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Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator
A shocking exposé from the most powerful insider in nuclear regulation about how the nuclear energy industry endangers our lives—and why Congress does nothing to stop it.
Gregory Jaczko had never heard of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when he arrived in Washington like a modern-day Mr. Smith. But, thanks to the determination of a powerful senator, he would soon find himself at the agency’s helm. A Birkenstocks-wearing physics PhD, Jaczko was unlike any chairman the agency had ever he was driven by a passion for technology and a concern for public safety, with no ties to the industry and no agenda other than to ensure that his agency made the world a safer place.
And so Jaczko witnessed what outsiders like him were never meant to see—an agency overpowered by the industry it was meant to regulate and a political system determined to keep it that way. After an emergency trip to Japan to help oversee the frantic response to the horrifying nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011, and witnessing the American nuclear industry’s refusal to make the changes he considered necessary to prevent an equally catastrophic event from occurring here, Jaczko started saying aloud what no one else had dared.
Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator is a wake-up call to the dangers of lobbying, the importance of governmental regulation, and the failures of congressional oversight. But it is also a classic tale of an idealist on a mission whose misadventures in Washington are astounding, absurd, and sometimes even funny—and Jaczko tells the story with humor, self-deprecation, and, yes, occasional bursts of outrage. Above all, Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator is a tale of confronting the truth about one of the most pressing public safety and environmental issues of our nuclear power will never be safe .
Gregory Jaczko had never heard of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when he arrived in Washington like a modern-day Mr. Smith. But, thanks to the determination of a powerful senator, he would soon find himself at the agency’s helm. A Birkenstocks-wearing physics PhD, Jaczko was unlike any chairman the agency had ever he was driven by a passion for technology and a concern for public safety, with no ties to the industry and no agenda other than to ensure that his agency made the world a safer place.
And so Jaczko witnessed what outsiders like him were never meant to see—an agency overpowered by the industry it was meant to regulate and a political system determined to keep it that way. After an emergency trip to Japan to help oversee the frantic response to the horrifying nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011, and witnessing the American nuclear industry’s refusal to make the changes he considered necessary to prevent an equally catastrophic event from occurring here, Jaczko started saying aloud what no one else had dared.
Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator is a wake-up call to the dangers of lobbying, the importance of governmental regulation, and the failures of congressional oversight. But it is also a classic tale of an idealist on a mission whose misadventures in Washington are astounding, absurd, and sometimes even funny—and Jaczko tells the story with humor, self-deprecation, and, yes, occasional bursts of outrage. Above all, Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator is a tale of confronting the truth about one of the most pressing public safety and environmental issues of our nuclear power will never be safe .
208 pages, Hardcover
Published January 15, 2019
22 people are currently reading
232 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
February 2, 2020
So, Jaczko definitely makes several valid points within this book regarding the unattractive economics of modern nuclear power. However, I think Jaczko has an unjustified opposition to the technology which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy due to his position of power in regulating nuclear. I was hoping to hear some shockingly evil stories about the industry that only Jaczko could deliver a la Rachel Maddow's scathing criticism of the fossil fuel industry in "Blowout", but found no such evidence. Jaczko's declared purpose of this book was to illustrate the NRC as a "captured regulator run by the industry". However, after reading this book, I am thoroughly unconvinced by this claim.
The line of reasoning is essentially as follows:
1) nuclear accidents have happened, but the worst, Chernobyl, is a design quite different from that used outside of Russia, so don't worry about what's outside of Russia going kaboom.
2) Three Mile Island experienced a core melting occurrence at one point, and some people were advised to leave their homes because the severity of the accident was hard to assess, and there was a lot of confusion and poor communication going on between the plant operator and the regulator. End of the day, nobody got hurt. Although the plant owner took a big hit financially.
3) Fukushima happened, and it was really scary, because it could have been bad if the hypothetical calculations that Jaczko's NRC did (which assumed that the reactor core were somehow vaporized AFTER being shut down), but of course, the radiological release was much lower than expected, and many people were unnecessarily evacuated as a precaution. I think the decision to push for a large evacuation was a reasonable precautionary measure.
4) We can't get Yucca Mountain built, but the rigorous reasons for this are not given (and are largely politically-driven, if you look into it), therefore we cannot operator nuclear power due to its waste "problem". Keep in mind that Jaczko was appointed by Harry Reid, a senator who fought desperately to keep Yucca Mountain out of his state.
Jaczko claims that the sum of these events disquality nuclear power as a viable energy source. In doing so, he commits perhaps the most unjustified non-sequitur I've ever seen in his opposition to new nuclear plants. There were two new nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina being built during the end of the book, and Jaczko encouraged his colleagues to vote against their licensure because the plant designs supposedly "failed to address Fukushima-like accident conditions".
Here, I call complete bullhonky. The AP1000 plants which are proposed for those sites have been SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to cope with the accident Jaczko claims is his reason for advocating against their licensure. Please see this document from Westinghouse, which details this reactor's ability to cope with loss of offsite power.
https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/P...
Lastly, I would like to add that through the course of events which Jaczko has listed as his reasoning for advocating against nuclear power (with the exception of Chernobyl), no person was physically harmed as a result of a nuclear-related incident. In contrast, around 100 oil well workers die each year on the job, but you don't see Jaczko advocating against that, do you? Why? I am genuinely confused.
End of the day, Jaczko calls his book an "expose", but in reality just shares a list of publicly available information that anyone could find in a google search, and spices things up with his hot takes. The flawed line of reasoning here reveals that Jaczko is not an energy visionary but instead a well-played pawn by the notoriously anti-nuclear senator Harry Reid. Rather than a "captured regulating agency", I see a captured bureaucrat carrying out the whims of Reid.
** As a bias disclaimer, I am a grad student in nuclear engineering. That's something that Jaczko never got an education in, by the way.
PS: one thing I did like was calling nuclear fission products "poison nuggets". I may use that phrase in the future.
The line of reasoning is essentially as follows:
1) nuclear accidents have happened, but the worst, Chernobyl, is a design quite different from that used outside of Russia, so don't worry about what's outside of Russia going kaboom.
2) Three Mile Island experienced a core melting occurrence at one point, and some people were advised to leave their homes because the severity of the accident was hard to assess, and there was a lot of confusion and poor communication going on between the plant operator and the regulator. End of the day, nobody got hurt. Although the plant owner took a big hit financially.
3) Fukushima happened, and it was really scary, because it could have been bad if the hypothetical calculations that Jaczko's NRC did (which assumed that the reactor core were somehow vaporized AFTER being shut down), but of course, the radiological release was much lower than expected, and many people were unnecessarily evacuated as a precaution. I think the decision to push for a large evacuation was a reasonable precautionary measure.
4) We can't get Yucca Mountain built, but the rigorous reasons for this are not given (and are largely politically-driven, if you look into it), therefore we cannot operator nuclear power due to its waste "problem". Keep in mind that Jaczko was appointed by Harry Reid, a senator who fought desperately to keep Yucca Mountain out of his state.
Jaczko claims that the sum of these events disquality nuclear power as a viable energy source. In doing so, he commits perhaps the most unjustified non-sequitur I've ever seen in his opposition to new nuclear plants. There were two new nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina being built during the end of the book, and Jaczko encouraged his colleagues to vote against their licensure because the plant designs supposedly "failed to address Fukushima-like accident conditions".
Here, I call complete bullhonky. The AP1000 plants which are proposed for those sites have been SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to cope with the accident Jaczko claims is his reason for advocating against their licensure. Please see this document from Westinghouse, which details this reactor's ability to cope with loss of offsite power.
https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/P...
Lastly, I would like to add that through the course of events which Jaczko has listed as his reasoning for advocating against nuclear power (with the exception of Chernobyl), no person was physically harmed as a result of a nuclear-related incident. In contrast, around 100 oil well workers die each year on the job, but you don't see Jaczko advocating against that, do you? Why? I am genuinely confused.
