P.M. Briefing : Energy Nominee Tells Nuclear Goals

Retired Adm. James D. Watkins, the energy secretary-designate, told his Senate confirmation hearing today that his first priority would be to seek major changes in the way the government runs its troubled nuclear weapons complex.

Watkins said the Energy Department’s defense program “has not brought itself into line with nearly all other public and private nuclear ventures that have now capitalized on lessons learned” since the 1979 reactor accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

“There is an urgent need to effect a significant change in its deeply embedded 35-year culture,” Watkins told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, adding that he would seek to make the department’s nuclear operations better run and more open.

“Problems relating to safety, health and the environment have not only been backlogged to intolerable levels but, in effect, hidden from public view until recently,” he said.