Thomas Gardiner
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wy.) had some tough questions for Jeff Baran during his confirmation hearing Wednesday for reappointment to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, drawing particular attention to the nominee’s position on the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
Barrasso’s panel is the gatekeeper for Baran’s nomination for a second term on the commission that would stretch to June 30, 2023. The lawmaker, though, made clear he is not pleased with Senate Democrats’ push for Baran’s nomination to proceed in step with those of two Trump administration nominees to fill vacant NRC positions with terms that would end years earlier.
“Let me be clear, Mr. Baran’s nomination is a big ask,” Barrasso said in his opening statement at the hearing. “In December 2014, the last time the Senate confirmed Mr. Baran, only one Republican voted in favor of his confirmation,” he added. “Since then, Commissioner Baran has given me little reason to reconsider my vote.”
In questioning, Barrasso called on Baran to explain his dissenting vote in the commission’s decision to take further steps, and spend more money, in the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada. In June, Baran was the lone opponent among the three sitting commissioners to plans to spend $110,000 of the NRC’s remaining Nuclear Waste Fund balance on “information-gathering activities” ahead of the potential resumption of adjudication of the Energy Department’s license application for the underground storage facility for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear reactor fuel.
Barrasso noted the 2013 federal court ruling that directed the NRC to resume the Yucca licensing process after the Obama administration had cut off funding for the project. The Trump administration has reversed that decision, seeking $150 million in fiscal 2018 for licensing work at the NRC and Department of Energy – but Congress has yet to approve the request.
“The NRC voted to spend funds on activities related to the licensing of Yucca Mountain. You were the lone person to dissent. I just find your rationale troubling,” Barrasso said. “The court has ordered the NRC to resume the licensing process. Why are you using a discredited rationale and uncertainty about appropriation as an excuse not to follow the law?”
Baran said the NRC currently has only $600,000 to $700,000 remaining of the over $13 million that was available from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the time of the ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The remaining funding has been spent on projects including a safety evaluation report on Yucca Mountain and completing a supplement to the site environmental impact statement.
“Does it make sense in [fiscal 2017] to use those remaining funds to move toward adjudication? My view is that it didn’t make sense to expend what little we have left until we knew whether or not Congress was going to appropriate funds for adjudication in [fiscal 2018],” Baran said.
The chairman did not appear convinced: “I find it disturbing that perhaps your opposition to Yucca Mountain is so strong that you wouldn’t even follow the legal court order.”
Barrasso also took Baran to task for his position on licensing of nuclear power plants, but the majority of the nearly three-hour hearing was focused on Republicans support for and Democrats opposition to three nominees for assistant administrator positions at the Environmental Protection Agency who also appeared before the committee.
There was no word on when the panel might vote on Baran’s nomination; members are first being given an opportunity to submit additional questions in writing to all four would-be appointees who testified Wednesday.
After the hearing, Barrasso told Politico that Democrats would need to deliver “a fairly significant, robust [nomination] package for me to agree to allow him through.”
The White House last spring submitted three nominations for the commission: current Chairman Kristine Svinicki, for a third term to June 30, 2022; Annie Caputo, a senior adviser for Barrasso, to fill a vacant spot through June 30, 2021; and David Wright, an energy consultant and former head of the South Carolina Public Service Commission, for a vacant spot through June 30, 2020. Svinicki sailed through the nomination process, and Wright and Caputo got the thumbs-up from the EPW Committee in July. But they have advanced no further, and panel Ranking Member Tom Carper (D-Del.) has made it clear he wanted a Democrat to be nominated alongside the Republicans.
That was Baran, a lawyer and longtime Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill. The White House submitted his nomination in September.
“Mr. Baran has been nominated for a term that is effectively three years longer than the term for which Mr. Wright has been nominated, and two years longer than the term for which Mrs. Caputo has been nominated,” Barrasso said. “If Mr. Baran is confirmed, his term would outlast those of all Republican nominees to the NRC.”