End of the day, Jaczko calls his book an "expose", but in reality just shares a list of publicly available information that anyone could find in a google search, and spices things up with his hot takes. The flawed line of reasoning here reveals that Jaczko is not an energy visionary but instead a well-played pawn by the notoriously anti-nuclear senator Harry Reid. Rather than a "captured regulating agency", I see a captured bureaucrat carrying out the whims of Reid.
** As a bias disclaimer, I am a grad student in nuclear engineering. That's something that Jaczko never got an education in, by the way.
PS: one thing I did like was calling nuclear fission products "poison nuggets". I may use that phrase in the future.
January 23, 2019
I wish this book were longer!
Nuclear energy has, in my opinion, gotten the status of "sustainable, environmentally friendly" option for our increasingly power-thirsty society. But account after account points to the unbearable fact that our safety is so often overlooked because the nuclear energy lobby is just too powerful. Perhaps nuclear energy would be a good solution if (and this is a big IF) regulators were able to regulate the companies, enforcing safety standards and protocols. But instead, as with many other industries, the bottom line is king, and so public safety is not their number one priority. For this and many other reasons, I wholeheartedly agree with Jaczko that we should follow in Germany's and Japan's footsteps and once and for all shut down our nuclear reactors, transition to solar/wind forms of renewable energy and avoid the Chernobyls and Fukushimas that will inevitably happen again. The risk is too high, the benefits too low, and in the end the industry tycoons reap the benefits while the rest of us are left at the mercy of inadequate industry leaders who would quite literally risk annihilating us all for the sake of profit.
I'd recommend this short book to everyone.
Nuclear energy has, in my opinion, gotten the status of "sustainable, environmentally friendly" option for our increasingly power-thirsty society. But account after account points to the unbearable fact that our safety is so often overlooked because the nuclear energy lobby is just too powerful. Perhaps nuclear energy would be a good solution if (and this is a big IF) regulators were able to regulate the companies, enforcing safety standards and protocols. But instead, as with many other industries, the bottom line is king, and so public safety is not their number one priority. For this and many other reasons, I wholeheartedly agree with Jaczko that we should follow in Germany's and Japan's footsteps and once and for all shut down our nuclear reactors, transition to solar/wind forms of renewable energy and avoid the Chernobyls and Fukushimas that will inevitably happen again. The risk is too high, the benefits too low, and in the end the industry tycoons reap the benefits while the rest of us are left at the mercy of inadequate industry leaders who would quite literally risk annihilating us all for the sake of profit.
I'd recommend this short book to everyone.
March 8, 2019
Well that was terrifying.
July 30, 2025
Dr. Jaczko (PHD) is interesting. I Didn’t expect the book to be so centrally focused on the bureaucracy around the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) (Calc is short for calculator). I think Jaczko is definitely on the extreme end of regulators with his opinions. His most convincing anti nuclear argument is the cost scale and centralization needed while other “clean” alternatives often head in the opposite direction. Felt a little bit like this book exists to air out his dirty laundry between him and his fellow commissioners.
2.67/5
2.67/5
February 18, 2019
Interesting viewpoint into the world of nuclear energy.
February 10, 2025
There is a term called “inattentional blindness” which describes the saturation of human perceptional capabilities and the resulting inability to discern some visual stimuli. It was made famous by a study which found that a large fraction of participants did not notice a person in a gorilla costume walking slowly through an otherwise normal (but busy) scene. This book is a case study in inattentional blindness; as the reader focuses on the narrative, the gorilla of what is left unsaid may be difficult for many to perceive simultaneously.
In essence, the book is a cautionary tale about — and a condemnation of — regulatory capture. This is a perfectly valid stance to take, which I doubt many reasonable people would argue against if they believe regulation should exist in the first place. It is realistic to suppose that industry players in general will work to advance their interests, with broader societal interests secondary to profit-making (although in the case of nuclear power specifically it may be somewhat tempered by the fear that their entire industry may collapse after a single bad accident, as in Japan after Fukushima). However, a similar possibility which the author does not consider is regulatory capture by congressional actors. The general disposition of the author is that those who don’t agree with his regulatory preferences are industry shills, but he doesn’t seem to be capable of accepting that he may at times effectively be a congressional shill (e.g. in his opposition to Yucca Mountain which seems to be why Harry Reid pushed for him to be appointed as an NRC commissioner in the first place).
As the narrative unfolds, readers may be persuaded, by crisp and vivid examples of scary almost-accidents, to the author’s position that nuclear power is too dangerous for use. This is an extreme argument which typically stems from a lack of understanding of the science of nuclear power. This clearly isn’t the problem for Jaczko, a former physicist, who clearly has a grasp of the science. Instead, it’s a problem of mindset. Somehow for him when failures are scarce it is evidence that more failure is lurking in the future, not that nuclear science, engineering, operation, and regulation has progressed and used previous failures to become more sophisticated and safer. This is a fearful, anti-technological mindset which applied to a somewhat similar industry of aviation would have humans abandon air travel altogether because there is a small chance that a plane can be flung into a skyscraper. This more inert/static safety paradigm may be comforting but completely stops modern life and technological progress in its tracks. By accepting that a dynamic equilibrium comes with risk, and balancing the system with regulation as appropriate, humans have achieved the remarkable progress of the past 100 years.
Another example of this absolutist thinking, by which either something is perfectly safe or an unacceptable risk, is in the discussion of nuclear waste. Jaczko states in black and white that “we must stop generating nuclear waste, and that means we must stop using nuclear power.” This is in reference to the lack of a deep geological repository in the US, which is a bit rich coming from someone handpicked for the job by the biggest opponent of the Yucca Mountain project. It is also in spite of a statement a paragraph prior, that “the short-term solution—leaving it where it is—can certainly be accomplished with minimal hazard to the public.” Nominally, Jaczko is concerned with the safety of generations tens of thousands of years hence. But no allowance is given for future improvements in the cost-effectiveness of currently available waste recycling technology; for the fact that the isotopes with the longest half-lives are precisely the ones which are typically the least active (read: dangerous), so that the risk to these far-flung generations is minimal; or for the possibility of another site replacing Yucca Mountain (e.g. one in a similar location to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, which already stores radioactive waste from nuclear weapons).
This lack of generosity for the future of nuclear power is made all the more frustrating when it is contrasted with an overly rosy outlook for solar power: “Instead of screwing solar panels on top of existing roofs, homes will eventually be built with solar roofing material, as well as solar siding… There will also be a place for larger renewable facilities, and I believe that in forty years we will have figured out how to fix the problems these pose today.” This is just wishful thinking — in the first part, neglecting both the consideration that homes at large latitudes will always have lower solar irradiance, and therefore less cost benefit from this roofing and siding idea, as well as the difficulties in construction using such a brittle material; in the second part, waving a magic wand over e.g. the physics that dictates that nuclear power has an inherently higher energy density than solar and wind (currently requiring 8.5 million solar panels to produce the energy that an average nuclear plant does, and using 100 times the amount of land per terawatt-hour in the process, not even including battery storage requirements).
In addition to wild speculation, the author is just incorrect about the financial aspect (which is not surprising since this is not his expertise). He claims “Advances in technology and manufacturing have made other types of clean electricity feasible and much less costly.” (referring here, I assume, to wind and solar). When considering the levelized full system cost of electricity (LFSCOE) which includes the cost of energy storage for intermittent sources, Bank of America found in a 2023 study that in an example state of Texas (with good conditions for solar!), the costs for nuclear vs. wind and solar combined were 96 and 97 USD$/MWh, respectively. This is in a generous scenario in which 5% of the electricity was allowed to come from an alternative source when solar and wind are not available. When 100% solar and wind are required, the cost jumps to 225 USD$/MWh, while for nuclear it is almost half that at 122 USD$/MWh. [In Germany, where solar power is less effective, they find this scenario to favor nuclear by a factor of more than 4 to 1]. To perform a calculation like this, many assumptions have to be made, so other sources can and do find different values, but often when nuclear seems more expensive (e.g. in a typical levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) calculation), it is because battery storage isn’t factored into the cost of intermittent sources.
