The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) would receive a roughly a $31 million budget for fiscal 2020, which it would have to use to employ the equivalent of at least 110 full-time staff, under a 2020 appropriations package Congress approved this week.
Explanatory language appended to the bill, which President Donald Trump was set to sign Friday after deadline, would require the independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog to hire, or appoint from its existing ranks, a full-time executive director for operations. The spending bill would prohibit the DNFSB from carrying out a reorganization proposed last year by board Chairman Bruce Hamilton that would slim the small agency’s headcount to 80 full-time equivalent positions from around 100.
The proposed 2020 DNFSB budget, within the energy and water development portion of the domestic 2020 minibus bill, would be flat year over year and about $1.5 million higher than the White House requested.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) the Senate sent to President Donald Trump’s desk on Wednesday authorizes essentially the same spending with the same restrictions for the DNFSB.
The compromise 2020 budget bill would drop a House-approved provision that requires the Energy Department and DNFSB to establish a memorandum of understanding about board access to predecisional DOE information. The two agencies have fought over the DNFSB’s access to certain defense nuclear sites, personnel, and information since last year, when the Energy Department approved the controversial Order 140.1.
The unilateral DOE order, a part of which DNFSB has openly declared it will defy, moved to block the board’s field inspectors from certain areas of active and former nuclear weapons sites, along with certain meetings of DOE and contractor personnel. Earlier this year, Hamilton told then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry that DNFSB inspectors will attend Nuclear Explosive Safety meetings, despite DOE telling them not to.
The continuing resolution now funding the federal government at 2019 levels runs through Friday. Trump must sign the 2020 appropriations packages and the NDAA before then to keep the defense board and the Energy Department’s defense programs authorized and funded.
