Members of the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board would generally not be allowed to serve in expired terms any longer, if Congress’ compromise 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) becomes law.
The measure would make an exception in cases where the departure of a board member would leave the nominally five-member body without its quorum of three.
The House approved the NDAA on Wednesday. The Senate is scheduled to consider it next week, and President Donald Trump has said he will sign the bill.
Nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) serve staggered five-year terms. The board makes health and safety recommendations for Department of Energy nuclear-weapon sites.
Currently, board members remain in their position until a successor is confirmed and sworn in.
All three active DNFSB members are serving in expired terms, but only Joyce Connery has not been nominated for a fresh term. Neither Connery, a former board chair during the Barack Obama administration, nor the other board members would be booted immediately once the NDAA becomes law. Instead, members would be allowed to stay on for a year after enactment.
The current board members are Chairman Bruce Hamilton; Jessie Hill Roberson, a former DOE official; and Connery. In November, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to advance the nominations of Hamilton and Roberson to new terms, along with the nomination of former Air Force officer Thomas Summers. The panel did not vote on the nomination of Lisa Vickers, a DOE employee posted at the Pantex Plant in Texas.
The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act would also require the DNFSB to employ no fewer than the equivalent of 100 full-time employees, as it does now, and allow the board’s chairman to reorganize the roughly $30-million-a-year agency as that person sees fit.
The 2020 NDAA would also address the longstanding beef about the Department of Energy’s move in the 2018 Order 140.1 to restrict DNFSB access to certain defense-nuclear sites and personnel. The new bill would require the secretary of energy to give notice in writing for each DNFSB access request the agency denies. Congress would then review those denials every six months in a sort of audit, in which the secretary of energy would have to explain the decisions to lawmakers.
The DNFSB has already complained that it has been barred from nuclear explosive safety studies led by the Nuclear Explosive Safety Study Group. This secretive group of technical experts includes federal staff from the three Energy Department nuclear weapons laboratories; federal staff from the Pantex weapons assembly and disassembly plant in Texas; the Nevada National Security Site; department headquarters; and DOE contractor personnel.
The NDAA authorizes almost $30 million in appropriations for the DNFSB in the 2020 budget year, which began Oct. 1. That is in line with the agency request and down roughly $1 million from 2019.