Inaccurate and unfair claims start to crack the veneer of the author as a competent, science-minded rationalist. In reality, he is reactive and his arguments stem from a place of emotion, especially fear. In response to flooding at a nuclear power plant which did not cause an accident, he writes: “At Cooper everyone came across as sincere, direct, and committed to a well-planned response to whatever flooding might come. But I couldn’t help but believe that underneath all that at least a few of them were thinking, “This is overkill. Our site is never going to flood.” They may have been right on that day, but there is always the potential for *something* to trigger a catastrophe.” Again, he had no evidence the operators were not concerned with keeping the reactor and the public safe, but what he felt was paranoia that it was the case, and anxiety that the worst would happen then or in a similar situation in the future. He ends the book with the profoundly irrational (and unclear) statement: “Probability cannot deceive us into believing that the hazards of nuclear power are small or insignificant” and finally, “Almost a decade after leaving the industry, I am still haunted by two images. The first is all that water flowing downstream from a massive snowmelt, flooding the Missouri, fanning out sideways to turn the surrounding farmland on both sides of the river into an inland sea, and squeezing the nuclear plant at Fort Calhoun. The second image is the idle plants at Fukushima, including the one whose reactors are now a ruin of steel rods, the radioactive poison buried deep inside the site still beyond the control of the engineers…”
Lastly I want to briefly turn to the unmentioned gorilla, which is climate change (I counted a single use of the phrase). Jaczko puts forth a half-baked and extreme call for us to “suspend nuclear projects until we know what to do with the waste they create” for example. And his stance (“No other industry is able to complain so loudly that someone else has failed to take care of its waste.”) overlooks the fact that a benefit of nuclear power is that we have all of its waste in neat little pools and containers, unlike fossil fuels (fly ash in the air), solar (all of the trace minerals and heavy metals from panels thrown in the landfill), and wind (the enormous fiberglass turbines). If we were to follow the author’s directive to abandon nuclear power completely, many would die from coal and gas filling the huge hole in the electricity mix that solar and wind are not capable of filling and contributing directly (via air quality) and indirectly (via climate change) to many millions of deaths. Meanwhile, nuclear power has contributed to probably somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 deaths in its entire history, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima (even including deaths from suicide from the probably-over-extensive evacuation of the latter) and saved millions of lives from its positive impact on air quality and climate change. Speaking of Fukushima, the cost of cleanup and internal refugee compensation will be something on the order of $100 billion, which sounds immense until you compare it to an estimate for the predicted yearly global cost of climate change by 2049 of $38 trillion. Sure, in the future we will hopefully have advanced fission reactors and finally fusion reactors, which will definitely be safer, but until then nuclear power is a priceless (and safe, with death rates per terawatt-hour on par with wind and solar) weapon in the war against climate change. In the meantime, overregulation, and handwringing about much less emergent and dangerous concerns, will doom us all.
In essence, the book is a cautionary tale about — and a condemnation of — regulatory capture. This is a perfectly valid stance to take, which I doubt many reasonable people would argue against if they believe regulation should exist in the first place. It is realistic to suppose that industry players in general will work to advance their interests, with broader societal interests secondary to profit-making (although in the case of nuclear power specifically it may be somewhat tempered by the fear that their entire industry may collapse after a single bad accident, as in Japan after Fukushima). However, a similar possibility which the author does not consider is regulatory capture by congressional actors. The general disposition of the author is that those who don’t agree with his regulatory preferences are industry shills, but he doesn’t seem to be capable of accepting that he may at times effectively be a congressional shill (e.g. in his opposition to Yucca Mountain which seems to be why Harry Reid pushed for him to be appointed as an NRC commissioner in the first place).
As the narrative unfolds, readers may be persuaded, by crisp and vivid examples of scary almost-accidents, to the author’s position that nuclear power is too dangerous for use. This is an extreme argument which typically stems from a lack of understanding of the science of nuclear power. This clearly isn’t the problem for Jaczko, a former physicist, who clearly has a grasp of the science. Instead, it’s a problem of mindset. Somehow for him when failures are scarce it is evidence that more failure is lurking in the future, not that nuclear science, engineering, operation, and regulation has progressed and used previous failures to become more sophisticated and safer. This is a fearful, anti-technological mindset which applied to a somewhat similar industry of aviation would have humans abandon air travel altogether because there is a small chance that a plane can be flung into a skyscraper. This more inert/static safety paradigm may be comforting but completely stops modern life and technological progress in its tracks. By accepting that a dynamic equilibrium comes with risk, and balancing the system with regulation as appropriate, humans have achieved the remarkable progress of the past 100 years.
Another example of this absolutist thinking, by which either something is perfectly safe or an unacceptable risk, is in the discussion of nuclear waste. Jaczko states in black and white that “we must stop generating nuclear waste, and that means we must stop using nuclear power.” This is in reference to the lack of a deep geological repository in the US, which is a bit rich coming from someone handpicked for the job by the biggest opponent of the Yucca Mountain project. It is also in spite of a statement a paragraph prior, that “the short-term solution—leaving it where it is—can certainly be accomplished with minimal hazard to the public.” Nominally, Jaczko is concerned with the safety of generations tens of thousands of years hence. But no allowance is given for future improvements in the cost-effectiveness of currently available waste recycling technology; for the fact that the isotopes with the longest half-lives are precisely the ones which are typically the least active (read: dangerous), so that the risk to these far-flung generations is minimal; or for the possibility of another site replacing Yucca Mountain (e.g. one in a similar location to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, which already stores radioactive waste from nuclear weapons).
This lack of generosity for the future of nuclear power is made all the more frustrating when it is contrasted with an overly rosy outlook for solar power: “Instead of screwing solar panels on top of existing roofs, homes will eventually be built with solar roofing material, as well as solar siding… There will also be a place for larger renewable facilities, and I believe that in forty years we will have figured out how to fix the problems these pose today.” This is just wishful thinking — in the first part, neglecting both the consideration that homes at large latitudes will always have lower solar irradiance, and therefore less cost benefit from this roofing and siding idea, as well as the difficulties in construction using such a brittle material; in the second part, waving a magic wand over e.g. the physics that dictates that nuclear power has an inherently higher energy density than solar and wind (currently requiring 8.5 million solar panels to produce the energy that an average nuclear plant does, and using 100 times the amount of land per terawatt-hour in the process, not even including battery storage requirements).
In addition to wild speculation, the author is just incorrect about the financial aspect (which is not surprising since this is not his expertise). He claims “Advances in technology and manufacturing have made other types of clean electricity feasible and much less costly.” (referring here, I assume, to wind and solar). When considering the levelized full system cost of electricity (LFSCOE) which includes the cost of energy storage for intermittent sources, Bank of America found in a 2023 study that in an example state of Texas (with good conditions for solar!), the costs for nuclear vs. wind and solar combined were 96 and 97 USD$/MWh, respectively. This is in a generous scenario in which 5% of the electricity was allowed to come from an alternative source when solar and wind are not available. When 100% solar and wind are required, the cost jumps to 225 USD$/MWh, while for nuclear it is almost half that at 122 USD$/MWh. [In Germany, where solar power is less effective, they find this scenario to favor nuclear by a factor of more than 4 to 1]. To perform a calculation like this, many assumptions have to be made, so other sources can and do find different values, but often when nuclear seems more expensive (e.g. in a typical levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) calculation), it is because battery storage isn’t factored into the cost of intermittent sources.
