
A young elk gallops across the road in front of our car. He owes his existence, perhaps, to the atom bomb: hunting hasn’t been allowed on the 586-square-mile tract since 1943, and so there’s game everywhere—geese, ducks, cougars, rabbits, elk, and deer. We drive past T plant, the long gray concrete building where they brought the irradiated material from the reactors, to cull the plutonium that went into the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Because it, too, is cold and dark, it is of less concern than the land surrounding it, for that is where the waste from the plant got dumped. The Nagasaki bomb contained about 14 pounds of plutonium, but the waste generated fills acres of manicured dirt, the texture of a baseball infield, just downhill from the plant. “The tank farm,” they call it.
On these farms lay buried 177 tanks, each roughly the size of a four-story apartment building and capable of holding a million gallons of “high-level waste.” Fifty-six million gallons now in the tanks are classified as “high-level waste.” What, you might ask, is high-level waste? “Incredibly dangerous stuff,” says Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Hanford Challenge, the organization which has monitored the site since the late 1980s. “If you’re exposed to it for even a few seconds you probably got a fatal dose.” And yet as you drive by, you would never know anything unusual was happening on the infield were it not for the men crawling over it, with scuba tanks on their backs and oxygen masks on their faces.
Hanford turns out to be a good example of an American impulse: to avoid knowledge that conflicts with whatever your narrow, short-term interests might be. What we know about Hanford we know mainly from whistle-blowers who worked inside the nuclear facility—and who have been ostracized by their community for threatening the industry in a one-industry town. (“Resistance to understanding a threat grows with proximity,” writes Brown.) One hundred and forty-nine of the tanks in the Hanford farms are made of a single shell of a steel ill-designed to contain highly acidic nuclear waste. Sixty-seven of them have failed in some way and allowed waste or vapors to seep out. Each tank contains its own particular stew of chemicals, so no two tanks can be managed in the same way. At the top of many tanks accumulates a hydrogen gas, which, if not vented, might cause the tank to explode. “There are Fukushima-level events that could happen at any moment,” says Carpenter. “You’d be releasing millions of curies of strontium 90 and cesium. And once it’s out there it doesn’t go away—not for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
The people who created the plutonium for the first bombs, in the 1940s and early 1950s, were understandably in too much of a rush to worry about what might happen afterward. They simply dumped 120 million gallons of high-level waste, and another 444 billion gallons of contaminated liquid, into the ground. They piled uranium (half-life: 4.5 billion years) into unlined pits near the Columbia River. They dug 42 miles of trenches to dispose of solid radioactive waste—and left no good records of what’s in the trenches. In early May of this year a tunnel at Hanford, built in the 1950s to bury low-level waste, collapsed. In response, the workers dumped truckloads of dirt into the hole. That dirt is now classified as low-level radioactive waste and needs to be disposed of. “The reason the Hanford cleanup sucks—in a word—is shortcuts,” said Carpenter. “Too many goddamn shortcuts.”
There is another way to think of John MacWilliams’s fifth risk: the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long-term risks with short-term solutions. Program management is not just program management. Program management is all the “less detectable, systemic risks.” Some of the things any incoming president should worry about are fast-moving: natural disasters, terrorist attacks. But most are not. Most are like bombs with very long fuses that, in the distant future, when the fuse reaches the bomb, might or might not explode. It is delaying repairs to a tunnel filled with lethal waste until, one day, it collapses. It is the aging workforce of the D.O.E.—which is no longer attracting young people as it once did—that one day loses track of a nuclear bomb. It is the ceding of technical and scientific leadership to China. It is the innovation that never occurs, and the knowledge that is never created, because you have ceased to lay the groundwork for it. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.
Toward the end of his time as secretary of energy, Ernie Moniz suggested that the department, for the first time ever, conduct a serious study of the risks at Hanford. Once the risks were spelled out, perhaps everyone would agree that it was folly to try to turn it into, say, a playground. Maybe the U.S. government should just keep a giant fence around the place and call it a monument to mismanagement. Maybe the people at the labs could figure out how to keep the radioactivity from seeping into the Columbia River and leave it at that. Maybe it shouldn’t be the D.O.E.’s job to deal with the problem, as the problem had no good solution and the political costs of constant failure interfered with the D.O.E.’s ability to address problems it might actually solve.
It turned out no one wanted to make a serious study of the risks at Hanford. Not the contractors who stood to make lots of money from things chugging along as they have. Not the career people inside the D.O.E. who oversaw the project and who feared that an open acknowledgment of all the risks was an invitation to even more lawsuits. Not the citizens of Eastern Washington, who count on the $3 billion a year flowing into their region from the federal government. Only one stakeholder in the place wanted to know what was going on beneath its soil: the tribes. A radioactive ruin does not crumble without consequences, and yet, even now, no one can say what these are.
Here is where the Trump administration’s willful ignorance plays a role. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is a downside to knowledge. It makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.
There is a telling example of this Trumpian impulse—the desire not to know—in a small D.O.E. program that goes by its acronym, ARPA-E. ARPA-E was conceived during the George W. Bush administration as an energy equivalent of DARPA—the Defense Department’s research-grant program that had funded the creation of G.P.S. and the Internet, among other things. Even in the D.O.E. budget the program was trivial—$300 million a year. It made small grants to researchers who had scientifically plausible, wildly creative ideas that might change the world. If you thought you could make water from sunlight, or genetically engineer some bug so that it eats electrons and craps oil, or create a building material that becomes cooler on the inside as it grows hotter on the outside, ARPA-E was your place. More to the point: your only place. At any given time in America there are lots of seriously smart people with bold ideas that might change life as we know it—it may be the most delightful distinguishing feature of our society. The idea behind ARPA-E was to find the best of these ideas that the free market had declined to finance and make sure they were given a chance. Competition for the grants has been fierce: only two out of every hundred are approved. The people who do the approving come from the energy industry and academia. They do brief tours of duty in government, then return to Intel and Harvard.
The man who ran the place when it opened was Arun Majumdar. He grew up in India, finished at the top of his engineering class, moved to the United States, and became a world-class materials scientist. He now teaches at Stanford University but could walk into any university in America and get a job. Invited to run ARPA-E, he took a leave from teaching, moved to Washington, D.C., and went to work for the D.O.E. “This country embraced me as one of her sons,” he said. “So when someone is calling me to serve, it is hard to say no.” His only demand was that he be allowed to set up the program in a small office down the street from the Department of Energy building. “The feng shui of D.O.E. is really bad,” he explained.
Right away he faced the hostility of right-wing think tanks. The Heritage Foundation even created its own budget plan back in 2011 that eliminated ARPA-E. American politics was alien to the Indian immigrant; he couldn’t fathom the tribal warfare. “Democrat, Republican—what is this?,” as he put it. “Also, why don’t people vote? In India people stand in line in 40 degrees Celsius to vote.” He phoned up the guys who had written the Heritage budget and invited them over to see what they’d be destroying. They invited him to lunch. “They were very gracious,” said Majumdar, “but they didn’t know anything. They were not scientists in any sense. They were ideologues. Their point was: the market should take care of everything. I said, ‘I can tell you that the market does not go into the lab and work on something that might or might not work.’ ”
Present at lunch was a woman who, Majumdar learned, helped to pay the bills at the Heritage Foundation. After he’d explained ARPA-E—and some of the life-changing ideas that the free market had failed to fund in their infancy—she perked up and said, “Are you guys like DARPA?” Yes, he said. “Well, I’m a big fan of DARPA,” she said. It turned out her son had fought in Iraq. His life was saved by a Kevlar vest. The early research to create the Kevlar vest was done by DARPA.
