Maine has a closed nuclear power plant, Maine Yankee, that stores its spent nuclear fuel in Wiscasset.

It is a pretty good idea for somebody to mind it.

That person is Pat Dostie, Maine’s nuclear safety inspector. He’s a former Maine Yankee worker, who now holds the ignominious distinction of still having his state job, despite its legislative elimination three years ago.

Yet funding for it remained (it’s paid by Maine Yankee), and there was still work to do. Federal regulators decommissioned Maine Yankee in 2005, but the state is not scheduled to finish its monitoring for a few more years.

For a straightforward need – monitoring spent nuclear fuel – the backstory about how Maine still has nuclear safety personnel on the payroll is almost as complicated as splitting an atom.

Budget-makers slashed the nuclear safety office this year, amid cutbacks. Maine Yankee’s funding, as well, was being halved to $170,000, per agreement with federal regulators.

Yet, late in the session, a $220,000 appropriation was put into the supplemental budget for the nuclear office, despite its earlier rejection. Like many things in Augusta, it happened in the gloaming.

Victoria Wallack, of the State House News Service, reported speculation that this funding was restored as political patronage by Sen. John Martin to former Senate President Charlie Pray, the state’s nuclear safety advisor.

His job, Pray told Wallack, is a “political job.”

There isn’t much Pray can accomplish. Nuclear disposal in Wiscasset will not change for the foreseeable future, until a federal repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada becomes available. When this might happen is unknown.

Licensing on the facility, which has been mulled since the early 1980s, is purported to finally start this June.

Meanwhile, the state’s final report on Maine Yankee is still perhaps a year or two away. Even the local committee in Wiscasset on the fuel only meets annually, unless something happens. This begs a legitimate question.

Does Maine still need nuclear safety advisors and inspectors?

Pray has answered his side; he’s resigned, effective in August.

How this wasn’t answered about Dostie is a crystalline example about what makes government so frustrating.

Preservation of the high-salary nuclear jobs (Pray and Dostie earn more than $70,000 annually) was ushered through the shadows during a time when funding for public programs was pilloried in the noontime sun.

There was no reason. Arguments for having an inspector for the Maine Yankee waste are pretty strong.

Even having Homer Simpson, the lackadaisical nuclear inspector on “The Simpsons,” is better than nothing.

The Appropriations Committee, in striking the position, made the wrong choice. It happens, and is unsurprising during this contentious budget season.

Given the imperative nature of ensuring spent nuclear fuel is safe, the monitoring must be seen through.

This seems easy. It’s nuclear material.

Call us crazy for thinking it’s a good idea somebody watches it.