Inaccurate and unfair claims start to crack the veneer of the author as a competent, science-minded rationalist. In reality, he is reactive and his arguments stem from a place of emotion, especially fear. In response to flooding at a nuclear power plant which did not cause an accident, he writes: “At Cooper everyone came across as sincere, direct, and committed to a well-planned response to whatever flooding might come. But I couldn’t help but believe that underneath all that at least a few of them were thinking, “This is overkill. Our site is never going to flood.” They may have been right on that day, but there is always the potential for *something* to trigger a catastrophe.” Again, he had no evidence the operators were not concerned with keeping the reactor and the public safe, but what he felt was paranoia that it was the case, and anxiety that the worst would happen then or in a similar situation in the future. He ends the book with the profoundly irrational (and unclear) statement: “Probability cannot deceive us into believing that the hazards of nuclear power are small or insignificant” and finally, “Almost a decade after leaving the industry, I am still haunted by two images. The first is all that water flowing downstream from a massive snowmelt, flooding the Missouri, fanning out sideways to turn the surrounding farmland on both sides of the river into an inland sea, and squeezing the nuclear plant at Fort Calhoun. The second image is the idle plants at Fukushima, including the one whose reactors are now a ruin of steel rods, the radioactive poison buried deep inside the site still beyond the control of the engineers…”
Lastly I want to briefly turn to the unmentioned gorilla, which is climate change (I counted a single use of the phrase). Jaczko puts forth a half-baked and extreme call for us to “suspend nuclear projects until we know what to do with the waste they create” for example. And his stance (“No other industry is able to complain so loudly that someone else has failed to take care of its waste.”) overlooks the fact that a benefit of nuclear power is that we have all of its waste in neat little pools and containers, unlike fossil fuels (fly ash in the air), solar (all of the trace minerals and heavy metals from panels thrown in the landfill), and wind (the enormous fiberglass turbines). If we were to follow the author’s directive to abandon nuclear power completely, many would die from coal and gas filling the huge hole in the electricity mix that solar and wind are not capable of filling and contributing directly (via air quality) and indirectly (via climate change) to many millions of deaths. Meanwhile, nuclear power has contributed to probably somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 deaths in its entire history, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima (even including deaths from suicide from the probably-over-extensive evacuation of the latter) and saved millions of lives from its positive impact on air quality and climate change. Speaking of Fukushima, the cost of cleanup and internal refugee compensation will be something on the order of $100 billion, which sounds immense until you compare it to an estimate for the predicted yearly global cost of climate change by 2049 of $38 trillion. Sure, in the future we will hopefully have advanced fission reactors and finally fusion reactors, which will definitely be safer, but until then nuclear power is a priceless (and safe, with death rates per terawatt-hour on par with wind and solar) weapon in the war against climate change. In the meantime, overregulation, and handwringing about much less emergent and dangerous concerns, will doom us all.
March 1, 2019
Pretty much every rational person has a healthy fear of nuclear weapons. Massively destructive and terrible long-term consequences. Nuclear power comes from the same dangerous forces, but we rely on technology and design to keep those forces in check. Jaczko makes the case in Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator that the system designed to keep nuclear power safe just isn't working.
Before I get into the main points of the book, let me first say that Jaczko has done a fine job of keeping a potentially dry subject entertaining. He includes plenty of personal anecdotes and first-hand descriptions of some pretty tense situations around events we're all familiar with - Three Mile Island, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster - as well as some near-misses that may not be as familiar - fire at Browns Ferry in Tennessee, flooding at the Fort Calhoun plant along the Missouri river. And he makes no bones about his own personal failings, either, especially his often adversarial and confrontational personal style. It's not a page-turner thriller novel, but the book is well written and kept me engaged throughout.
Jaczko makes two main points about the current state of nuclear power:
First, because the forces involved are so powerful, it's impossible to make nuclear power completely safe. We can develop elaborate safety measures that will reduce the risk to extremely low levels, but that risk is always there. This means safety measures have to be redundant, cover every known risk, be constantly updated against new risks, and strictly enforced. If you don't do those things, the risk very quickly becomes unacceptable. This is a pretty straightforward point and I don't think anyone would argue with it, though the definitely of exactly what is "acceptable" can be debated.
Second, none of that is happening as it should, because the regulatory system in place to ensure nuclear power safety is ineffective. In the current political environment, not just in the US but all around the world, putting a truly effective nuclear power regulatory system is simply not possible. This is a much more contentious point, but I think Jaczko makes a strong case. He cites repeated examples where regulators have been unable to enforce existing rules, or put into place important new rules, due to interference and delay by nuclear power providers. Those obstructions are enabled by political cover from officials who are beholden to the nuclear power industry. This is an example of regulatory capture: through political and economic influence, the nuclear power providers have taken control of the very processes meant to ensure that their product is safe.
The logical conclusion from those two points is that nuclear power should be eliminated, and that is in fact the position Jaczko takes. "Nuclear power is a failed technology"...no equivocation there. That is a very strong denouncement from a former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The argument isn't that human beings are unable to use nuclear power safely - while the risk is never zero, it can be reduced to acceptable levels. Rather, the constant pushback against updating and enforcing regulations required to maintain those low levels of risk means nuclear power won't be made safe. The issue isn't that we can't, it's that we won't.
I've long considered nuclear power to be a worthwhile alternative in the search to find alternatives to fossil fuels, but after reading this book I've changed my mind. Until we can either drastically improve technology to lower risk, or effectively address the regulatory capture concerns that Jaczko raises, nuclear power should be off the table. I don't see how the former is possible economically, or the latter politically. There are other clean alternatives, and though those have their own issues, they don't carry the same extreme risks as nuclear power.
Before I get into the main points of the book, let me first say that Jaczko has done a fine job of keeping a potentially dry subject entertaining. He includes plenty of personal anecdotes and first-hand descriptions of some pretty tense situations around events we're all familiar with - Three Mile Island, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster - as well as some near-misses that may not be as familiar - fire at Browns Ferry in Tennessee, flooding at the Fort Calhoun plant along the Missouri river. And he makes no bones about his own personal failings, either, especially his often adversarial and confrontational personal style. It's not a page-turner thriller novel, but the book is well written and kept me engaged throughout.
Jaczko makes two main points about the current state of nuclear power:
First, because the forces involved are so powerful, it's impossible to make nuclear power completely safe. We can develop elaborate safety measures that will reduce the risk to extremely low levels, but that risk is always there. This means safety measures have to be redundant, cover every known risk, be constantly updated against new risks, and strictly enforced. If you don't do those things, the risk very quickly becomes unacceptable. This is a pretty straightforward point and I don't think anyone would argue with it, though the definitely of exactly what is "acceptable" can be debated.
Second, none of that is happening as it should, because the regulatory system in place to ensure nuclear power safety is ineffective. In the current political environment, not just in the US but all around the world, putting a truly effective nuclear power regulatory system is simply not possible. This is a much more contentious point, but I think Jaczko makes a strong case. He cites repeated examples where regulators have been unable to enforce existing rules, or put into place important new rules, due to interference and delay by nuclear power providers. Those obstructions are enabled by political cover from officials who are beholden to the nuclear power industry. This is an example of regulatory capture: through political and economic influence, the nuclear power providers have taken control of the very processes meant to ensure that their product is safe.
The logical conclusion from those two points is that nuclear power should be eliminated, and that is in fact the position Jaczko takes. "Nuclear power is a failed technology"...no equivocation there. That is a very strong denouncement from a former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The argument isn't that human beings are unable to use nuclear power safely - while the risk is never zero, it can be reduced to acceptable levels. Rather, the constant pushback against updating and enforcing regulations required to maintain those low levels of risk means nuclear power won't be made safe. The issue isn't that we can't, it's that we won't.
I've long considered nuclear power to be a worthwhile alternative in the search to find alternatives to fossil fuels, but after reading this book I've changed my mind. Until we can either drastically improve technology to lower risk, or effectively address the regulatory capture concerns that Jaczko raises, nuclear power should be off the table. I don't see how the former is possible economically, or the latter politically. There are other clean alternatives, and though those have their own issues, they don't carry the same extreme risks as nuclear power.
March 13, 2019
This was almost a DNF for me - I am very interested in learning more about whether and how to include nuclear power in our clean power future, and this book did shed light on a lot of the safety issues with respect to human oversight that I wasn't aware of. That said, it was *really* hard to get past the author's continual stance of "I'm the real victim here!" External reports saythat he was really unpleasant to work for and borderline abusive, but he doesn't own any of it. Thank u next.
June 8, 2019
I had high hopes for this book, but ended up disappointed. While short and generally clear, Jaczko’s clear enmity to the industry, his colleagues, and seemingly everyone other than his mentor Senator Reid, curdled the flavor of his writing. He seemed strangely unaware (at least in real time) of how his personality and actions came off to people—he was constantly “surprised” that others would react in a specific way or that his colleagues would undermine him on a congressional panel. He claims to be more self-reflective and aware of his faults in this book, but it feels more like knowledge acquired via blunt force trauma than from self-reflection.
