The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan that triggered widespread fears over nuclear security have thrust an unfamiliar face into the national spotlight: Gregory Jaczko, head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

And the chairman will only grow in prominence as he leads a nationwide security check on the country's 104 nuclear reactors at the behest of President Obama.

Before the Japanese crisis, Jaczko had been unknown to most of the American public -- and his name had been unfamiliar even in Washington circles. At an energy event in the capital last month, he was introduced as the government official with the most mispronounced name. And the chairman himself has joked about the trend, telling the Regulatory Information Conference shortly after he joined the commission in 2005 that he had an important issue to address: "For the record, it is pronounced 'Yatsko.'"

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko. Photo courtesy NRC.

Recent weeks have changed all that, with the Obama administration relying on the chairman to take a lead role in calming a jittery public and addressing the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

Obama appointed Jaczko in May 2009 to be NRC chairman for a four-year term. While he holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Jaczko has not worked as a nuclear engineer or industry official but spent years as a staffer on Capitol Hill -- leading some to question whether his political background has influenced his decisions as chairman.

Jaczko gained a foothold into the regulatory scene after working for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Energy Department employee.

Alvarez said the nuclear industry has to give a "thumbs up or a thumbs down" to members of NRC, and Jaczko had the extra boost of having served as a staffer for Reid.

Jaczko served as Reid's science policy adviser from 2001 to 2005, focusing on science, energy, technology and the use of Yucca Mountain as a permanent nuclear waste repository, according to the senator's office.

A native of Pennsylvania who grew up near Albany, N.Y., Jaczko also worked as a congressional science fellow in the office of Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University teaching science and policy.

The Nuclear Energy Institute applauded Obama's appointment of Jaczko in 2009, and the industry group says it looks forward to continue working with the chairman.

"The NRC has always been respected globally as a competent and effective regulator," Marvin Fertel, the group's president and CEO, said in an e-mail. "With the focus on the accident in Japan and concern about safety, leadership from the five commissioners and clear communication by the chairman is essential to demonstrate their credibility and provide confidence to the public and policymakers."

But lawmakers have questioned the chairman's political past in current decisionmaking, namely in controversial decisions surrounding the development of Yucca Mountain as a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada.

Jaczko's former boss, Reid, has been a vocal opponent of the federal government developing the site to serve as a repository, pointing to the project's "partial designs and countless safety and environmental issues unresolved," according to the senator's website.

The Energy Department moved last year to abandon its request to develop the site and pull its application that was submitted to NRC. After a panel within NRC ruled the department cannot abandon the project, the decision is once again before Jaczko and the other four commissioners for a final vote (Greenwire, March 22).

In the meantime, Jaczko used his position as chairman to halt the commission's safety review of the site, prompting many Republicans to questioned his legal authority to do so -- most recently, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) at a congressional hearing last week (E&E Daily, March 18).

In the minority?

At NRC, Jaczko has often focused on safety issues and open communication with the public. David Lochbaum, director of nuclear safety projects for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the chairman has always tried to form a consensus and even successfully pushed for new reactor designs to be able to withstand an aircraft crash.

But Jaczko has oftentimes been on the minority voting side of the five-member NRC, Lochbaum said, joining the "short side" of many 4-1 and 3-2 votes.

"He votes for improved safety and restored safety, but all too often gets out-voted," Lochbaum said in an email, noting that he has known the chairman since he was a science fellow working for Markey. Lochbaum believes the chairman is not "seeking to inflate his ego or status or trying to leave behind some legacy that will cause people to erect statues in his honor."

Diane Curran, a partner with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Harmon Curran Spielberg & Eisenberg LLP, echoed those sentiments. Curran represented a California group that challenged an environmental assessment of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s application for a spent fuel storage facility at the Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo, Calif.

The commission voted 3-2 to deny the group's request for a more extensive environmental review of the project, with Jaczko dissenting. He said the agency should have given the request more consideration, including providing the group with an opportunity to review classified decision documents in a closed hearing. A federal appeals court dismissed the group's challenge in February.

"It was his dissent that gave us heart to pursue that claim in court," Curran said. "We are disappointed that the court did not rule for us because we fear the NRC's unusually high level of secrecy is hiding a lack of regulatory resolve and capitulation to the industry."

Alvarez said major changes are needed to increase the oversight of U.S. nuclear reactors. NRC, he said, has taken a softer stance on regulating plants in recent years, after cracking down in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown in Pennsylvania.

"Congress is going to have to re-establish its oversight capability, which disappeared about 15 years ago," Alvarez told reporters last week during a briefing on the nuclear crisis in Japan.

"I think that what this accident also, in my mind raises, is the need for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to establish a much greater arms-length relationship with the licensees to sort of move back towards the era of the post-TMI reforms and to greatly reduce its dependence on industry's self-reporting of problems," he said.

The question Jaczko and his staff now must answer is whether U.S. reactors are sufficiently prepared to handle a "one-two" punch like the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in northern Japan.

Federal officials say radioactive material emitted from the complex poses no danger to U.S. shores and insist the American fleet of reactors has been sufficiently tested and analyzed for natural disasters, including tornadoes, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes.

But images of explosions, rising smoke and fears over radiation from Japanese reactors have piqued concern over what U.S. reactors can withstand, the amount of backup power the facilities have and how nuclear waste is stored in the absence of a national permanent nuclear waste repository. And Jaczko will play a major role in shaping the industry's future as it works to answer those questions.

Click here for a May 2010 E&ETV interview with Jaczko regarding nuclear facility safety.