The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has scheduled a series of meetings, including a closed-door session to brew up a new safety recommendation and two public hearings about a controversial Department of Energy order the board says would weaken its oversight of defense-nuclear sites.
In the closed door meeting, scheduled for Oct. 23, the board will consider a possible draft safety recommendation for DOE. The board has not published a recommendation since 2015; it did submit a separate draft recommendation to DOE earlier this year, but the agency essentially refused to discuss the matter. The draft recommendation touched on the agency’s tritium-refining facilities at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The DNFSB has not yet decided on the dates, exact locations, or agendas for the open hearings regarding DOE Order 140.1, a board spokesperson said by email Wednesday. The order, which DOE handed down in May, restricts agency communication with the DNFSB. Among other things, the board says the directive would cut off its inspectors’ access to 70 percent of the DOE sites the DNFSB now oversees, and block board inspectors from meetings with DOE contractors and civil servants.
In an Oct. 4 letter to Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), acting DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton said the board planned a fall hearing on Order 140.1 in Washington, D.C., a winter hearing in New Mexico, and possibly others at unspecified times and locations.
In report language appended to the 2019 DOE budget bill signed in September, Congress ordered the department to better explain Order 140.1.
Congress created the DNFSB in 1988. The independent federal agency has no regulatory power over DOE, but it may issue public safety recommendations with which the secretary of energy must publicly agree or disagree. Before issuing formal recommendations, which are published in the Federal Register, the DNFSB usually lets the energy secretary review and comment on a draft version.
