WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy locked Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) staff out of meetings at least one defense nuclear site, a member of the independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog said here Tuesday.
At a public meeting, board member Joyce Connery said DNFSB staff at a site she did not identify were denied access “two times in a row” to “certain meetings” involving DOE personnel.
Connery characterized the denial of access as a “140 roadblock,” referencing the controversial DOE Order 140.1 issued in May 2018. The Energy Department framed Order 140.1 as a way of simplifying its interactions with the DNFSB. The board, to a member, sees it differently, arguing the order unlawfully shuts out independent oversight of DOE contractor personnel and of some departmental nuclear facilities.
Among other things, Order 140.1 requires DOE employees and contractors to clear communications with the DNFSB through headquarters, and says the department will not consider any safety recommendations from the board that apply to agency employees and contractors. The Energy Department also would decline to address safety recommendations for so-called Category 3 facilities and radiological facilities, which the agency says pose no risk to those outside of DOE nuclear sites.
Connery, the former DNFSB chair, did not identify any of the personnel involved with the repeated “140 roadblock.” Through a spokesperson, she declined Thursday to provide additional details.
Connery suggested DNFSB members collect information about other such roadblocks from senior board staff at an internal town-hall meeting scheduled for the week of April 29. In addition, board member Jessie Hill Roberson suggested the DNFSB itself write a letter to DOE explaining exactly “what kinds of access and what … kinds of information we require to do our mission.
“What happened with 140 is it wiped out all the standing practices that allowed the board access to what it needed,” Roberson said.
Congress created the DNFSB in 1988. The board does not regulate DOE or its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), but it is allowed to make safety recommendations at active and former nuclear-weapon sites, with which the agency must publicly agree or disagree. Of all DOE-controlled defense-nuclear sites, only naval reactor sites are exempted from DNFSB review.
The DNFSB’s last safety regulation, handed down in February, addressed the safe handling of nuclear explosives at the Pantex weapons assembly and disassembly plant in Amarillo, Texas. NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty accepted the recommendation in an April 16 letter published online last week by DNFSB.
‘We look forward to briefing the Board …’
In that letter to DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton, Gordon-Hagerty promised to brief the board on the agency’s strategy for addressing those recommendations. In fact, some of the recommended tweaks to operations at Pantex are complete already, the NNSA boss wrote.
“I accept Recommendation 2019-1, which aligns with improvement actions that the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) has already taken,” Gordon-Hagerty wrote. “We look forward to briefing the Board on improvement actions planned and underway.”
The DNFSB spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment about whether a meeting with the NNSA had yet been scheduled. The board posted Gordon-Hagerty’s letter online on April 18.
The DNFSB based Recommendation 2019-1 on board fact-finding conducted between November 2017 and March 2018. It is the first recommendation the DNFSB has issued in the Donald Trump administration.
In 2019-1, the board called out a few scenarios that, while unlikely, could spread dangerous levels of radiation beyond Pantex’s boundaries.
Among other hazards identified by the DNFSB: cracks in a tool used to lift high explosives out of W76 warheads; procedures that may expose the W87’s warhead’s arming system to jostling during disassembly; the potential for a worker to crush parts of the B61 gravity bomb by tripping and falling on a certain piece of equipment; and even the potential that a W78 warhead could be struck by lightning while being moved from one location to another within Pantex.
Among the improvements the NNSA made since the DNFSB’s fact-finding mission to Pantex is a change to the site’s safety guidelines that address “falling man” scenarios of the sort the board said exist for the B61 bomb. Gordon-Hagerty did not discuss details on the updates in the letter.
