With Bruce Hamilton’s Sept. 12 resignation as chairman, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is back down to three members, two of them Democrats.
The chairman unexpectedly resigned Aug. 31, apparently for family reasons, only weeks after he and the three other DNFSB members were confirmed for new terms by the U.S. Senate via voice vote July 2.
Thomas Summers, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who was only sworn into Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) service as vice chairman on Aug. 17, now steps in as acting chairman and will serve a term set to expire Oct. 18, 2025. Hamilton’s exit will again leave DNFSB with only one Republican appointee — Summers — just as the board was reaching a two-to-two equilibrium between the GOP and Democrats.
The other two remaining members are Jessie Hill Roberson and Joyce Connery: Democrats whose terms end in October 2023 and October 2024, respectively. The DNFSB has five members at full staffing and no more than three are allowed from one political party.
It now appears that party parity at DNFSB will wait until the Senate acts on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Matthew Moury to a board seat. But Moury’s nomination is still in the early stages, with a limited number of Senate sessions left before the Nov. 3 election. The Senate received the nomination from the president on July 21 and it was assigned to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which at deadline had not scheduled a hearing.
Moury spent 20 years as a senior staff member at the DNFSB and is now DOE’s associate undersecretary for environment, health, safety and security. In a twist, Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes said in an Aug. 26 letter that Moury will serve as DOE’s point person for developing a possible memorandum of agreement or understanding that irons out the relationship between DNFSB and DOE after revisions this year to the latter’s Order 140.1.
The order governs DOE civil servant and contractor interactions with the board.