With regards to safety, Fukushima appears to have been deeply scarring to Jaczko and I was sympathetic to this initially. However, his fairly quick dismissal of the role nuclear power can play in alleviating climate change did not convince me—yes, solar and wind are cheap and growing cheaper, but much of the reduction in coal is happening by switching to natural gas. In both Germany and Japan, turning away from nukes is causing them to backslide in achieving their climate reduction goals.
This problem calls for more balanced and nuanced analysis than Jaczko seems prepared to indulge. Yes, nuclear accidents can be terrible and damaging —but so can coal mine accidents, fracking explosions, tainted drinking water from fracking, earthquakes caused by fracking, coal ash in water, etc. That is even before you get to the climate change and health alleviation arguments (less mercury, sulfur, other pollutants, etc). While I don’t think cost/benefit analysis is the end-all/be-all, the lack of any type of balancing makes the book sorely deficient. To weigh whether nuclear power is too dangerous, you have to look at the harms the other energy types are causing (both immediate and climate) and then weigh them against nuclear (both immediate and climate). A good analysis would further think about historical harm and potential harm— nuclear I believe would come out well historically, but Jaczko seems to have a good case that the potential damage could be higher.
It’s not that I’m persuaded that he is wrong—it’s that I’m definitely sure his straw man version of relying on cheap renewables is not right. With an issue this complex and important, we need to wrestle with the actual complexity of the harms and benefits at issue. Focusing just on safety is not enough, because climate change also poses risks to human health.
Also, I felt that a focus on Fukushima safety (being able to respond to tsunamis) was not necessarily the biggest risk to nuclear power plants—earthquakes, fire, and flooding deserved more attention I think. The best parts of the book were where Jaczko was thinking about those issues and educating on how our general safety approach to nuclear was deficient—I found that compelling and interesting.
Overall, I’m glad I read it. But for a book that had potential to be deeply insightful and impactful, it was a shame to read a book that fell so short of its potential—much like Dr. Gregory Jaczko must feel about the the promise of nuclear power.
With regards to safety, Fukushima appears to have been deeply scarring to Jaczko and I was sympathetic to this initially. However, his fairly quick dismissal of the role nuclear power can play in alleviating climate change did not convince me—yes, solar and wind are cheap and growing cheaper, but much of the reduction in coal is happening by switching to natural gas. In both Germany and Japan, turning away from nukes is causing them to backslide in achieving their climate reduction goals.
This problem calls for more balanced and nuanced analysis than Jaczko seems prepared to indulge. Yes, nuclear accidents can be terrible and damaging —but so can coal mine accidents, fracking explosions, tainted drinking water from fracking, earthquakes caused by fracking, coal ash in water, etc. That is even before you get to the climate change and health alleviation arguments (less mercury, sulfur, other pollutants, etc). While I don’t think cost/benefit analysis is the end-all/be-all, the lack of any type of balancing makes the book sorely deficient. To weigh whether nuclear power is too dangerous, you have to look at the harms the other energy types are causing (both immediate and climate) and then weigh them against nuclear (both immediate and climate). A good analysis would further think about historical harm and potential harm— nuclear I believe would come out well historically, but Jaczko seems to have a good case that the potential damage could be higher.
It’s not that I’m persuaded that he is wrong—it’s that I’m definitely sure his straw man version of relying on cheap renewables is not right. With an issue this complex and important, we need to wrestle with the actual complexity of the harms and benefits at issue. Focusing just on safety is not enough, because climate change also poses risks to human health.
Also, I felt that a focus on Fukushima safety (being able to respond to tsunamis) was not necessarily the biggest risk to nuclear power plants—earthquakes, fire, and flooding deserved more attention I think. The best parts of the book were where Jaczko was thinking about those issues and educating on how our general safety approach to nuclear was deficient—I found that compelling and interesting.
Overall, I’m glad I read it. But for a book that had potential to be deeply insightful and impactful, it was a shame to read a book that fell so short of its potential—much like Dr. Gregory Jaczko must feel about the the promise of nuclear power.
July 26, 2024
If ever there was an organization that you would want to err on the side of safety and caution, it would be the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And you would not want them to be influenced by politics. Oh, if that were so.
The author rolls back the curtain to tell the stories of his time serving as the chairman of the commission. He gives a background history lesson beginning with Three Mile Island, on through Fukushima in Japan in 2011. He tells of troubled sites in Nebraska from the Cooper Nuclear Station to Fort Calhoun. Both sitting on the Missouri River that never was expected to flood, but dams fail despite precautions.
"The power of nature is most obvious when we witness it up close. Leaving Fort Calhoun, it was the murky waters swirling just inches below the plant's doors that stayed in my mind, contribution to the resolve I needed to press forward with the Fukushima reforms. These were no longer simply hypothetical scenarios. I had walked over the Missouri River to enter a nuclear power plant, about as close to an accident as you can get without one happening. It was a situation I hoped never to experience again."
"For the (nuclear) technology to survive, any future nuclear program must address three things. First and foremost, we must acknowledge that accidents will continue to happen. If more and more plants come online, more and more accidents are inevitable. To truly meet the needs of climate change abatement using nuclear power, the number of plants would have to rise from 400 to a figure in the thousands. At those numbers, instead of happening once every 10 years, a nuclear power plant accident would become an annual occurrence. Those incidents might not be of the same magnitude as Fukushima, but they would still create political and financial challenges. After all, the Three Mile Island accident did not release significant amounts of radiation, but it dramatically altered the nuclear power program in the United States."
"Almost a decade after leaving he agency, I am still haunted by two images. The first is all that water flowing downstream from a massive snowmelt, flooding the Missouri, fanning out sideways to turn the surrounding farmland on both sides of the river into an inland sea, and squeezing the nuclear plant at Fort Calhoun.
The second image is the idle plants at Fukushima, including the one whose reactors are now a ruin of steel rods, the radioactive poison buried deep inside the site still beyond the control of the engineers. I started my life as a scientist in awe of humans' ability to see the genius of nature and harness it. I left my job as a nuclear regulator humbled at what nature can do to turn our technological inventions against us."
This book is deep dive into the nuclear industry that will leave you uneasy...
The author rolls back the curtain to tell the stories of his time serving as the chairman of the commission. He gives a background history lesson beginning with Three Mile Island, on through Fukushima in Japan in 2011. He tells of troubled sites in Nebraska from the Cooper Nuclear Station to Fort Calhoun. Both sitting on the Missouri River that never was expected to flood, but dams fail despite precautions.
"The power of nature is most obvious when we witness it up close. Leaving Fort Calhoun, it was the murky waters swirling just inches below the plant's doors that stayed in my mind, contribution to the resolve I needed to press forward with the Fukushima reforms. These were no longer simply hypothetical scenarios. I had walked over the Missouri River to enter a nuclear power plant, about as close to an accident as you can get without one happening. It was a situation I hoped never to experience again."
"For the (nuclear) technology to survive, any future nuclear program must address three things. First and foremost, we must acknowledge that accidents will continue to happen. If more and more plants come online, more and more accidents are inevitable. To truly meet the needs of climate change abatement using nuclear power, the number of plants would have to rise from 400 to a figure in the thousands. At those numbers, instead of happening once every 10 years, a nuclear power plant accident would become an annual occurrence. Those incidents might not be of the same magnitude as Fukushima, but they would still create political and financial challenges. After all, the Three Mile Island accident did not release significant amounts of radiation, but it dramatically altered the nuclear power program in the United States."
"Almost a decade after leaving he agency, I am still haunted by two images. The first is all that water flowing downstream from a massive snowmelt, flooding the Missouri, fanning out sideways to turn the surrounding farmland on both sides of the river into an inland sea, and squeezing the nuclear plant at Fort Calhoun.
