In mid-January 2009, in advance of the inauguration of President Obama, a radiological survey of downtown Washington, DC was conducted at the request of the Secret Service.
No statistically significant man-made radiological activity was detected in the survey. Typical variations in natural background radiation were found, along with slightly elevated readings at the National World War II Memorial and elsewhere “caused by the building materials containing naturally occurring radioisotopes.”
See “Radiological Survey of Downtown Washington DC for the 2009 Presidential Inauguration” (large pdf), National Nuclear Security Administration, March 2009.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.