The guys at Heritage declined the invitation to actually visit the D.O.E. and see what ARPA-E was up to. But in their next faux budget they restored the funding for ARPA-E. (The Heritage Foundation did not respond to questions about its relationship with the D.O.E.)
As I drove out of Hanford the Trump administration unveiled its budget for the Department of Energy. ARPA-E had since won the praise of business leaders from Bill Gates to Lee Scott, the former C.E.O. of Walmart, to Fred Smith, the Republican founder of FedEx, who has said that “pound for pound, dollar for dollar, activity for activity, it’s hard to find a more effective thing government has done than ARPA-E.” Trump’s budget eliminates ARPA-E altogether. It also eliminates the spectacularly successful $70 billion loan program. It cuts funding to the national labs in a way that implies the laying off of 6,000 of their people. It eliminates all research on climate change. It halves the funding for work to secure the electrical grid from attack or natural disaster. “All the risks are science-based,” said John MacWilliams when he saw the budget. “You can’t gut the science. If you do, you are hurting the country. If you gut the core competency of the D.O.E., you gut the country.”
But you can. Indeed, if you are seeking to preserve a certain worldview, it actually helps to gut science. Trump’s budget, like the social forces behind it, is powered by a perverse desire—to remain ignorant. Trump didn’t invent this desire. He is just its ultimate expression.
Keep reading...Show less
Rick Perry is wrong: The grid is ready for renewables.
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is expected to issue a report saying renewables pose a threat to the electricity grid. But the truth is that advances in technology and battery storage are making the grid ever-more capable of accommodating wind and solar power.
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
OPINION
The Energy Secretary Is Wrong: The Grid is Ready for Renewables
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is expected to issue a report saying renewables pose a threat to the electricity grid. But the truth is that advances in technology and battery storage are making the grid ever-more capable of accommodating wind and solar power.
BY JACQUES LESLIE • JULY 5, 2017
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will soon release a study asserting that wind and solar energy are undermining the electricity grid and that only fossil fuel and nuclear plants can assure the grid’s reliability.
Making this prediction requires no extrasensory powers. It stems directly from the April 14 memo by Energy Secretary Rick Perry that ordered the study. Echoing a popular argument of the fossil fuel industry, Perry wrote that pro-renewables regulations issued by past U.S. administrations “threaten to undercut the performance of the grid” and have caused “the erosion of critical baseload resources” derived from coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. In stating these controversial views, Perry seemed to dictate the study’s findings.
The study is being led by Travis Fisher, who, until he became a DOE senior advisor in January, worked for the fossil fuel-funded Institute for Energy Research. While at the institute, Fisher published a report calling clean energy policies “the single greatest emerging threat” to the nation’s grid. Given the potential risks to the grid from cyberwarfare, terrorism, and extreme weather, that’s a highly dubious allegation.
Perry and some fossil fuel industry officials maintain that because wind and solar power are intermittent — that is, they function only when the wind blows or the sun shines — they threaten the grid’s stability. They argue that only fossil fuel and nuclear plants can provide a constant flow of power, which they say the grid needs.
A range of measures should enable the grid to maintain stability as renewables spread.
But a succession of rigorous studies — including a widely cited two-year study conducted by the DOE itself in 2012 — has found that renewables can provide as much as 80 percent of the nation’s energy supply without disrupting a properly managed grid. And that doesn’t mean that 80 percent is the upper limit of renewables — it indicates only that levels beyond 80 percent weren’t thoroughly investigated. A range of measures should enable the grid to maintain stability as renewables spread. These include broadening each regional grid’s reach to take in a greater variety of energy sources, installing more transmission lines, and increasing electricity storage, mostly in the form of batteries. The 2012 DOE study foresees a five-fold growth in the use of batteries by 2050, a realistic goal given batteries’ increasing efficiency and plummeting cost.
In contrast to the earlier studies, Perry’s is cursory — he wanted it completed in 60 days — and appears to address political concerns, not technological ones. David Pomerantz, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based utility watchdog Energy and Policy Institute, calls the study “a politically motivated effort by the Trump administration to create some kind of justification for pro-coal policies when, in reality, no such justification exists.”
President Trump has vowed to revive the reeling coal industry, and administration officials blame regulations that facilitate renewables — including former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan — for coal’s rapid decline.
But contrary to Perry’s memo, the success of renewables is not what has rendered coal plants uneconomic — the extremely low cost of natural gas, which sets prices in the energy market, has done that.
Wind turbines at Storm Lake, Iowa. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
ALSO ON YALE E360
In Iowa, a bipartisan push to become a leader in wind energy. Read more.
Perry’s line of thinking is far from unanimous even among Republicans. Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, whose state generates a third of its electricity from wind, the highest percentage of any state in the nation, dismissed the study in a letter to Perry as “anti-wind.” Six other Republican senators wrote Trump to object to his proposed cuts in DOE research and development funding, including a 70 percent cut in renewables research.
Not coincidentally, the renewables-are-destroying-the-grid argument has arisen while their production is soaring. In fact, renewables are triggering a transformation in the power sector, as lethargic utilities awaken to the widespread opportunities of a decarbonized, electrified energy system. In some areas, new unsubsidized wind and solar energy is already cheaper than natural gas and promises to get cheaper still, as a slew of innovations and economies of scale are rolled out, including new materials for photovoltaic cells and more sophisticated ways to shift electricity use from high-cost to low-cost times of the day.
Renewables have accounted for a majority of the nation’s new electricity-generating capacity since 2015, and that proportion is expected to grow. Leading industrial and commercial corporations are loading up on renewable energy. One example is Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s behemoth holding company, which has invested more than $6 billion in five solar farms, two of which will be the nation’s largest solar installations.
The grid operates under certain inescapable realities. The amount of electricity delivered to the grid must equal the amount that consumers take from it, or else power stations and transmission lines can break down, causing blackouts. And wind and solar are variable sources of energy: wind turbines don’t turn without wind, and solar panels don’t work without sunlight. Fossil fuel and nuclear advocates like to contrast this set of attributes with their favored energy sources, which, they claim, provide an unvarying flow of energy — a dependable “baseload” supply.
“The idea that intermittency is a challenge for the grid fundamentally misunderstands how the grid operates,” says one expert.
But as Matt Roberts, executive director of the Energy Storage Association, which represents the energy storage industry, puts it, ”The idea that intermittency is a challenge for the grid fundamentally misunderstands how the grid operates. We have a whole toolbox of ways to deal with intermittency.”
The truth is that every source of energy is variable in its own way. For example, the cold wave that struck the U.S. Northeast in early 2014 disabled three-quarters of New England’s gas-powered generation capacity because contractual limitations and exceptional demand impeded supplies.
“Hardly a month goes by,” the DOE’s Energy Information Administration reported in 2006, that delivery from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the nation’s largest coal reserve, “somewhere in the supply chain is not interrupted by a derailment, freezing, flooding, or other natural occurrence.” Amory Lovins, cofounder of the energy research-focused Rocky Mountain Institute, reported in a May article in Forbes that coal plants experience outages 6 to 10 percent of the time, and are unavailable for one reason or another for about 15 percent of their maximum theoretical output. That compares unfavorably with solar and wind equipment, which contains few moving parts and rarely breaks down.
