The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) hopes to meet soon with new U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette to discuss public health and safety issues at nuclear sites overseen by his agency.
In a Jan. 16 letter, DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton congratulated Brouillette on his December confirmation as energy secretary and said the board would like to meet during the first three months of 2020.
Brouillette, former deputy secretary of energy, was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in last month to succeed Rick Perry in the top post at the Energy Department.
The other two current DNFSB members, Jessie Hill Roberson and Joyce Connery, approved submission of the letter to Brouillette. Attached to the letter is a one-page enclosure citing eight challenges at the DOE weapons complex.
Listed first is “resolving differences” between DOE Order 140.1 and language included in the final fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
The board says the department’s 2018 order runs counter to the Atomic Energy Act by restricting its access to oversight of certain parts of nuclear-weapon sites. The order also says the Energy Department should speak with “one voice” to the board – calling upon contractors to channel DNFSB questions through DOE managers.
The DNFSB says the order would hinder its independent federal health-and-safety inspectors from doing their job, by limiting access to certain records and predecisional meetings.
The NDAA requires the secretary of energy to give written notice each time the department denies a written request from DNFSB personnel for access to people or locations. A roundup of these denials would then be provided to Congress in a report every six months. The energy secretary must also justify the denials in writing to Capitol Hill.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board also wants to discuss measures to protect workers and others around tritium facilities at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina during accident scenarios. The semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration has repeatedly rebuffed a board recommendation on measures to prevent potential widespread tritium contamination. The NNSA says current standards adequately protect workers and the public.
Other items on the board’s agenda include protecting criticality safety at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and updating directives to prevent future breaches of radioactive waste drums like those in recent years at the Idaho National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
In April 2018, four drums of sludge waste that had recently been repackaged overheated and blew off their lids in the the Radioactive Waste Management Complex in Idaho.
In February 2014, a ruptured drum of waste caused an underground radiation leak that took WIPP out of service for about three years.
As of Thursday, the DNFSB has not heard back from the secretary’s office. The Energy Department did not respond to a request for comment.
