The United States - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 43

Widespread complaints that the AEC should not be responsible for
regulating the industry, at the same time as it was promoting it, led to
reorganization in 1974, whereby the Commission was split in two. The
smaller part, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, concentrated solely on
safety, while the bigger part promoted the industry, conducted research,
and built weapons (a function the agency had had since World War II).
This was named the Energy Research and Development Administration,
and got additional responsibilities for nonnuclear energy projects. Three
years later under President Carter, it became the Department of Energy.
About 1989 the new department discovered its own facilities were con-
taminating the ground and water with radioactive waste. Its plant in
Barnwell, South Carolina, was leaking radiation into the Savannah River.
Storage of radioactive waste from civilian electric generating plants was
a continuing issue. Never since the Manhattan Project has a permanent
site been found. Plutonium is the most dangerous material known, with a
half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that after that time, it will still be half as
dangerous as now. Utilities store their old uranium in temporarily in pools
of water and in vaults next to their plants. In 1982 Congress passed the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act requiring the Department of Energy to identify
several sites, but all of them had drawbacks. Eventually, the Department
decided to use Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Citizen Alert is a local group
opposed to storing the waste in the state. It organized in 1975 when this
idea first arose. In the presidential elections of 2004 and 2008, Nevada
voters found themselves in a key position. Although the state has only four
votes in the Electoral College out of a total of 538, candidates were afraid of
losing them, so they promised that the waste site would not be built.
George W. Bush began his term by denouncing the Kyoto Protocol, the
international treaty to protect against global warming. At home he directed
Vice President Richard Cheney to develop a national energy policy, a con-
cept not seen since the Carter administration. The Reagan administra-
tion had staunchly opposed central planning in favor of the free market.
Cheney promptly alienated many environmentalists by consulting only
industry people. He had just resigned as president of the Halliburton
Corporation, a petroleum company. Cheney talked of opening the Arctic
National Wildlife Reserve to oil exploration. Bush himself had begun his
career in the oil business in the Arbusto, Spectum 7, and Harken compa-
nies. Some of the president's early acts seemed almost deliberate slaps at
protection. For example, he withdrew regulations limiting the amount of
arsenic in drinking water. The Interior Department allowed snowmobiles