The grid was built around the idiosyncrasies of fossil fuels, so long ago that they’re taken for granted. In optimum circumstances, fossil fuel and nuclear plants deliver a constant supply, which meets the system’s minimum daily electricity demand. As demand rises to a late-afternoon crescendo, when commercial and residential devices are both in use, the increase is met with idle plant capacity and smaller “peaker” plants that function only during peak hours. This arrangement works, but it wastes unused plant capacity.
By current standards, coal and nuclear plants are also clunky: They lose efficiency when they don’t run at full capacity, and they take hours to start and stop. Refueling takes them out of service — in the case of nuclear plants for weeks at a time. They are slow to adjust to the never-ending fluctuations of electricity demand, which occur not just day to day and season to season, but minute to minute.
By contrast, the implements of the modern grid — renewables, electricity storage, and smart grid technology — respond quickly to shifts in electricity demand, and show promise of greatly reducing electricity costs. For example, with the aid of Internet links, “smart” refrigerators and water heaters track changes in electricity prices and maximize electricity use when supply is high and prices are low. When Perry declared in his memo that baseload power “is necessary to a well-functioning grid,” he was dating himself, like a horse enthusiast in the era of cars.
One lesson ought to hold special appeal for Republicans: Where free enterprise is fostered, renewables thrive.
A Pacific Gas & Electric vice president’s explanation in December for the utility’s closing of California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant can be read as an epitaph for the baseload concept. “With 50 percent renewables on the system, the idea of a large baseload generator that runs pretty much all the time, every day, 24 hours a day, just doesn’t have as good a fit to the market as we expect to see,” PG&E;’s Steve Malnight said.
The modern grid, it turns out, prizes not baseload power but flexible power. When electricity supply suddenly outstrips demand, solar farms can be quickly turned off, as happens occasionally at midday in California. And if a grid covers a wide enough geographical area, variations in supply are evened out — if there’s no sun in southern California, there may be plenty in Arizona. A grid that reaches into two time zones further flattens electricity demand, since, for example, people in one time zone get home from work and turn on their air conditioners at different times from those in the other. That enables existing infrastructure to be used more efficiently, and obviates the need to build more.
For the last century, utilities have considered the amount of electricity demand as a given and have adjusted supply to equal it. Now, however, it’s increasingly possible to shift demand as well as supply. With time-of-use pricing, utilities can alter consumer behavior by dropping prices at midday, when renewable electricity is bountiful, and increasing prices during the late-afternoon demand peak. In addition, the electricity storage industry is growing at a rate of more than 200 percent a year and is making the grid even more efficient. Batteries can store midday renewable energy, then provide it a few hours later when demand is higher.
Even the batteries of electric cars can become grid components. Electric vehicles are still seen as luxuries (Tesla) or curiosities (the Chevrolet Bolt), but sales are likely to take off soon, and not just because of the cars’ lack of emissions, according to Julie Blunden, an energy consultant and California Clean Energy Fund board member. Electric cars’ engines are far simpler than internal combustion engines, which means that they require much less maintenance, and they will cost less than gasoline-fueled cars once economies of scale are reached.
California, the nation’s automotive market leader, has set a target of 1.5 million electric cars on the road by 2025 — which will help drive sales. Parked electric cars can take advantage of the midday peak in renewable electricity supply by charging then, while their owners are at work. With a modernized grid, in the event of a sudden drop in electricity supply or increase in demand, the car-charging could be suspended while the electricity is diverted elsewhere, and owners could be compensated for the interruption.
The biggest obstacle to the ongoing paradigm shift is the slowness of utilities and regulations to adapt. On one level, it’s hard to blame utilities, for they are organized to make profits by expanding infrastructure, not by being efficient or facilitating the distribution of other generators’ electricity. And many regulations were written before the advent of renewables, and don’t take account of new technologies.
For example, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which manages the grid in the Midwest, requires systems in the fast-frequency electricity response market to use governors, which modulate electricity transmissions from coal plants. The fast-frequency market handles second-to-second imbalances between electricity supply and demand. Because transmission from batteries is instantaneous, they’re perfectly suited to fast-frequency transmission, but batteries don’t need governors. And according to MISO’s regulations, that lack excludes them from the market. In the face of all this, utilities and public utilities commissions are beginning to take on the enormous task of redesigning utilities’ business models and regulations to remain viable.
ALSO ON YALE E360
Innovative government policies have helped propel Texas into the forefront of wind energy generation. Read more.
Much of this ought to be familiar to Perry, who was governor of Texas as it became the nation’s leader in wind energy production — the state has an installed wind capacity of more than 21,000 megawatts, more than triple that of Iowa, the second-ranking state. During Perry’s tenure, Texas promoted wind energy by building transmission lines, which are far cheaper than gas pipelines. Wind energy production promptly skyrocketed even though, unlike most states, Texas lacks a potent “renewable portfolio standard” — a regulation requiring increased renewables production. The lesson ought to hold special appeal for Perry and other Republicans who profess to embrace free markets: Where free enterprise is fostered, renewables thrive.
Keep reading...Show less
France, India to cooperate in fighting climate change.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday their countries would cooperate in the fight against climate change, just days after the U.S. withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.
By Geert De Clercq | PARIS
French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday their countries would cooperate in the fight against climate change, just days after the U.S. withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.
Modi, whose country is the world's third-biggest emissions generator, said in Russia on Friday that he would continue to back the deal and Macron has said the 2015 Paris agreement is irreversible despite U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw.
"The protection of the environment and the mother planet is an article of faith," Modi said at a joint news conference with Macron in Paris.
The two leaders, who met for the first time, announced no contracts or new initiatives.
"We are both convinced that our countries have to do a lot for the ecological and environmental transition and the fight against global warming," Macron said, adding that France would go above and beyond its Paris agreement commitments.
He said he planned a visit to India before year-end for a first summit of the International Solar Alliance, an initiative launched by New Delhi and Paris during the Paris climate talks.
Macron said the alliance will lead to concrete measures in favor of solar energy and commit the companies of both nations.
The alliance seeks to mobilize more than a trillion dollars by 2030 and bring together well over 100 solar-rich countries to deliver solar energy to some of the planet's poorest.
The two leaders said they had also discussed how to combat terrorism and that they would work on concrete initiatives before the end of the year to fight terrorism on the internet.
Ties between the two countries have grown in recent years most notably in the defense sector with New Delhi ordering 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets.
The two countries are also in talks about nuclear power and French utility EDF in Jan. 2016 signed a preliminary pact to build six Areva-designed European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) at Jaitapur, on India's western coast.
But last month, India's cabinet approved plans to build 10 reactors of indigenous Indian design and said that India will not buy foreign reactors unless these reactors are already in operation.
Four EPRs are under construction in France, Finland and China, but all are years behind schedule and not a single EPR is in operation yet.
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Ralph Boulton)
Keep reading...Show less
Usually fractious Freedom Caucus works quietly on energy.
When Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) led the first major rewrite of the nation's chemical safety rules in four decades last year, he made sure to check in with an increasingly powerful bloc of conservatives: the House Freedom Caucus.
When Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) led the first major rewrite of the nation's chemical safety rules in four decades last year, he made sure to check in with an increasingly powerful bloc of conservatives: the House Freedom Caucus.
"You don't want to be cross-wires with them," said Shimkus, who recalled that the group never raised any concerns with the legislation that would eventually became one of the signature, bipartisan environmental bills in the 114th Congress.
Shimkus' outreach reflects the extraordinary clout the collection of mostly backbench lawmakers wields — less than three years after it was founded by hard-right members who felt ignored by party leaders. It has become the most powerful caucus on Capitol Hill, one that Republican leaders will have to reckon with if they hope to pass any significant energy, environment, tax, spending or infrastructure bills in this Congress.
The group rose to prominence in the summer of 2015 when it began agitating for the ouster of then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and its influence was unquestioned by the fall when Boehner resigned and was replaced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) with the caucus' backing. More recently, the caucus successfully held up the passage of the Republicans' top legislative priority, health care overhaul legislation, for several weeks this spring to force changes.
Currently, all of its members are men — and all but one are white.
Understanding where Freedom Caucus members stand on energy and environment policy offers insight into where the Republican Party is headed on those issues in the 115th Congress.
Despite its success, the Freedom Caucus, fearing political retribution from party leaders, does not make its membership public. However, many caucus members are open about their participation, and by most accounts about 30 lawmakers are involved (for profiles of each member, see below).
For all its influence on politics and policy on Capitol Hill, the caucus at first glance does not appear to have weighed in much on energy or environmental topics.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said energy and environmental policy would not make a top 10 list of issues the group is focused on and rarely is discussed at its weekly meetings.
"We've got lower energy prices right now than we have had historically, so until energy prices spike up, it doesn't become the big deal," he added.
However, E&E; News interviews with more than a dozen members both inside and outside the Freedom Caucus, congressional aides, and experts show the group is a subtle force in promoting conservative energy and environment ideas. They may not be hot-button issues for the caucus, but its members have become leaders in promoting the right's energy agenda — which is almost always at odds with green groups.
Freedom Caucus members have sponsored bills proposing expanding energy production, easing federal lands protections and ending energy subsidies. They have used oversight hearings to scold U.S. EPA and the Energy Department. And the group has been the most reliable supporter of the Trump White House's anti-regulatory push.
A conservative agenda
Ask any Freedom Caucus member who the leader in the group is on energy issues, and they are quick to name Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).
A former Energy and Commerce chairman, Barton, who with more than three decades in the House is easily the dean of the caucus, has long been the most ardent backer of expanding energy production in Congress. While his unvarnished support for the fossil fuels industry sometimes raised concerns when he was chairman, his views now have wide backing from the Freedom Caucus.
Graphic by E&E; News.
"The Freedom Caucus per se does not have a specific energy agenda, but generically it would be what our national energy policy has been to try to maintain private enterprise and free markers to the largest extent possible," Barton said.
He added that most of the group's members are skeptical of climate change and support expanding drilling offshore and on public lands.
Several Freedom Caucus members make the point that there is little difference between their views on energy and environment and those now pushed by party leaders. They say that's one of the reasons they have not needed to be as outspoken on promoting their positions as they have on other issues like health care.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), an influential Freedom Caucus member on land issues and a senior Natural Resources Committee member, said the group sees the Trump administration as off to a "very promising" start with Scott Pruitt installed at EPA and Rick Perry at the Energy Department. He believes those leaders want to enact an "all of the above" energy strategy and are eager to work with local officials.
Gosar, chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, said House Republicans are largely united on land-use issues. He noted many Freedom Caucus members and GOP leaders like Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) belong to the Western Caucus, which has long pushed a libertarian approach to federal land management.
"We all are committed to protecting private property rights, strengthening local control, fostering economic growth, preserving multiple use of public land and increasing energy independence," said Gosar.
Lawmakers point to the use of the Congressional Review Act to reverse Obama-era environmental protections as the kind of regulatory rollbacks the Freedom Caucus routinely champions.
Meadows, in fact, provided the White House with a list of more than 200 regulations that conservatives thought could be scrapped earlier this year, including several repealed under the CRA.
Several Freedom Caucus members, including its first chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), were invited to the White House when President Trump signed into law a measure blocking the Interior Department's Stream Protection Rule. The rule that would ease mining restrictions near certain waterways is a priority for their coal-country districts.
Other caucus members see an opportunity to promote their energy ideas if Trump and congressional Republicans make good on their plans for a massive infrastructure package.
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), a Freedom Caucus member and Natural Resources Committee veteran, is pushing the administration to include in the infrastructure package dollars for upgrades to a refinery in his vast district, which is one of the nation's largest producers of oil.
"Trump is really focused on things that could create jobs," said Pearce, outlining his economic argument that an overhauled refinery would be able to handle far more crude.
Gosar expects many of the infrastructure projects will use raw materials obtained through mining. He sees an opening there to get the administration behind easing some of the current federal restrictions on mining to jump-start the work.
Freedom Caucus lawmakers also note that former Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), one of the caucus founders, now heads the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney was the group's point man on fiscal matters and often called for sharp budget cuts. Many see Mulvaney and their views reflected in the Trump administration's emerging fiscal 2018 budget, which aims to slash EPA funding by a third.
Committee clout
Freedom Caucus members have regularly used committee hearings to promote their energy priorities or, in other instances, take aim at EPA and DOE.
The House's top committee assignments often are doled out based on seniority, fundraising and loyalty to the party's broader agenda. Given its rebel status, the Freedom Caucus has only landed two members on the Energy and Commerce Committee and one apiece on the Appropriations and Ways and Means committees, which oversee tax and spending policy, respectively. None serves as a committee chairman.
Among the committees with the most Freedom Caucus members are Oversight and Government Reform (10); Science, Space and Technology (six); and Natural Resources (five). Four out of the six House Oversight subcommittees are led by Freedom Caucus members, while they chair two out of the six on both Science and Natural Resources.
Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who is not in the caucus, said he's on the same page with many of the group's Western members about lifting restrictions on federally owned land. But Bishop concedes he's concerned about how the caucus' sometimes adversarial relationship with leadership could make it a liability in pushing land issues.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who as ranking member on Natural Resources is a leading environmentalist, sees Freedom Caucus members on the panel behind efforts to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Antiquities Act, and speed up permitting for energy drilling on public lands.
"They are players because they are obsessive, and there is no point of compromise," he added.
On Oversight, Jordan, who is a potential candidate to lead the committee with the upcoming retirement of current Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), has used oversight hearings to attack the Energy Department's renewable loans program and argue against subsidies (E&E; Daily, May 11).
EPA, too, has been a frequent target of the committee, where Freedom Caucus members have criticized the agency's handling of the Flint, Mich., water crisis; accused officials of ignoring sexual harassment claims; and even called for impeaching former EPA chief Gina McCarthy.
Climate doubters
Questions about climate change abound in the Freedom Caucus; many members say the science behind global warming is flawed.
Many in the caucus see the threat from global warming as less about the environment and more about the economy if energy production is restricted. A potential carbon tax and even federal research into the impact of carbon are opposed by its members. Most would enthusiastically back the administration pulling out of the Paris climate deal.
Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), a senior Science, Space and Technology Committee member, said, "Anytime you have a conservative mindset on the committee, they are going to have an impact." Like Weber, several Freedom Caucus members on the Science panel have deep doubts about global warming and have held hearings that have attacked the "fake" science behind it.
