The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board should focus on providing the Department of Energy with independent safety advice and let its new incoming operations director deal with the board’s daily grind, a new federal report said.
A recently-released Office of Inspector General report on management challenges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) found DNFSB Chair Joyce Connery and the board members were slow to give up control of routine issues ranging from personnel to heating and air conditioning.
The Office of Inspector General said the chair “failed to delegate functions to the EDO [executive director of operations] as required by Atomic Energy Act,” according to the report. The chair and board also often bypassed the first operations director “when interacting with employees under the EDO’s supervision,” according to the Dec. 1 report that covers the last six months of fiscal 2023.
“For example, even after the first EDO’s appointment, the board continued to hold meetings on topics that were primarily administrative in nature, such as conference room HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] repair, procurement updates, and routine personnel actions,” according to the report.
“We appreciate the spirit and intent of the NRC IG report to make our agency even better and took it into consideration during our EDO selection process to conduct our important defense nuclear facilities safety mission in the most effective and efficient way possible,” DNFSB Chair Connery said in an email response Tuesday to Exchange Monitor.
Connery also said Mary Buhler, former chief financial officer at the Export-Import Bank, was sworn in this week as the board’s second operations director. Joel Spangenberg, the first director, left the job in August 2022 after less than two years to become deputy director of the Selective Service System.
The purpose of creating an executive director at DNFSB was to remove board members from having to grapple with workaday details, the Inspector General’s office said. It cited a 2018 report of the National Academy of Public Administration, which concluded there was a “critical need” to empower staff “to deal with issues at an appropriate level and bring to the top only the critical, strategic matters worthy of a presidentially appointed senate-confirmed official’s precious time.”
Creation of the executive director of operations was mandated by congress in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
Between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2023, the office received 15 complaints about DNFSB, with 14 of those coming through the Office of Inspector General hotline, according to the report. Seven complaints were reviewed and closed, and another seven have been referred to a new or ongoing Inspector General investigation. One was referred to DNFSB management.
The report from Inspector General Robert Feitel lists five big challenges for DNFSB. The challenges are: “leading a healthy and sustainable” organizational culture; upgrading security including cyber; continuing focus on technical safety oversight; improving readiness “to respond to future mission affecting disruptions” and also improving the board’s visibility, credibility and relations with stakeholders.
While it lacks regulatory enforcement power, the DNFSB has the authority to issue written safety recommendations to the secretary of energy, who must then publicly respond in writing.