The second image is the idle plants at Fukushima, including the one whose reactors are now a ruin of steel rods, the radioactive poison buried deep inside the site still beyond the control of the engineers. I started my life as a scientist in awe of humans' ability to see the genius of nature and harness it. I left my job as a nuclear regulator humbled at what nature can do to turn our technological inventions against us."
This book is deep dive into the nuclear industry that will leave you uneasy...
February 13, 2019
This is probably one of the shortest and most readable books one is likely to find by the former chair of any US regulatory agency. Former NRC Commissioner and Chairman Jaczko describes crisply and clearly how he came to be a commissioner, how he was elevated to chair, and outlines the key issues he faced during his tenure. An appendix provides a brief, simplified explanation of nuclear power to aid the reader unfamiliar with the technology.
This is a physically small book -- 168 pages plus the Appendix, printed in a format similar to the Reader's Digest. So Jaczko has wasted few words and little paper on small details or unimportant issues -- he focused on what he considers the major issues he faced on the NRC and that the nuclear industry faces today.
As a former nuclear utility engineer who worked on the design and operation of Navy and utility nuke plants for 30 years, I was generally familiar with the outlines of how the NRC works, but I left the industry before Jaczko was appointed, and before the accidents and regulatory challenges he focuses on. His book was surprisingly informative about the processes and politics of the upper echelons of nuclear power regulation, and provides a good outline of the issues arising from the disaster at Fukushima. The Fukushima event drove much of the author's final actions at NRC, and was clearly haunting him as he wrote this small book. I had read a fair amount about Fukushima at the time, but I don't think I understood the full extent of the tragedy. Jaczko's perspective is quite sobering.
The other sobering aspect of his story is his blunt description of the power of the industry over the regulators. I had what was apparently a rather naive view that NRC was one of the "tougher" regulatory agencies among the many in the US Government, but this book indicates the NRC is as much a puppet of the industry it is supposed to regulate as are many of the other agencies we read about more often. Which was a discouraging conclusion.
The book is brief and reads quickly. The author uses little technical jargon and does not dwell on the technical details. If anything, I would fault him a bit for over-simplifying the science and the language describing it. I recommend it for anyone interested in nuclear power generation technology and regulation, and especially for those who might want to refresh their understanding of the state of the US nuclear industry.
This is a physically small book -- 168 pages plus the Appendix, printed in a format similar to the Reader's Digest. So Jaczko has wasted few words and little paper on small details or unimportant issues -- he focused on what he considers the major issues he faced on the NRC and that the nuclear industry faces today.
As a former nuclear utility engineer who worked on the design and operation of Navy and utility nuke plants for 30 years, I was generally familiar with the outlines of how the NRC works, but I left the industry before Jaczko was appointed, and before the accidents and regulatory challenges he focuses on. His book was surprisingly informative about the processes and politics of the upper echelons of nuclear power regulation, and provides a good outline of the issues arising from the disaster at Fukushima. The Fukushima event drove much of the author's final actions at NRC, and was clearly haunting him as he wrote this small book. I had read a fair amount about Fukushima at the time, but I don't think I understood the full extent of the tragedy. Jaczko's perspective is quite sobering.
The other sobering aspect of his story is his blunt description of the power of the industry over the regulators. I had what was apparently a rather naive view that NRC was one of the "tougher" regulatory agencies among the many in the US Government, but this book indicates the NRC is as much a puppet of the industry it is supposed to regulate as are many of the other agencies we read about more often. Which was a discouraging conclusion.
The book is brief and reads quickly. The author uses little technical jargon and does not dwell on the technical details. If anything, I would fault him a bit for over-simplifying the science and the language describing it. I recommend it for anyone interested in nuclear power generation technology and regulation, and especially for those who might want to refresh their understanding of the state of the US nuclear industry.
July 5, 2019
I'm glad I read it. To me, there are some non-glaring but obvious issues but at heart I agree with many of Dr. Jaczko's points. As it's a nonfiction book I will ignore the concept of spoiler.
Treated me right:
We do not think of technologies, probabilities, combination effects and externals correctly. For this reason alone nuclear power may never be safe. Though he does not mention this (a sorely missed point), Three Mile Island was a normal accident. It just wasn't a predictable accident. Because there is so much technological operating leverage concerning nuclear reactors, any political or financial gaming is bound to multiply the effects.
I feel for Dr. Jaczko as he's admittedly not a political player, which should be a positive among everyone, but too often becomes a negative. He stepped in it so many times... and I have too. He's got the grace to admit it and only throws a couple people under the bus. They undoubtedly deserved it. Heh heh.
Reading between the lines I too believe the concept of better managing nuclear power sites would drastically improve the industry's future.
Rubbed me wrong:
For a physics PhD and someone who held his position, there should be no confusion between adsorption and absorption. It may sound like hair splitting, but it matters.
It cannot pretend to be apolitical. This book openly shines admiration upon some people who slide down the detestable scale, including Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, and Ed Markey. I'm sure they have their good points, but I haven't seen them. It's a political game, but the whole idea was that Dr. Jaczko was an outsider.
His ultimate boss, BHO, was the one who cut the funding to Yucca Mountain. Fair enough, but what was the replacement? This is a huge contradiction from the Obama Administration but ignored by the former NRC chairman: if you're actually serious about CO2 reduction, what do you do with the waste from one of the lowest CO2/kWh power sources? Give up?
Yucca Mountain had its issues, and Dr. Jaczko is right to cover them. He was wrong not to speak to the future waste plans at length.
Also, do not criticize for industry being upset at regulators and the Obama Administration. Regulations and Regulators were used unabashedly to drown and threaten anyone with more than two nickels to rub together. Naturally there would be pushback.
And there was.
Treated me right:
We do not think of technologies, probabilities, combination effects and externals correctly. For this reason alone nuclear power may never be safe. Though he does not mention this (a sorely missed point), Three Mile Island was a normal accident. It just wasn't a predictable accident. Because there is so much technological operating leverage concerning nuclear reactors, any political or financial gaming is bound to multiply the effects.
I feel for Dr. Jaczko as he's admittedly not a political player, which should be a positive among everyone, but too often becomes a negative. He stepped in it so many times... and I have too. He's got the grace to admit it and only throws a couple people under the bus. They undoubtedly deserved it. Heh heh.
Reading between the lines I too believe the concept of better managing nuclear power sites would drastically improve the industry's future.
Rubbed me wrong:
For a physics PhD and someone who held his position, there should be no confusion between adsorption and absorption. It may sound like hair splitting, but it matters.
It cannot pretend to be apolitical. This book openly shines admiration upon some people who slide down the detestable scale, including Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, and Ed Markey. I'm sure they have their good points, but I haven't seen them. It's a political game, but the whole idea was that Dr. Jaczko was an outsider.
His ultimate boss, BHO, was the one who cut the funding to Yucca Mountain. Fair enough, but what was the replacement? This is a huge contradiction from the Obama Administration but ignored by the former NRC chairman: if you're actually serious about CO2 reduction, what do you do with the waste from one of the lowest CO2/kWh power sources? Give up?
Yucca Mountain had its issues, and Dr. Jaczko is right to cover them. He was wrong not to speak to the future waste plans at length.
Also, do not criticize for industry being upset at regulators and the Obama Administration. Regulations and Regulators were used unabashedly to drown and threaten anyone with more than two nickels to rub together. Naturally there would be pushback.
And there was.
August 14, 2020
TL;DR: Save your money. This book was written by an egotistical clown. If you’re interested in a good treatment of the history of nuclear accidents I recommend
Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey.
Jaczko is a political hack that should never have been the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
He is annoyingly self-congratulatory for “taking on a corrupt industry” yet skates over science and facts about nuclear power.
Some of his most egregious examples:
- He claims the U.S. “learned nothing” from Chernobyl. Not only is this untrue, but it’s also not particularly relevant to the U.S. nuclear industry. Soviet nuclear plants were designed quite differently than American plants thus the technical problems that plagued Soviets did not apply to the U.S. About seven years prior, Three Mile Island occurred which resulted in major updates to safety measures, designs, regulations. TMI was producing electricity until 2019, safely and with zero carbon emissions.
