The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) is scheduled to meet in private Sept. 17 to mull a potential safety recommendation to the Department of Energy, which earlier this year bounced back the independent federal watchdog’s first draft recommendation since 2015 with a curt refusal to comment.
The four-member board did not disclose the nature of the “potential recommendations” it could consider in the closed-door meeting at its Washington headquarters. In February, DOE refused to discuss a draft recommendation about atmospheric dispersion modeling at the Savannah River Site, in part because the recommendation touched on the National Nuclear Securirty Administration’s tritium facilities at the Aiken, S.C., site.
In an April 27 letter to then-DNFSB Vice Chairman Bruce Hamilton, Undersecretary of Energy for Science Paul Dabbar said the board’s legal authority required it to make safety recommendations to protect the public, not to protect DOE employees or contractors.
The DNFSB has no regulatory authority over the Energy Department, but it may issue formal recommendations to which the secretary of energy must by law respond. The board usually lets the DOE examine recommendations in draft form before publishing them publicly and effectively starting a timer for a public response from the department. The board has made nearly 60 recommendations in its roughly 20-year history, including more than a dozen that address worker safety, according to DNSFB Technical Director Chris Roscetti.
Since Dabbar spiked the draft recommendation, DOE has only taken a stricter stance about its interactions with the DNFSB, including issuing an order in May that would require final agency sign off on any information shared with the board. The DNFSB has said the order could cut off its access to 70 percent of the DOE facilities it currently inspects. The DNFSB can make recommendations about health and safety at active and former DOE nuclear weapon sites, but not about the agency’s naval nuclear reactors program.
The DNFSB has had a tumultuous end of the summer, between the hearing on the DOE order and a controversial board decision to cut full-time staff next year to about 80 from the current 100 or so heads. A DOE budget bill set for a vote in Congress this week would block the board from carrying out the reorganization, for now, and directs the department to brief lawmakers about Order 140.1 within 30 days of the bill’s enactment into law.
