With long-timer Jessie Hill Roberson’s Wednesday retirement from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the federal government’s independent safety watchdog for nuclear-weapon sites is down to two members.
Chair Joyce Connery and Vice Chair Thomas Summers are the only two active members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), leaving the nominally five-member panel without a quorum for the first time since its creation by Congress in 1998.
Changes enacted through the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act mean the DNFSB chair can still issue safety recommendations to the secretary of energy for up to one year after the board falls below a quorum. Chair Connery is required to notify the House and Senate Armed Services Committee within 30 days that a quorum no longer exists, according to DNFSB.
Connery’s term is scheduled to expire in October 2024 and Summers in October 2025. A manager at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Patricia Lee, has been nominated to the board by President Joe Biden but no confirmation hearing has been held by the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
This week, Roberson talked with the Exchange Monitor about her career, which included serving on the board, as the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary of environmental management and as a DOE manager for cleanup of the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado.
The board has successfully made a “generational transition,” Roberson said. “I think the board is strong. I wish the board had more board members. … The board is at its best when it actually has a full complement of board members,” she said. “After all, it relies on the integration of knowledge and expertise of people that come from different parts of the complex” and who have different backgrounds.
But with only two members left, the personnel needs become more acute, Roberson said, noting that Connery’s term is scheduled to expire one year from now.
Roberson could have continued to serve until a successor was in place but is ready to retire.
“I think it is important to know when to go,” she said.