A few Freedom Caucus members have shown a willingness to work on climate change, limiting offshore drilling and renewable issues.
Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) is the only member of the Freedom Caucus involved in the Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which attracts House members from both parties to work on global warming.
Sanford has the highest lifetime rating of any Freedom Caucus members from the League of Conservation Voters at 25 percent; several of the group score at zero percent.
"Conservatism ought to apply to more than financial resources, and I think that one of the mistakes we make as conservatives is to discard the Teddy Roosevelt model of conservatism," said Sanford, who represents South Carolina's Low Country, which would be hard hit by sea-level rise.
Sanford and caucus member Bill Posey (R-Fla.) have broken with many in the group by opposing offshore drilling. Like Sanford, Posey represents a large swath of Atlantic coastline.
Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), a Freedom Caucus member, recently became the first member of the group to join the House Republican Energy, Innovation and Environmental Working Group, which aims for "common-sense energy reforms" that in part focus on renewables.
"I don't know anybody up here that doesn't want clean air and clean energy, we all want that," said Yoho. But, he added, he hopes to "pull the EPA back from debilitating businesses."
According to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan website run by the Center for Responsive Politics, 24 current members of the Freedom Caucus received donations from Koch Industries Inc. in the 2016 election cycle. Nearly half received at least $10,000, the same amount as Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the Energy and Commerce chairman.
A lasting influence
The Freedom Caucus is not yet 3 years old, and it's impossible to know yet if it will remain a force or wane in clout as so many other congressional coalitions have over the years.
Molly Reynolds, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said the Freedom Caucus is the most powerful House coalition since the moderate Blue Dog Democrats were flexing their power nearly a decade ago by softening House Democratic cap-and-trade legislation.
However, Reynolds said, a major difference is that Freedom Caucus members represent some of the nation's most reliably conservative districts, many based in the South and Southwest, and that gives them some staying power. She noted the contrast to moderate Blue Dogs, who frequently represented swing districts and saw their ranks decimated when Republicans took over the House in 2010.
Much of the Freedom Caucus' current success is due as much to math as it is to its politics.
House Republicans peaked at controlling 247 seats in the past two Congresses, meaning GOP leaders could lose no more than 29 votes and still pass any bill without Democratic votes. As a result, the Freedom Caucus, representing only 7 percent of the entire House but with at least 30 members, has held great sway in shaping legislation.
But the group's sometimes stubborn positions — 80 percent of its members must back a bill before the caucus will endorse it — have led some to leave.
Most recently, Rep. Bruce Babin (R-Texas), a House Science member who did not support the Freedom Caucus' initial opposition to the health care overhaul, resigned from the group.
Not every House conservative has rushed to join the caucus.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who this year replaced the last female member of the group, former Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), said she turned down an invitation to join the Freedom Caucus. Cheney said she agrees with much of her colleagues' agenda, but with congressional majorities and a GOP White House, she believes those issues can be advanced in other ways.
"I think they have a right to do it, it's just not something I wanted to participate in," she added.
For Myron Ebell, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Energy and Environment who's known for questioning global warming, the Freedom Caucus is the congressional ally he's long sought. Ebell, who led the Trump transition at EPA, said he's in close contact with its members promoting EPA budget cuts and ending "junk science."
Ebell added, "I was the Freedom Caucus before there was a Freedom Caucus."
Freedom Caucus members and their districts. Map by E&E; News, photos courtesy of Wikipedia.
Bios
Justin Amash
Fourth term, Michigan 3rd District
Committee: Oversight and Government Reform
Amash, 37, is the youngest member of the Freedom Caucus and perhaps its most committed libertarian. He was loudly booed at a town hall in his district this spring when he raised questions about the science behind global warming. Citing his views on limited government, he was the only member of the Michigan delegation to oppose federal aid for the water crisis in Flint, Mich. He was kicked off the Budget Committee early in his House career for bucking party leaders. His district was once represented by President Ford.
Joe Barton
17th term, Texas 6th District
Committee: Energy and Commerce (vice chairman)
Barton, 67, is the senior member of the Freedom Caucus, with a long track record on energy and environmental issues. As the former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, he is the group's most accomplished legislator and was a lead author of the last major energy bill to clear Congress in 2005. Barton now serves as vice chairman of the committee, where he remains one of Capitol Hill's most steadfast backers of fossil fuels. He regularly questions the need for renewable energy, dismisses climate change and cheers on Trump administration efforts to scale back U.S. EPA. Barton has long held many of the anti-regulatory views now championed by the Freedom Caucus. His Waco-area district is the nation's third leading producer of natural gas.
Andy Biggs
First term, Arizona 5th District
Committees: Science, Space and Technology (Environment Subcommittee chairman); Judiciary
Biggs, 58, emerged from a competitive GOP primary to represent a mostly suburban Phoenix district after being endorsed by the Freedom Caucus. He recently held a subcommittee hearing to blast Obama administration efforts to determine the social cost of carbon. His Judiciary work includes sponsoring legislation with other Western lawmakers to break up the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A winner of $10 million in the American Family Publishers sweepstakes in 1993, Biggs subsequently appeared in television commercials with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon to promote it.
Rod Blum
Second term, Iowa 1st District
Committees: Oversight and Government Reform, Small Business (Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade chairman)
Blum, 61, is one of the few Freedom Caucus members who back ethanol subsidies, which are a priority for farmers in his northeastern Iowa district. He believes that as long as there are federal subsidies for oil production, there should be ethanol supports, too. Blum will use his Small Business subcommittee post to target what he views as overreach by EPA and promote policies aimed at economic growth in rural America. A climate change doubter, Blum said his pessimism comes in part because most of the data pointing to global warming comes from federally funded research. Blum is one of the few members of the Freedom Caucus who face a competitive general election in 2018.
David Brat
Third term, Virginia 7th District
Committees: Budget, Education and the Workforce, Small Business (Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access Subcommittee chairman)
Brat, 52, is an outspoken free-market capitalist who often frames policy choices in terms of economic growth. "Rich people, it turns out, like clean air and clean water," said Brat at a town hall in his Richmond, Va.-area district this spring, tying a safe environment to a strong economy. He'll have the chance to weigh in on the impact of federal fiscal policies this Congress both on the Budget panel and from his subcommittee perch. Brat, who boasts of being the only member of Congress to hold a doctorate in economics, pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in recent history, knocking off then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Republican primary.
Jim Bridenstine
Third term, Oklahoma 1st District
Committees: Science, Space and Technology; Armed Services
Bridenstine, 41, is under consideration to be the next NASA administrator. He recently said he would be open to moving climate research work out of NASA, perhaps to another agency, or cutting the effort altogether. In the last Congress, Bridenstine led the Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on the Environment, where he backed steps to improve National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather forecasting, an important issue for his Tulsa-based "Tornado Alley" district. An ally of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Bridenstine has teamed up with him to propose broad energy legislation rolling backing federal rules for energy drilling and production. He came to Congress after beating Rep. John Sullivan (R), then a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in a primary. Bridenstine will stick to a term-limits pledge and not seek re-election in 2018, although he may run for the Senate in 2020 if Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) retires.
