From Senate job to nuclear lobbyist — twice

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Moves like Tauzin’s and Flint’s are “perfectly legal on Capitol Hill,” Holman said. But his group and others are pushing for reforms that would toughen disclosure requirements on members of Congress and staffers when they are seeking outside employment and much more severely limit what they could do immediately after leaving their government posts. Holman is hopeful of some success in the current session of Congress despite the most recent effort stalling in the Senate over a political maneuver on the Dubai Ports World issue.

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Meanwhile, the 2005 energy bill is just one of a number of recent bright spots for the U.S. nuclear power industry after years trying to undo the PR nightmare of accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

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In addition to strong allies in Congress like Domenici and Bingaman, the NEI and its members have an enthusiastic supporter in the White House. In his Feb. 2 State of the Union address, President Bush called for new investments in nuclear energy. And in a trip to India this month, he announced a landmark deal to share nuclear energy technology, a move that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said could be a windfall to the U.S. nuclear industry.

A dozen new plants by 2015?
Domestically, the NEI says U.S. firms plan to build more than a dozen new nuclear plants by 2015. On its Web site, the institute cites growing editorial support in U.S. newspapers for nuclear power, touts recent federal design approval for a new reactor design by Westinghouse and boasts of electrical production records set by U.S. nuclear plants in 2004 and 2005.

Things have been bright for quite some time for elected federal officials who receive campaign contributions from the nuclear industry. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the industry contributed $57.7 million to federal campaigns from 1989 to 2003, 62 percent to Republicans. Public Citizen noted that Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, also an avid supporter of nuclear energy, received $267,259 from nuclear power interests for their 2000 White House run alone.

And the Center for Responsive Politics lists four firms with strong nuclear interests among the top five donors to Domenici over the past five years, meaning employees of those firms or committees they control gave the senator a total of $65,915 in that time.

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