- Jaczko believes that Fukushima-Daiichi accident was evidence that nuclear power is too dangerous to use. The accident at Fukushima was a failure of oversight. The sea wall was knowingly insufficient and warnings were ignored. Other nuclear plants — closer to the epicenter — were safely shutdown and resulted in no damage. Japan has since worked to revamp their regulatory structure to mirror the U.S. Jaczko’s mishandling of the crisis causes more harm through panic.
- The author abused his power to unilaterally shut down the Yucca Mountain project for political gain. Since the Yucca Mountain Repository was defunded, anti-nuclear activists, like Jaczko, have claimed that there is “no solution” to nuclear waste. Which is entirey false — there are several technical solutions (see France, Sweden).
Amid these gross inaccuracies, Jaczko leaves out that he was fired for his poor attitude towards other NRC regulators and creating a toxic workplace environment, as well as falsifying documents or asking his subordinates to falsify documents.
Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey.
Jaczko is a political hack that should never have been the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
He is annoyingly self-congratulatory for “taking on a corrupt industry” yet skates over science and facts about nuclear power.
Some of his most egregious examples:
- He claims the U.S. “learned nothing” from Chernobyl. Not only is this untrue, but it’s also not particularly relevant to the U.S. nuclear industry. Soviet nuclear plants were designed quite differently than American plants thus the technical problems that plagued Soviets did not apply to the U.S. About seven years prior, Three Mile Island occurred which resulted in major updates to safety measures, designs, regulations. TMI was producing electricity until 2019, safely and with zero carbon emissions.
- Jaczko believes that Fukushima-Daiichi accident was evidence that nuclear power is too dangerous to use. The accident at Fukushima was a failure of oversight. The sea wall was knowingly insufficient and warnings were ignored. Other nuclear plants — closer to the epicenter — were safely shutdown and resulted in no damage. Japan has since worked to revamp their regulatory structure to mirror the U.S. Jaczko’s mishandling of the crisis causes more harm through panic.
- The author abused his power to unilaterally shut down the Yucca Mountain project for political gain. Since the Yucca Mountain Repository was defunded, anti-nuclear activists, like Jaczko, have claimed that there is “no solution” to nuclear waste. Which is entirey false — there are several technical solutions (see France, Sweden).
Amid these gross inaccuracies, Jaczko leaves out that he was fired for his poor attitude towards other NRC regulators and creating a toxic workplace environment, as well as falsifying documents or asking his subordinates to falsify documents.
January 3, 2024
With hope of learning something good about the ways to replace fossil fuel energy production facilities with "cleaner" energy sources, I went to our local used bookstore to look for titles on nuclera power. Jaczko's was the only title they had on the subject, and not at all the book I was looking for to bolster my support for the technology. Turns out Jaczko's "confessions" are mostly a scathing critique of the U.S.'s nuclear power industry; turns out, it's all about profits and power. The task of ensuring a reasonable amount of plant safety is dragged down by political proponents, techno pollyannas, and cost-cutting corporate boards which, as Jaczko tells it, cannot be trusted in analyzing the cost/benefits of nuclear power production.
Jaczko spent three years as Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the board of appointees whose job is "to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment. The NRC regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials, such as in nuclear medicine, through licensing, inspection and enforcement of its requirements." His confessions begin with a look back and a detailed review of the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; he dissects the particulars of each incident - the Chernobyl information collected through tiny cracks in the Soviet Iron Curtain.
Those were both well before his tenure at the NRC, but while he's on the job and leading US response amid analysis of the Fukushima incident, the most frightening situations are not where radioactive materials are exploded and released, but rather those where behind-the-scenes electric and diesel powered emergency alarm, shutdown and response systems failed to perform as intended. In the end, his career "melted down" when his insistence on higher standards were deemed too costly, too conservative, and too unfriendly to industry where peripheral safety measures take too big a bit out of profits.
Jaczko spent three years as Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the board of appointees whose job is "to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment. The NRC regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials, such as in nuclear medicine, through licensing, inspection and enforcement of its requirements." His confessions begin with a look back and a detailed review of the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; he dissects the particulars of each incident - the Chernobyl information collected through tiny cracks in the Soviet Iron Curtain.
Those were both well before his tenure at the NRC, but while he's on the job and leading US response amid analysis of the Fukushima incident, the most frightening situations are not where radioactive materials are exploded and released, but rather those where behind-the-scenes electric and diesel powered emergency alarm, shutdown and response systems failed to perform as intended. In the end, his career "melted down" when his insistence on higher standards were deemed too costly, too conservative, and too unfriendly to industry where peripheral safety measures take too big a bit out of profits.
March 26, 2019
Jaczko raises many serious and important issues about the safety of nuclear power. Unfortunately, I really can't recommend this book. His anti-nuclear stance - which I somewhat agreed with going in and agree with more after reading - is acknowledged, which is great, but he doesn't always explain why he feels the way he does, or what he proposes as alternatives. As some other reviewers mention, the book comes across as something of an attempt to justify criticism Jaczko received as head of the NRC, but he doesn't offer much explanation of why people criticized him so heavily other than some vague "powerful nuclear energy lobby" rhetoric.
The central thesis, that there are major problems with nuclear energy, is generally coherent, but secondary points are not always clear or well-argued. There are some cases where sentences directly contradict each other and the perspective isn't always consistent. He criticizes computer models for being out-of-date, but then he also complains about how engineers "can't stop tinkering" with nuclear plant designs.
All of that said, I do completely agree with Jaczko that nuclear energy as a whole is underregulated and doesn't plan sufficiently for disasters - particularly unexpected disasters, which are more difficult to plan for. I just wish that the message had been better presented.
The central thesis, that there are major problems with nuclear energy, is generally coherent, but secondary points are not always clear or well-argued. There are some cases where sentences directly contradict each other and the perspective isn't always consistent. He criticizes computer models for being out-of-date, but then he also complains about how engineers "can't stop tinkering" with nuclear plant designs.
All of that said, I do completely agree with Jaczko that nuclear energy as a whole is underregulated and doesn't plan sufficiently for disasters - particularly unexpected disasters, which are more difficult to plan for. I just wish that the message had been better presented.
January 1, 2022
This is a tight, quick read. A refreshing description by a top regulator of what it was like to run one of the most important public safety and industrial regulatory commissions out there.
It confirms what you might assume: That for the most part the NRC is held captive by the nuclear industry, often in subtle ways that make it hard for well-intentioned staff who want to protect the public from the pile-driving against safety reviews (not to mention ridiculous subsidies) that tilt the balance in favor of the industry and give watchdogs and the public no chance to stop new nukes (as Jaczko points out, the NRC has never refused to license new nuclear power plants, and even rejected efforts to impose new safety regulations in the wake of Fukushima).
It's very accessible (he's a nuclear physicist who knows the importance of communicating to the public).
This is also a good example of the kind of bureaucratic infighting used to sabotage good public servants. He knew what he was up against (other commissioners who torpedoed transparency and safety improvements, stabbing him in the back by pressuring staff to reverse their positions and using congressional pressure to subject him to unfair personal attacks), and was capable of deflecting most of the arrows, but eventually they pushed him out. Too bad. The good thing is that we got this memoir as a result.
It confirms what you might assume: That for the most part the NRC is held captive by the nuclear industry, often in subtle ways that make it hard for well-intentioned staff who want to protect the public from the pile-driving against safety reviews (not to mention ridiculous subsidies) that tilt the balance in favor of the industry and give watchdogs and the public no chance to stop new nukes (as Jaczko points out, the NRC has never refused to license new nuclear power plants, and even rejected efforts to impose new safety regulations in the wake of Fukushima).
It's very accessible (he's a nuclear physicist who knows the importance of communicating to the public).
This is also a good example of the kind of bureaucratic infighting used to sabotage good public servants. He knew what he was up against (other commissioners who torpedoed transparency and safety improvements, stabbing him in the back by pressuring staff to reverse their positions and using congressional pressure to subject him to unfair personal attacks), and was capable of deflecting most of the arrows, but eventually they pushed him out. Too bad. The good thing is that we got this memoir as a result.
