Groundbreaking Ceremony for NRC Headquarters Expansion Yields More than Dirt

(Rockville, MD) — On May 17, 2010, accompanied by cameras, politicians, business representatives from Rockville and a steady rain, NRC Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko dug his shovel into the ground located next to the White Flint Metro. In a mere 27 months, the location is expected to house a third NRC headquarters building, designated as Three White Flint North, or TWFN. What they will choose to do with the name of Two White Flint North, or TWFN, remains a mystery.

Perhaps a more pressing issue will be solving the mystery that made the choreographed event head south as quickly as turning over a shovel of dirt.

Digging revealed a skeleton, buried for at least six months according to the staff of Blackwater, commonly known as the Keystone Kops, entrusted to protect, bully and assault the Federal employees of the agency. The Keystone Kops, Montgomery County police, and investigators from Metro (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or WMATA), will all have to coordinate in the coming months to try and unravel the mystery.

WMATA has not ruled out a passenger suicide. "If the DC-bound train hit the person, they could have been launched off the rail bed and up to this location," said a WMATA security spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Montgomery County officers agreed with the WMATA assessment, but also pointed out that the person could be an employee of Metro. Reeling from a high level of customer and employee murders and injuries in 2009 and 2010, the officers postulated that Metro may have buried the evidence to avoid further embarrassment and bad publicity.

And then, it could be an employee of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; if so, it could have far-reaching implications for the agency's status as "Best Place to Work in the Federal Government" as ranked by the Partnership for Public Service and American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation (ISPPI). NRC first won the award in 2007 and again in 2010.

"If it turns out to be an NRC employee, it could turn their 'Best Place to Work' mantra on its head," said a Montgomery County police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The agency really will be known as the 'Best Place to Work Yourself to Death' from now on."

An NRC official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that agency managers know of no disgruntled employees, though seven have gone missing over the past four years. Their whereabouts are unknown, and only time in a forensics lab will determine if the agency now has six employees still unaccounted for.