The White House requested roughly $31 million for the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in 2019, roughly even with the appropriation that now funds the independent health-and-safety watchdog of the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapon sites.
The requested budget of $30.6 million is less than one percent lower than the $30.9 million the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) receives this year under the fifth continuing appropriation of 2018, which froze federal funding for all but Pentagon programs at 2017 levels.
The budget proposes no major mission change for DNFSB and would support the equivalent of 120 full-time employees, just like the 2018 budget.
The nominally five-member DNFSB has no regulatory power of the Department of Energy’s active and shuttered nuclear weapon sites, but it may make safety recommendations for those sites with which the Secretary of Energy must publicly agree or disagree. The board is drafting a recommendation for Energy Secretary Rick Perry now, but it could be month before that recommendation is published. It would be the first DNFSB recommendation for the Trump administration.
DNFSB is without a leader after Sean Sullivan, a Republican, resigned as board chairman in early February nearly a year after President Donald Trump appointed him to the position. Sullivan had been on the board about five years before briefly leading it and resigned few months after suggesting Congress dissolve the board. In his farewell note to staff, he suggested he had lost the confidence of his colleagues.
The Senate must confirm Sullivan’s successor; the White House had not nominated anyone to take his place at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
Bruce Hamilton, now the sole Republican board member, is the acting DNFSB chair with Sullivan gone. Trump appointed Hamilton vice chairman last year.