Mo Brooks
Fourth term, Alabama 5th District
Committees: Science, Space and Technology; Armed Services; Foreign Affairs
Brooks, 62, is known for making colorful statements in opposition to federal spending and regulation. In a 2015 floor speech, he called for lawmakers to "wean Amtrak from the taxpayer nipple" in an unsuccessful bid to cut all federal funding for the passenger rail service. As a House Science member, Brooks favors more dollars for NASA space exploration but opposes space agency spending tied to climate research. On Armed Services, he backs the Army's directed energy programs, some of which are based in his Huntsville, Ala., district. Brooks, a longtime Alabama state official who once worked for Attorney General Jeff Sessions when Sessions was Alabama's attorney general, won his seat by defeating GOP Rep. Parker Griffith, an Energy and Commerce member, in a primary. Brooks yesterday announced he's running for Senate in a special election this year.
Ken Buck
Second term, Colorado 4th District
Committees: Rules, Judiciary
Buck, 58, is the only Freedom Caucus member on the Rules Committee, a panel that works closely with leadership to set the House agenda. Buck said at a recent town hall in his eastern Colorado high plains district to expect EPA spending cuts and railed against "redundant" federal environmental protections. He has backed legislation to turn federal transportation funding over to states and opposes expanding national heritage sites. He recently penned a book decrying Washington's "pay to play" culture by highlighting the money members must raise to serve on top committees. Buck was an aide to then-Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.) during the Iran-Contra investigation. His wife, Perry, serves as the GOP leader in the Colorado House.
Warren Davidson
Second term, Ohio 8th District
Committee: Financial Services
Davidson, 47, replaced Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House and showed his conservative bona fides by quickly joining the Freedom Caucus. He has been in sync with the GOP's congressional regulatory agenda, applauding rollbacks of Obama-era environmental rules. Davidson has a large manufacturing base in his Rust Belt district and worries that talk of tariffs on imports could spark a trade war. A former Army Ranger who worked for his family's small manufacturing firm before coming to Congress, Davidson backs legislation calling for all federal agencies to have their headquarters outside of Washington.
Ron DeSantis
Third term, Florida 6th District
Committees: Oversight and Government Reform (National Security Subcommittee chairman), Judiciary, Foreign Affairs
DeSantis, 38, touts himself as a small-government conservative. He has backed legislation calling for phasing out the gas tax and opposed the most recent farm bill as "corporate welfare." A member with 100 miles of Florida coast in his district, DeSantis opposes any global warming legislation that would raise taxes. A former Navy JAG officer with an interest in foreign affairs, DeSantis originally had hoped to run for the Senate in 2016 but opted to stay in the House after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) decided at the last minute to seek re-election. Recent speculation has him weighing a run for governor in 2018.
Scott DesJarlais
Fourth term, Tennessee 4th District
Committees: Oversight and Government Reform, Agriculture, Armed Services
DesJarlais, 53, one of the House's most fiscally conservative members, takes hard-line stances that draw political fire. Green groups have derided him for targeting Smokey Bear by calling for ending Forest Service education programs. Nutrition groups have criticized his repeated bids to limit federal funding for ads against unhealthy foods and beverages. On the House Agriculture Committee, DesJarlais sought to double the food stamp cuts in the last farm bill. The Freedom Caucus provided crucial financial support to help DesJarlais, a former doctor, survive a 2016 primary challenge for his middle Tennessee seat amid reports of an earlier extramarital affair with a patient who subsequently had an abortion.
Jeff Duncan
Fourth term, South Carolina 3rd District
Committees: Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security
Duncan, 51, has been a leading promoter of an "all of the above" energy strategy backed by many in the Freedom Caucus. The upstate South Carolina lawmaker's pro-exploration strategy applies to offshore drilling, as well. He won House approval in 2013 for agreement for offshore drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and for a separate House bill in 2014 requiring areas off the South Carolina coast to be considered in federal offshore leasing assessments. A former college football player at Clemson University, Duncan is a co-chairman of the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus and has won its annual shooting competition.
Trent Franks
Eighth term, Arizona 8th District
Committees: Armed Services, Judiciary
Franks, 59, is a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus who often talks about energy in national security terms. He calls for more domestic oil exploration to avoid having the United States become subject to the "whims of radical regimes." On Armed Services, the West Valley lawmaker won support for a defense authorization provision requiring expanded federal efforts to protect the nation's critical infrastructure, including power grids, from attacks by electromagnetic pulse weapons. Franks says he may be the only lawmaker to ever have fracked a well. While still in high school, he launched an oil drilling business with his brother that has made him one of the wealthier members of Congress.
Tom Garrett
First term, Virginia 5th District
Committees: Education and the Workforce, Homeland Security, Foreign Affairs
One of two freshman members in the group, Garrett, 45, has strong anti-regulatory views that make him a good fit for the Freedom Caucus. He supports expanded domestic energy exploration and production efforts, but warns against any federal energy subsidies that he says would lead to higher taxes. He accuses regulatory agencies of "government aggression" and says both EPA and the Bureau of Land Management have "waged war" against farmers. Representing a Southside Virginia district with both agriculture and timber interests, Garrett is eager to ease trade rules for exporting those products.
Louie Gohmert
Seventh term, Texas 1st District
Committees: Natural Resources (vice chairman), Judiciary
Gohmert, 63, is best known for his combative floor speeches attacking Democrats and promoting conservative values. He also uses his Natural Resources seniority to push for easing federal land policies that favor energy exploration that would benefit his rural East Texas district, which is near the top in the nation in natural gas production. He's sponsoring a bill that would shift responsibility for regulating hydraulic fracturing from the federal government to states. Gohmert is a vehement critic of EPA who says the agency tries to operate above the law. Green groups continue to mock his 2009 suggestion that more carbon dioxide from global warming will benefit plants. But his hard-line views on the environment have played with well with voters, who have never re-elected the former state judge with less than two-thirds of the vote.
Paul Gosar
Fourth term, Arizona 4th District
Committees: Natural Resources (Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee chairman), Oversight and Government Reform
Gosar, 58, is the brash leader on federal land issues in the Freedom Caucus. He uses his subcommittee to protect mining interests, back the transfer of federal lands to states and local governments, and call for the delisting of endangered species. He has been part of a bipartisan push in recent years to streamline the permitting process for renewable energy development on public land. As a Congressional Western Caucus co-chairman, Gosar has priorities that range from overhauling the Antiquities Act to finding funds to cover the maintenance backlog at national parks, including the Grand Canyon in his district. He led failed efforts to impeach former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. A former dentist, Gosar refused to attend Pope Francis' 2015 address to Congress, saying he worried that it would focus on "climate justice."
Morgan Griffith
Fourth term, Virginia 9th District
Committee: Energy and Commerce
Griffith, 59, uses his seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee to protect coal interests in his southwestern Virginia district. He has repeatedly sought to rein in the regulatory reach of EPA. He has also joined with other coal-state lawmakers to press for increased federal dollars for cleaning up abandoned mine sites. Known as the parliamentarian of the Freedom Caucus, Griffith led the House effort to revive the dormant Holman Rule for this Congress that will make it far easier for lawmakers to cut the federal workforce. A member of the Virginia House before being elected to federal office, Griffith was the first Republican House majority leader in Old Dominion history. He won his seat by ousting Rep. Rick Boucher (D), an Energy and Commerce member and lead author of the 2009 House carbon cap-and-trade bill, with strong backing from the Koch brothers.
