BY ROGER WITHERSPOON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Gregory Jaczko resigned as head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday, ending months of open warfare with the staff and the other four commissioners over safety issues and a personal style often perceived as imperious.

Jaczko’s departure stills the agency’s lone major voice pushing for increased safety measures at the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants despite the its long-standing aversion to imposing costly fixes on the politically powerful industry. And it ends a bitter public feud which led to extraordinary dueling hearings led by Democrats in the Senate, who supported his safety-first approach, and Republicans in the House who backed the four dissenting commissioners and called for his resignation.

New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg went so far as to declare at the Dec. 15, 2011 hearing that “he is the first chairman not to be in the pocket of the industry.” But as the controversy continued to swirl around the chairman, Lautenberg has backed away from the increasingly isolated Jaczko.

Similarly, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Cal.) staunchly defended Jaczko at her December hearings and called the House hearings a day earlier a “witch hunt.”

Afterwards, however, she too had little to say in his behalf, and her one-line statement yesterday merely thanked the chairman for his public service.

Jaczko’s only consistent support came from Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass), who said in a statement that “Greg Jaczko has been one of the finest NRC Chairmen in the history of the commission… Greg has led a Sisyphean fight against some of the nuclear industry’s most entrenched opponents of strong, lasting safety regulations, often serving as the lone vote in support of much-needed safety upgrades recommended by the Commission’s safety staff.”

But Jaczko’s detractors were numerous. In a report last fall, the NRC’s Inspector General criticized Jaczko for making decisions while keeping the other four commissioners in the dark. At one point in the post-Fukushima environment, Jazcko directed the staff to bring their findings directly to him and not share them with the other commissioners. While the IG concluded that Jaczko had not violated any laws, it was critical of his imperious style.

Among other things, Jaczko ordered the evacuation of Americans near the runaway nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan to at least 50 miles – five times the 10-mile American evacuation zone – because of the realistic danger of spreading radiation. He was criticized by his fellow commissioners for making a unilateral decision, even if it did turn out to have been correct.

His biggest support came from safety watchdogs such as the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a statement last month Ed Lyman, a physicist and head of the UCS Global Security Program, said “NRC commissioners have failed to require that the NRC enforce its own regulations and to address known safety problems.