For the past three months, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board has been operating under a cloud, its future seemingly uncertain.
The confusion started Jan. 21, when nine board members received an email from the White House presidential personnel office informing them they were to resign by Jan. 23 or their position would be terminated.
The only board member spared was the chair, Peter Swift, a former senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories. Swift maintains that the White House’s move to remove board members was part of a broader White House effort to downsize the government, not a sign of apathy toward nuclear waste.
The nonpartisan board was established in the late 1980s to provide independent scientific advice and oversight of the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste management. Over the past decade, the government shifted from planning for a permanent depository for spent fuel and radioactive waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain to a policy reversal that relies on on-site waste storage for the foreseeable future.
