Victor Gilinsky

A physicist, Gilinsky is an independent consultant, most recently advising Nevada on matters related to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. His expertise spans a broad range of energy issues. From 1975 to 1984, he served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, having been nominated by President Gerald Ford and renominated by President Jimmy Carter. Earlier in his career he worked at Rand Corporation; he was also an assistant director for policy and program review at the Atomic Energy Commission.

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Articles by Victor Gilinsky

1 March 2010
Feature

Revisiting the NUMEC Affair

Victor GilinskyRoger J. Mattson
It is the story that won't go away–the possibility that in the 1960s Israel stole bomb-grade uranium from a U.S. nuclear fuel-processing plant. Now two former NRC officials explain what they think happened.
Opinion
17 June 2009
Nuclear WeaponsNuclear Energy

Locking down the NPT

Henry SokolskiVictor Gilinsky

President Barack Obama recently spoke of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's (NPT) importance, as has every president since Lyndon B. Johnson who signed the treaty in 1968. Yet they have all, to a lesser or greater degree, weakened the treaty, through lax enforcement, by carving out exceptions for certain countries, or by just ignoring it. We have come to the point now that North Korea, which signed the treaty in 1985, is now mocking it.

Opinion
23 March 2009
Nuclear Energy

Behind the scenes of Three Mile Island

Victor Gilinsky

Shortly after I arrived at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)'s headquarters in Washington, D.C., at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, I got a call from the commission's emergency center in Bethesda, Maryland. The number two reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania had declared a general emergency. There weren't supposed to be serious accidents at nuclear power plants and having to deal with one led to some, let us say, out-of-the-ordinary, and even absurd, behavior.

Opinion
27 January 2009
Nuclear WeaponsNuclear Energy

A call to resist the nuclear revival

Victor Gilinsky

When formulating its nuclear energy policy, the new Obama administration will have to face the reality that advances in technology, combined with politics and ideology, have made it much harder to prevent nuclear energy use from contributing to the spread of the Bomb. To avoid a future Hobbesian nuclear jungle, the United States and other world governments will need to agree on tougher nuclear controls.

Agree to Disagree
25 June 2008

NRC should allow the public to fairly participate in its licensing hearings

Victor Gilinsky

Let's talk about something no one is happy with--citizen and state participation in Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing hearings on nuclear plants and facilities.

Agree to Disagree
30 May 2008

Pro-industry priorities derail NRC's public-safety mission

Victor Gilinsky

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) problems lie in the priorities at the top. The overriding priority--evident from commission pronouncements and actions--is to facilitate a major expansion, or "renaissance," of nuclear power.

Agree to Disagree
1 May 2008

The NRC must see itself as a regulator first, not an industry booster

Victor Gilinsky

David Lochbaum wants to inject new blood into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff to stiffen enforcement of its safety rules. The composition of NRC technical staff is not the problem--they are a professional lot, as good as you will find in the federal government.