Andy Harris
Fourth term, Maryland 1st District
Committee: Appropriations
Harris, 60, is the only member of the Freedom Caucus to serve on the Appropriations Committee and the sole Maryland Republican in Congress. Harris generally is a critic of federal spending and was the only House appropriator to have voted against the most recent omnibus spending bill. Still, he has used his seat to fend off cuts to Chesapeake Bay environmental programs. A former medical doctor, Harris questions EPA's scientific integrity, particularly as part of its rulemaking process. Harris defeated one of the leading GOP House environmentalists, then-Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, in a contentious 2008 primary, but it was not until two years later that he would win the general election to represent the Eastern Shore. His district is home to much of the state's poultry and seafood industry.
Jody Hice
Second term, Georgia 10th District
Committees: Natural Resources, Oversight and Government Reform
Hice, 55, from his seat on Oversight and Government Reform has accused EPA of hypocrisy for being tougher on environmental law violators than employees who have stolen from the agency. On Natural Resources, Hice has sponsored bipartisan legislation to create a nonprofit to help the Bureau of Land Management clean up abandoned mine sites. He also has been a nuclear energy booster, with the nuclear power site Plant Vogtle being built near his central Georgia district. A former Baptist minister and talk radio host, Hice wants to rename a patch of federal land next to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., the Nancy Reagan Memorial Park.
Jim Jordan
Sixth term, Ohio 4th District
Committees: Oversight and Government Reform (Health Care, Benefits and Administrative Rules Subcommittee chairman), Judiciary
Jordan, 53, served as the first chairman of the Freedom Caucus and remains one of its leading voices and agitators. As a senior member of the Oversight and Government Reform panel, Jordan pushed for an investigation into the Energy Department's loan guarantees to the now-bankrupt Solyndra solar company. He opposes energy subsidies and has sought to eliminate the renewable fuel standard. With the pending retirement of current Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Jordan is seen as a candidate for the gavel, but it's not clear that Republican leaders would back the central and western Ohio lawmaker, who is known as a leadership critic. A former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the chamber's largest conservative caucus, Jordan helped launch the Freedom Caucus out of frustration with GOP leaders on fiscal issues.
Raúl Labrador
Fourth term, Idaho 1st District
Committees: Natural Resources (Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee chairman), Judiciary
Labrador, 49, the media-savvy co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, has used a senior seat on the Natural Resources Committee to seek fewer restraints on federal lands. Representing vast western Idaho, he has pushed for more geothermal exploration on those lands but opposes subsidies for the alternative energy source. He has held oversight hearings that have criticized EPA's handling of the Gold King mine spill in Colorado. A native of Puerto Rico, Labrador is one of the few minorities in the Freedom Caucus and recently announced he plans to run for governor of Idaho in 2018.
Mark Meadows
Third term, North Carolina 11th District
Committees: Oversight and Government Reform (Government Operations Subcommittee chairman), Transportation and Infrastructure, Foreign Affairs
Meadows, 57, the affable chairman of the Freedom Caucus, has led high-stakes legislative negotiations between the group and the White House. He spearheaded the compilation of some 200 federal regulations that conservatives have pressed for President Trump to roll back. Meadows used his senior slot on Oversight and Government Reform to create a tip line for federal employees to report waste and abuse to Congress. He authored a House-passed bill to prohibit federal employees from accessing pornographic websites after an EPA worker was caught viewing explicit materials at work. A former real estate developer whose western North Carolina district includes the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Meadows advocates for more flexibility in federal conservation tax breaks for landowners. He became a tea party hero in 2015 by pushing for a House vote to remove then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Alex Mooney
Second term, West Virginia 2nd District
Committee: Financial Services
Mooney, 45, looks out for his district's coal interests as an opponent of federal regulation that restricts mining. He wrote House-approved legislation in the 114th Congress that would have barred EPA restrictions on mining near streams from taking effect; the rule eventually was repealed under the Congressional Review Act. He has also been active with other coal-state lawmakers in pushing for the federal government to guarantee health and pension benefits for retired miners. Mooney spent more than a decade as a Maryland state senator, but then moved to West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle in 2014 to run for Congress.
Gary Palmer
Second term, Alabama 6th District
Committees: Oversight and Government Reform (Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee chairman); Science, Space and Technology; Budget
Palmer, 52, stresses government accountability. He's sponsoring legislation calling for federal agencies that collect fees or settlements to return all those dollars to the Treasury rather than keep them in agency coffers. He has suggested that EPA is partially responsible for the Flint, Mich., water crisis because of its failed focus on regulatory updates. On the Science panel, Palmer has raised doubts about links between fracking and earthquakes. The founder of the conservative Alabama Policy Institute think tank, Palmer never ran for office before winning his seat with crucial backing in a primary from the anti-tax group Club for Growth.
Steve Pearce
Seventh term, New Mexico 2nd District
Committees: Financial Services (Terrorism and Illicit Finance Subcommittee chairman), Natural Resources
Pearce, 69, has been a leading House conservative voice on Western issues for more than a decade. He has repeatedly called for fewer restrictions and more energy exploration on federal lands, questioned EPA's use of science in rulemaking, and criticized the Bureau of Land Management's oversight of energy leases. He's pressing the Trump administration as part of its push for more infrastructure projects to back building a new oil refinery in his remote southern New Mexico district, one of the nation's largest sources of crude oil. With the most national parks and monuments in his district of any Freedom Caucus member (seven in his district, including Carlsbad Caverns National Park and White Sands National Monument), Pearce wants more funds to resolve park service maintenance backlogs. A two-time failed Senate candidate, Pearce came to Congress after serving as a combat pilot in Vietnam and making millions by selling his oil field services business. He's eyeing a 2018 run for New Mexico governor.
Scott Perry
Third term, Pennsylvania 4th District
Committees: Transportation and Infrastructure, Homeland Security (Oversight and Management Efficiency Subcommittee chairman), Foreign Affairs
Perry, 54, has pushed for expanding hydropower by limiting EPA regulations. He recently suggested that under current EPA rules for limiting pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay, God would be a "violator." His south-central Pennsylvania district is home to a major hydro-production facility operated by Voith, a leading global hydropower firm. Perry founded a utility services contracting venture that faced charges from the Pennsylvania EPA of falsifying sewage monitoring reports. He denied those charges but did pay a $5,000 fine and eventually saw his record expunged. An Army officer who served in the Iraq War, Perry currently is a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania National Guard.
Bill Posey
Fifth term, Florida 8th District
Committees: Science, Space and Technology; Financial Services
Posey, 69, supports some environmental protections that favor his Atlantic coast district. He recently co-founded the bipartisan Congressional Estuary Caucus, which aims to protect wetlands like the 156-mile Indian River Lagoon in his district. Posey supports bipartisan efforts aimed at blocking drilling off the Florida coast and has opposed high-speed rail in his district over environmental concerns. On Financial Services, however, he has led opposition to requiring publicly traded companies to disclose business risks related to climate change. A quality control inspector for NASA rocket flights in the 1960s, Posey uses his Science Committee seat to back the mining of asteroids and champion space exploration, a priority for a district, which is home to Cape Canaveral.
