Departing chair talks safety board nominations, challenges

Joyce Connery, who is departing as a nuclear safety watchdog after nearly a decade, would not be shocked to see the President Donald Trump (R) administration revive then-President Joe Biden’s (D) nomination of a former Department of Energy cleanup boss to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board —only this time paired with one or more Republican nominees.

The last Congress left town without the Senate acting on the nomination of William (Ike) White to be a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).  White acted as nuclear cleanup boss for about five years, initially under the first Trump administration DOE and subsequently under Biden.

Connery, whose last full term ended in mid-October, told Exchange Monitor Thursday she hoped to stick around, as allowed by DNFSB rules, long enough to swear in White to DNFSB. But when the clock ran out on White, Connery decided it was time to leave.

“So, I could just keep stringing myself along in perpetuity,” Connery said. “But I think it’s time … it was 2015 when I joined the board, so it’s time to kind of look to do other things.” She plans to look at a variety of options, including think-tank and non-profit work.

As a result, “I am hanging up my spurs” with the federal government, Connery said. After 20 years as a fed, in policy roles including energy and nuclear security, Connery will clean out her DNFSB office in Washington by Jan. 31.

During a 45-minute interview with the Monitor, Connery discussed the state of the DNFSB, filling board vacancies, the board’s accomplishments and challenges, including lessons from some reports critical of safety board management.

Vacancies: The Senate’s failure to confirm White, coupled with Connery’s departure, will leave DNFSB with only two members out of a potential five. In addition to vice chair Thomas Summers, a retired Air Force colonel and former National Nuclear Security Administration policy adviser, the other is Biden appointee Patricia Lee, a longtime executive at DOE’s Savannah River National Laboratory. Summers, a Republican, is expected to be appointed chair any day now, Connery said. But there is urgency, given Summers’ first term expires Oct. 18.

The new administration “would do well to put a Republican or two up with [White], but we just don’t know what the Trump administration is going to do,” Connery said. The last time Congress modified DNFSB governing rules, it wanted to restrict board members from staying on too long, but it may have “over-corrected,” Connery said. She hopes a future Congress will tweak the rules to make it easier for board members to serve consecutive terms and preserve continuity.

DNFSB’s work: The DNFSB, established by Congress 35 years ago, is designed as a bipartisan five-member board that works with a small staff to provide independent nuclear safety advice to DOE. No one takes the job unless they care about nuclear safety, Connery said. While not all recommendations are enacted, Connery said the board did important analysis on issues including emergency response, aging infrastructure and preventing potential explosions of nuclear waste drums. The latter looked at lessons gleaned from drum accidents at the Idaho National Laboratory as well as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

Turbulent times and disputes: DNFSB experienced some rocky times over the past decade.  Onetime board chairman Sean Sullivan at one point urged the White House to ask Congress to dissolve DNFSB. Sullivan held a sincere belief DOE no longer needed safety advice from the board, Connery said. The recommendation never gained traction. “We were not disbanded. We are still here,” Connery said. Congress recognizes the board improves safety culture around the weapons complex, Connery said.

At another point, DNFSB’s management and workplace culture was placed under the microscope in a 2018 report by the National Academy of Public Administration. The document found the board underperforming its central mission to enhance safety in DOE’s nuclear complex. It is worth remembering, Connery said, that the DNFSB requested the academy report. Connery said DNFSB asked the academy to take a hard look, and that’s what the academy did.

One of the recommendations from the academy report was for the safety board to hire an executive director to manage DNFSB’s routine day-to-day operations. DNFSB’s first executive director of operations departed in August 2022 after about 20 months. A report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Inspector General in December 2023 concluded Connery and the board undermined the first executive director, Joel Spangenberg.

Connery disagrees with that assessment, but in retrospect she and the board did a poor job of “change management” when the first executive director joined the agency, she said.

In the old days, board members were very hands-on with administrative matters, Connery said. When Connery joined DNFSB in 2015, she was one of the first board members not to interview candidates for staff positions. As a result, both the board and existing staff were not fully prepared when a new layer of management was brought in to run DNFSB administration. Lessons were learned and taken into account during hiring of the second executive director, Connery said.

Also, during the first Trump term, DNFSB successfully fended off a DOE effort to limit access to nuclear site people and documents. The board, however, received much support from the public, stakeholder groups and Congress, Connery said. The experience probably helped unify the board, which finalized a memorandum of understanding with DOE in in 2022.

The board has made the weapons complex a safer place to work, Connery said, adding that serving was the “honor of a lifetime.”