NRC's rogue behavior called out by ProPublica

NRC Office of Public Affairs director Eliot BrennerProPublica editor Stephen Engelberg, in an "Editor's Note on Our Investigation Into Fire Risks at Nuclear Power Plants," wrote the following:

"...Last September, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Eliot Brenner sent an email in response to our written questions. It said the 'fire safety program leadership' had asked him 'to relay their conviction that the time devoted to ProPublica's two years of questions has taken staff away from performing mission critical safety activities on behalf of the public.'

In my more than three decades of covering the federal government, I have never seen such a response to legitimate questions about a crucial issue."

Eliot Brenner, before joining NRC as its director of the Office of Public Affairs, was Vice President Dick Cheney's communications director. Of course, Cheney's office led the "Energy Task Force Report" that promoted a "nuclear power renaissance" -- at taxpayer financial risk -- in May, 2001.

Mr. Engelberg, and ProPublica's investigative journalist John Sullivan, were facing what Beyond Nuclear and concerned citizen groups at the grassroots level have experienced for decades -- the rogue behavior and obscurity of the NRC, which is supposedly mandated to protect public health, safety, security, the environment, and the common defense from the radiological and other risks of the nuclear power industry. More often than not, however, NRC does the bidding of the very companies it is supposed to regulate. Corporate profits and construction schedules seem to top NRC's priority list. NRC's lack of transparency has persisted, despite President Barack Obama's call for full transparency and accountability within his administration on his very first day in office. However, NRC is wont to remind critics that it is an "independent agency." Apparently, this includes independence from President Obama's commitment to transparency.

Mr. Engelberg concluded his "Editor's Note" by encouraging "elected officials, and political leaders of the Obama administration to read our story and Ms. Shanahan's [a companion piece in the Center for Public Integrity's iwatch news] to judge whether the NRC is adequately addressing fire safety."