The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) offered no comment Monday on the Department of Energy’s latest attempt to temper the independent watchdog’s insight into weapons-related nuclear facilities across the country.
A DNFSB spokesperson would not comment Monday about a Sunday article from ProPublica and the local Santa Fe New Mexican that DOE approved a new order restricting some communication between the agency and the board.
The Energy Department published the 18-page order in May. The document supersedes the 33-page order from 2005 that previously guided DOE and contractor interactions with the DNFSB. Among other things, the new order calls for the agency to speak with “one voice” before articulating policy to the board, establishes tighter DOE control of contractor interactions with the board, and even removes a directive from the 2005 order that called on contractors to be courteous in their encounters with DNFSB staff.
The DNFSB was created by, and remains a creature of, Congress, which so far has proven uninterested in weakening the organization.
Neither has the Donald Trump administration yet sought to pare back the board in the annual appropriations process. The White House sought about $30 million for the DNFSB in fiscal 2019, about equal to the 2018 appropriation. In a minibus appropriations bill awaiting final negotiations in Congress, Congress essentially met the president’s request for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.
Likewise, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which could get its final approval from the House this week, authorizes the board to continue as it has since its founding, and with roughly a $30-million appropriation. Neither the House nor the Senate proposed unwinding the board in their respective versions of the annual military policy bill.
In its day, the Barack Obama administration has also bristled at the DNFSB. Former National Nuclear Security Administration boss Frank Klotz, prior to his departure from federal service earlier this year, said the board should cease publishing weekly safety reports on active and shuttered defense-nuclear sites across the country.
