Sen. Pete Domenici: nuclear renaissance man

Mike Stuckey Senior news editor • Profile • E-mail

On a cool morning last August, the senior U.S. senator from New Mexico hefted a shovel of desert earth and invited 800 onlookers to witness history.

“I have been talking over the last several years about the coming of the nuclear renaissance in commercial nuclear energy in America,” the senator said, helping to dedicate a $1.5 billion uranium enrichment facility in his state's southeast corner, about five miles east of the small town of Eunice. “I am delighted and proud that the renaissance is in New Mexico.”

If the renaissance that the U.S. nuclear power industry predicts for itself is indeed occurring, then Pietro “Pete” Vichy Domenici, the son of Italian immigrants, may be seen as both its Michelango and its Machiavelli. And the New Mexico uranium plant is just one piece of deft political artwork the conservative Republican has brought to a nuclear industry that has showered him with praise — and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.

Casting himself as Congress’ “chief nuclear apostle,” Domenici has for years painted a glowing picture of nuclear energy’s potential to give Americans “a cleaner, healthier, sustainable and self-sufficient energy future” and even contribute to global peace, as he wrote in his 2004 book on the topic, “A Brighter Tomorrow.” To those ends, he worked tirelessly as the chairman of two powerful Senate committees with direct control of federal spending on nuclear energy and regulation.

For a New Mexico politician, a passion for nuclear power is as natural as sagebrush on the mesa. The state has strong ties to all things nuclear: It is the birthplace of nuclear weapons, home to two national labs that provide 20,000 jobs and bring in billions of dollars a year in federal funds and is host to a Department of Energy nuclear waste site. It also has substantial uranium deposits and depends heavily on nuclear-generated electricity.

But Domenici’s reach on nuclear matters has become ubiquitous. He boasts proudly of how he brought an “adversarial” Nuclear Regulatory Commission to heel. He has helped broker U.S.-Russian deals to convert nuclear bomb materiel into fuel for nuclear plants. He’s the only American to have been honored with the French Nuclear Energy Society's highest award. He has championed the Bush administration’s controversial deal to conduct nuclear business with India and its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a plan to bring nuclear energy to developing nations. Captains of the industry sing his praises and his former aides have graduated to some of the most influential positions in the nuclear industry and the government agencies that work with it and oversee it.

The senator’s signature achievement was winning passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which contained $85 billion in subsidies and tax breaks across all energy sectors, including $13 billion for nuclear power.

Money goes both ways
It’s been a two-way street. Since 1989, Domenici has received $1.2 million in campaign donations from individuals and political action committees in the energy and natural resources sector, well over a tenth of the total $10.8 million he has raised for his Senate campaigns in that time, according to federal election records. Electric utilities, with big stakes in the future of nuclear power and government subsidies for it, kicked in $384,923. The list of Domenici’s campaign donors includes at least three dozen firms on the membership roster of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main lobbying arm.

Day 1: Industry on verge of rebound? Day 2: The nuclear renaissance man Day 3: Reality check for cartel plan Day 4: The French connection Day 5: Do 'nukeonomics' make sense?

While Domenici is proud of his nuclear stewardship, as his book attests, his handlers can be prickly when it comes to discussing his relationship with the industry. His staff refused repeated requests from MSNBC.com to speak to him for this series, in one case canceling an appointment after a reporter and photographer had flown across the country for an interview.

Now 74 and starting his 35th year in the Senate, the bespectacled, stern-faced Domenici is at a crossroads as he contemplates the nature of his nuclear legacy. With both the House and Senate reverting to Democratic control earlier this month, he lost the chairmanships of the Energy Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Water and Energy.

Given that the Energy Policy Act had strong bipartisan support and that his successor as chairman of the Energy Committee, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Bingaman's counterpart in the House, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., both are staunch supporters of nuclear power, there is no expectation that a legislative U-turn is in the cards.

‘Too soon to tell’
Domenici's work on the energy bill and other nuclear matters could ultimately see him revered as a visionary architect of global energy abundance for the 21^st century or reviled for boosting what critics maintain is a dangerous and inefficient way to produce electricity. The prevailing view will not be clear for many years.

"I think his legacy is big, but I’m reminded of (former Chinese Premier) Chou En Lai’s remark about the legacy of the French Revolution being that it's too soon to tell," said Matthew Bunn, a senior researcher in Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom who has worked with Domenici on non-proliferation issues and has testified before the senator's panels on nuclear power matters. "The Energy Policy Act is very big, but how big it will be depends on what actually gets appropriated and how many plants get built.”

Whatever his legacy on nuclear power, the tale of his rise from minor league ballplayer to one of the U.S. Senate’s most powerful and tenured members is the classic local-boy-makes-good story that weaves its way through much of America’s political fabric.

The only son of five children born to Italian immigrants Cherubino and Alda Domenici, the future senator grew up in Albuquerque, working in the family’s wholesale grocery business and attending Catholic schools. After graduating from the University of New Mexico with a degree in education in 1954, Domenici pitched for a Brooklyn Dodgers farm team for a year. Acknowledging that he couldn’t get his curve over the plate, he became a junior high math teacher. By 1958, he had earned a law degree, married Nancy Burk and started a family that would eventually include eight children.

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