November 5, 2023
There's some good value in reading this book. It shows the politics involved in the attempt to regulate the nuclear power industry and the dominance of the utility companies over the board supposedly regulating them.
Also there's a lot of info on the nuts and bolts of what goes on in those plants and specifically what happened at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima, explained in terms that the normal public can understand.
Undercutting the strengths of the book to some extent is the feeling that in the end the book is kind of an attempt to reclaim the narrative around what happened during the author's tenure at the head of the agency. And I wonder personally about his campaign to ensure every facility can withstand a Fukushima-like disaster.
In the end we are left with the feeling that new plants will probably not happen much because of the cost to build them but that older plants will probably pose some environmental risk at some point if no one is willing to invest in overcoming the politics and costs of making them safe or taking them offline. And then we will be left with nuclear waste stored forever at those individual sites since the politics and logistics of disposing them in a central location can't be overcome. Scary thoughts but on the other hand, any industry with only 3 major disasters in 50 years may actually have an acceptable track record?
Also there's a lot of info on the nuts and bolts of what goes on in those plants and specifically what happened at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima, explained in terms that the normal public can understand.
Undercutting the strengths of the book to some extent is the feeling that in the end the book is kind of an attempt to reclaim the narrative around what happened during the author's tenure at the head of the agency. And I wonder personally about his campaign to ensure every facility can withstand a Fukushima-like disaster.
In the end we are left with the feeling that new plants will probably not happen much because of the cost to build them but that older plants will probably pose some environmental risk at some point if no one is willing to invest in overcoming the politics and costs of making them safe or taking them offline. And then we will be left with nuclear waste stored forever at those individual sites since the politics and logistics of disposing them in a central location can't be overcome. Scary thoughts but on the other hand, any industry with only 3 major disasters in 50 years may actually have an acceptable track record?
January 16, 2019
I feel like I should rate this a bit higher than I did, because I did learn something....& that really is always worth another star in rating! And it is a worthy expose....of the politics/frailty/aging/danger of the nuclear energy industry. The title is right on....it's just that politics & science just don't make for overly exciting reading.... The author is a bit of a 'Mr. Smith Goes To Washington' type character/experience.....that probably didn't fare as well as Jimmy Stewart's character in the movie. He paints a scary picture of the danger possibilities in the USA (& world too), with the nuclear industry policing itself.....probably not a good option! He did include an Appendix at the end, attempting to explain how nuclear energy works, that was helpful.....explained using layman's terms, but it's still kind of 'heavy' science! It was interesting, but I'm glad it was a rather short book!
I received an e-ARC from the publisher Simon & Schuster via NetGalley, in return for reading it & offering my own fair & honest review. These are my own opinions.
I received an e-ARC from the publisher Simon & Schuster via NetGalley, in return for reading it & offering my own fair & honest review. These are my own opinions.
June 7, 2024
I picked up this book five years ago but only happened to get around to reading it now. That gap between publication and reading, especially as I work in the energy industry and read relevant nuclear news daily, made for some additional i teresting perspective.
in that time, Vogtle has gone online while the SC reactors abandoned, Japan has built new reactors for the first time post Fukushima, fusion is closer than ever, and grid reliability is more the headline than emissions.
Those all lead to already a deviation from the Commissioner's predictions, and I think the thesis rejection of nuclear as a whole doesn't hold up, but the real valuable perspective I think worth taking away is the inherent harm big lobbying has on the regulatory process and we need to be vigilant and leery of where that leads to short cuts and tipping of the scale— regardless of industry.
in that time, Vogtle has gone online while the SC reactors abandoned, Japan has built new reactors for the first time post Fukushima, fusion is closer than ever, and grid reliability is more the headline than emissions.
Those all lead to already a deviation from the Commissioner's predictions, and I think the thesis rejection of nuclear as a whole doesn't hold up, but the real valuable perspective I think worth taking away is the inherent harm big lobbying has on the regulatory process and we need to be vigilant and leery of where that leads to short cuts and tipping of the scale— regardless of industry.
March 8, 2023
An interesting book written by a former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He was the chairman when the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster occurred in Japan. I found him to be somewhat unsupportive of atomic power. He believes that some form of renewable energy will replace nuclear power, but if that takes place it will be after we're all dead and buried I believe. One of the best parts of the book is the appendix that describes generally how atomic power generation systems work. I paid $2.99 for this book at an Ollies store and would recommend not spending any more than that. As a bureaucrat, he fought the private companies actually trying to make money generating electricity. He wanted to Fukushima-proof U.S. reactors and the industry fought him to avoid the expenses.
March 14, 2023
How can politics be allowed to run amok against our best interests. Yes we need power, but people, let's ensure we have common sense safely measures in place so we never see a Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania 1979), Chernobyl (Soviet Union 1986), and the worst of all - Fukashima (Japan 2015) EVER AGAIN. Oh wait -- you'll never be able to have enough safe guards in place to prevent another nuclear accident, especially with global warming (fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes ...) then let's not play with fire or in this case nuclear radioactivity that lasts for thousands of years -- This book is eye opening.
March 18, 2019
As someone who conducted hundreds (thousands?) of technical environmental compliance inspections across all kinds of industries, I fully support this author's concern on allowing self-regulation in the nuclear power industry. When there is a profit incentive to just meet the most minimum safety requirements, there will be plenty of power plant owners that will take that option. The risks to public safety are too great not to have stringent, effective, non-political Federal oversight of this industry.
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August 17, 2019Wind and solar energy are proving more agile technologies than nuclear energy, but nukes will be with us a long time, or at least the spent fuel rods will. Accidents will happen, says the U.S. regulator in charge during the Fukushima meltdown. Power plant designs never anticipated an earthquake followed by a tsunami. Climate change suggests at least a new round of risk modeling is in order. But energy is still a political choice, and Greg Jaczko lost a political argument during the Obama administration, when scientists ran the Energy Department. Now they don't. What could possibly go wrong?
September 8, 2021
This was helpful to learn a bit more about how the appointment process to a federal agency works and the political connections needed for those.
The authors recap of their tough time challenging the industry seemed fairly one-sided and it would be helpful to hear other’s views about them. Their tone about being hot-headed but escaping finding of proof against them reminds me of some big ego co-workers I’ve had over the years that were more in the way of progress than they ego would let them believe.
The authors recap of their tough time challenging the industry seemed fairly one-sided and it would be helpful to hear other’s views about them. Their tone about being hot-headed but escaping finding of proof against them reminds me of some big ego co-workers I’ve had over the years that were more in the way of progress than they ego would let them believe.
February 25, 2019
i didn’t realize the dangers of nuclear energy and how lax the regulations are. i’m inclined to believe Jaczko and his 3.5 years as the chief commissioner of the nuclear regulatory commission.
this is a look into the sausage making of the NRC and american nuclear policy with the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster
this is a look into the sausage making of the NRC and american nuclear policy with the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster
April 23, 2019
I found this book fascinating as an inside look at how this industry is regulated. I personally had a hard time getting past the political aspects discussed in a lot of the book but it really plays an important part in it as well. If you interested in how politics try to control industry this is a good read.
April 16, 2021
Interesting and educational. Good window into the pull between industry growth and regulation, walks you through the former NRC chairman’s response and reflections on Fukushima and other nuclear plant tragedies experienced during Obama’s first term. A bit hard to get through at times but important for people interested in going into energy policy and curious about nuclear!
July 19, 2021
Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Reactor is an eye opening story. It pushes ones ideas back and forth. I am normally a pro-nuclear energy person. However, reading the intimate stories of disaster and hearing very well researched and practiced counter argument has me swaying back and forth on my support. Overall, very well done and a good read.
February 8, 2019
If you thought that nuclear power plants were well equipped to deal with disaster- think again. Classic tale of how industry controls the government agency charged with regulating it, and how difficult it is to make meaningful change in a broken system.
May 12, 2019
Honestly it mostly read like a long complaint about how the author was the only person in the world who ever cared about nuclear safety and that he was just so good at his job that his coworkers hated him. It was interesting to hear about the Fukishima response though.
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