The U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) still suffers from flagging morale and could stand to improve communication between its staff and its politically appointed leadership, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspector general wrote in an annual report on the board’s biggest challenges.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspector general, which also serves that role for the DNFSB, “continues to see management of a healthy and sustainable organizational culture and climate [at the DNFSB] as a serious challenge,” according to last week’s report.
Although it did not quantify the churn, the inspector general said the DNFSB had been hurt by turnover among the technical staffers tasked with protecting the public from health hazards at Department of Energy nuclear sites.
Also, the inspector general said, communications between board members and technical staff sometimes get bogged down by inefficiencies in the DNFSB’s Issue and Commitment Tracking System: an online workflow tool that DNFSB leadership and technical staffers use to keep track of specific oversight activities.
In addition, the inspector general worried that the DNFSB’s technical staff, including resident inspectors at DOE nuclear sites, might not be able to “operate efficiently and effectively” because the board has too few staffers handling administrative functions at headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The inspector general said the DNFSB could also improve its financial record keeping, its ability to recruit and retain needed personnel, and better train its existing employees.
According to the inspector general’s report, DNFSB has 89 staffers now. In late September, the agency approved a 2020 staffing plan that would take it up 115 employees: a little higher than the DNFSB thought its headcount would settle after the board last year approved a plan — since blocked by Congress — to reorganize its bureaucracy and hold staffing at the equivalent of about 100 full-timers.
