Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
7/18/2014
NRC Commissioner William Magwood will not resign or retroactively recuse himself from decisions from the past year, the Commissioner said in a letter this week to a coalition of 34 environmental activist organizations calling for his removal for accepting a position with the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency while still serving as Commissioner. Magwood announced he would be leaving the Commission sometime this summer to take over as Director General for the NEA, a move that the environmental groups saw as “fatally compromising” to his role as an independent regulator of public health and safety. Magwood argued in his letter, however, that the NEA is dedicated to the sharing of ideas between nations, not a platform to sell nuclear. “The policy and technical decisions in which I have participated in the last few months—and in which I intend to participate fully through the end of my service as a Commissioner—have had and will have no impact on the NEA’s financial health or even its future research or policy activities,” Magwood said. “Similarly, future activities by the NEA will only affect future NRC licensing and safety activities if the NRC decides to adopt future NEA policy recommendations. Such a decision would be based on the NRC’s usual regulatory procedures, including any necessary public input and interaction.”
Diane Curran, lead attorney for the environmental groups, said that Magwood’s argument actually helped their case. “Nothing he says in his response makes us think that we were incorrect,” Curran told RW Monitor this week. “As a matter of fact, we think his response confirms that he has inappropriately mixed-up his regulatory and promotional duties that he has with NRC and NEA. This is what the Energy Reorganization Act was all about, that you can’t wear both hats at the same time, and he thinks that because the NEA responsibilities include safety considerations that it is fine for him to have applied and taken this job that also includes promotion. He really exemplifies the problem that the Energy Reorganization Act was designed to eliminate.” It is not clear yet if the group will seek additional recourse, Curran said.
The groups have accused Magwood of creating a conflict-of-interest by accepting the new position. By accepting the new position while at the NRC, the groups have claimed that Magwood ruined his credibility to effectively regulate for public health and safety, and therefore, the group called for his retroactive recusal to previous votes. Although there were not any close votes in the past year that would change with Magwood’s recusal, the group still wants to set a precedent that this type of behavior in office is unacceptable, Curran said. “At some point, the Agency needs to recognize this is a problem and start dealing with it by setting up procedures to ensure that this kind of problem is acknowledged and addressed,” Curran said. “I don’t think the way to do that is by saying, ‘Well, it would not have made a difference anyway.’ There needs to be a procedure where, when this type of violation occurs, the Agency takes procedural steps to acknowledge this has tainted the decision-making process and it needs to be dealt with.”