Mark Sanford
Sixth term, South Carolina 1st District
Committees: Oversight and Government Reform, Transportation and Infrastructure, Budget
Sanford, 56, is the only member of the Freedom Caucus who is also in the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, a moderate group that aims to address global warning. He has the highest League of Conservation Voters score, 24 percent, of any Freedom Caucus member. He has opposed several Trump environmental rollbacks and criticized recent White House plans to consider expanded offshore drilling. His views reflect the concerns of his Low Country, coastal South Carolina district, which would be hard hit by any rise in sea level or environmental damage from energy exploration. Sanford served two terms as South Carolina governor, though his final years in office were marred by a messy sex scandal. He returned to the House, where he first served in the 1990s, after winning a special election in 2013.
David Schweikert
Fourth term, Arizona 6th District
Committee: Ways and Means
Schweikert, 55, is the only Freedom Caucus member to serve on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. He opposes a carbon tax as well as tax credits for renewable energy. A former chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment, he has led GOP efforts to target what Republicans see as EPA's use of "secret science" in writing regulations. He also has sponsored a bill to allow states to crowdsource air quality monitoring and a bill that would permit individuals to carry legal guns on Army Corps of Engineers lands. Schweikert grew up down the street from conservative icon Barry Goldwater in the suburban Phoenix district he now represents.
Randy Weber
Third term, Texas 14th District
Committees: Science, Space and Technology (Energy Subcommittee chairman); Transportation and Infrastructure
Weber, 63, is a fierce defender of the fossil fuel industry. He has used his subcommittee post to attack Energy Department loan guarantee programs for picking winners and losers and putting taxpayers at risk. He has backed bipartisan efforts to spur nuclear research at Department of Energy laboratories. Known for his sometimes over-the-top conservatism, Weber has called a carbon tax "blasphemy," accused EPA of trying to "kill" the nation's oil supply and asked a climate scientist at a House hearing where he could buy a "long coat" if global warming continued. Representing a Texas Gulf Coast district, where the Keystone XL pipeline ends, he has made its construction a priority. Weber owned a small air conditioning and heating contracting business before replacing another shoot-from-the-hip Republican, Ron Paul, in the House.
Ted Yoho
Third term, Florida 3rd District
Committees: Agriculture, Foreign Affairs (Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee chairman)
Yoho, 61, recently became the first Freedom Caucus member to join the House Republican Energy, Innovation and Environmental Working Group, which works on business-minded, "common sense" energy reforms. Like most Republicans, he has backed an "all of the above" energy strategy and opposes subsidies. He serves on the Agriculture Committee, where he has sought to look out for peanut farmers in his North Florida district. Despite briefly having received food stamps himself, he has backed cuts to the program. Yoho, a former large-animal veterinarian, had no legislative experience when he upset incumbent Rep. Cliff Stearns, then a senior Energy and Commerce member, in a Republican primary.
Twitter: @GeorgeCahlink Email: gcahlink@eenews.net
Keep reading...Show less
UK nuclear industry faces Brexit fall-out.
Leaving the EU treaty that prevents radioactive waste falling into the wrong hands could prove costly for the UK nuclear industry.
Battered sign on a truck carrying radioactive material. Image: Blake Burkhart via Flickr
Leaving the EU treaty that prevents radioactive waste falling into the wrong hands could prove costly for the UK nuclear industry.
LONDON, 17 May, 2017 – The UK’s vote to leave the European Union has put the country’s nuclear industry at risk because its trade in radioactive materials will be forbidden under international law.
In the worst case scenario, legal experts say, the lights could go out in the UK, but they think the more probable outcome is simply that the government will find itself with an expensive industrial problem and an embarrassing diplomatic mess.
The unintended consequence for the British nuclear industry of last year’s referendum vote to leave the EU is that the decision will also take the UK out of the Euratom treaty that protects the EU’s nuclear industry against radioactive material falling into the hands of rogue states or terrorist groups.
Nuclear power stations already provide about one-fifth of the UK’s electricity, and the government has ambitious plans to build at least 10 more reactors as part of its strategy to cut carbon emissions.
It has withdrawn subsidies from onshore wind and solar power, and underwritten new nuclear stations instead.
However, the industry relies on foreign companies − based both in the EU and outside − that provide parts, fuel and raw materials. When the UK leaves Euratom, this trade will be contrary to international law.
Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industries Association, which represents 260 companies, says: “There is scope for real and considerable disruption.”
Nuclear materials
The Euratom safeguards are applied by the European Commission to provide confidence that nuclear materials in the EU are not diverted from their declared end use, which is producing electricity from uranium and plutonium, and dealing with the waste that results.
This enables countries inside the EU to trade with other member states in construction and providing parts and staff for nuclear power stations. It also allows trade in such dangerous materials as plutonium, uranium and spent fuel, provided it is both safe and for peaceful purposes.
There is no precedent for a member state leaving the EU. But, in theory, when the UK does so − and therefore leaves Euratom − possibly as soon as two years from now, this trade must cease, otherwise member states will be breaking the terms of the treaty.
This would effectively paralyse not only the UK industry, which relies on international trade to survive, but also many of its trading partners in the EU, and also Japan, China and the US, all of which the UK has nuclear deals with that would need a new safeguard regime in place in order to continue.
Outside the EU, nuclear traffic is policed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has a safeguard regime similar to the EU’s and regulates international trade outside the EU.
“ The government has failed to consider
the potentially severe ramifications of its
Brexit objectives for the nuclear industry ”
Euratom and the IAEA work closely together, but the two organisations have different methods and different personnel, so switching from one safeguard regime to the other cannot be done overnight.
Since the UK’s nuclear industry is owned by the French energy company EDF, which in turn has the French government as its majority shareholder, this could lead to serious problems in nuclear supplies.
The UK government accepts that it must leave Euratom if it leaves the EU, but says “it will seek alternative arrangements”.
As yet, it has given no clue how this will be achieved, but since the UK is in the middle of a general election campaign it is unlikely there will be any way out of the problem soon.
A UK government spokeswoman said: “Leaving Euratom is a result of the decision to leave the EU as they are uniquely legally joined.”
She added: “The UK supports Euratom and will want to see continuity of co-operation and standards. We remain absolutely committed to the highest standards of nuclear safety, safeguards and support for the industry.”
Trade and research
However, the UK’s House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee report − issued just as parliament was dissolved for the election – says that any gap between the UK leaving Euratom and entering into secure alternative deals would “severely inhibit nuclear trade and research and threaten power supplies”.
Iain Wright, the committee’s chair, said: “The impact of Brexit on Euratom has not been thought through. The government has failed to consider the potentially severe ramifications of its Brexit objectives for the nuclear industry,
“Ministers must act as urgently as possible. The repercussions of failing to do so are huge. The continued operations of the UK nuclear industry are at risk.”
Rupert Cowen, a senior nuclear energy lawyer at Prospect Law, a firm that specialises in energy legislation, has told MPs that leaving the Euratom treaty, as the government has promised, could see trade in nuclear fuel grind to a halt.
He said: “Unlike other arrangements, if we don’t get this right, business stops. There will be no trade. If we can’t arrive at safeguards and other principles that allow compliance [with international nuclear standards] to be demonstrated, no nuclear trade will be able to continue.”
Dame Sue Ion, chair of the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board, which was established by the UK government in 2013, said a whole lot of new international agreements would have to be in place before anything in the nuclear sector could be transferred between countries.
“We would be crippled without other agreements in place,” she said. – Climate News Network
Keep reading...Show less
ORIGINAL REPORTING
MOST POPULAR
CLIMATE
