The Department of Energy has completed only five of the 13 steps in a complex-wide emergency preparedness implementation plan the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recommended the department start work on more than two years ago, according to a recently published letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
The letter is the latest to be made public in a long-running correspondence that began in 2014 when the board issued its second-ever formal recommendation to DOE: that the agency create a complex-wide emergency preparedness and response framework and put it in place by the end of 2016.
DOE initially resisted completing the plan by the end of this year, but the board insisted it had legal ground to force a deadline. The department subsequently set about writing an implementation plan to formalize the steps it would take to establish the new safety framework.
A spokesperson for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration said Wednesday that Moniz had received the June 3 letter from DNFSB Chair Joyce Connery.
“We are in possession of the letter and we are reviewing it,” the spokesperson said. “We are taking it very seriously.”
The department’s fifth and most recent deliverable under the implementation plan was a book of standardized guidelines that allow facility operators across the DOE complex to assess how safe, or not, their site’s operations are. DOE sent this draft, known officially as a draft Baseline Emergency Management Criteria and Review Approach Document, to DNFSB on April 20.
But even counting that draft document, DOE still has not completed half of the steps the implementation plan called for finishing by April. Moniz acknowledged as much in a May letter to DNFSB, citing “a more accurate understanding of the time and resources needed to effectively achieve the necessary coordination to accomplish specific [implementation plan] commitments.” Connery replied in writing to Moniz on June 3.
“We agree with your conclusion that it is taking longer than originally estimated to complete the milestones and provide the deliverables called for in the [implementation plan],” Connery wrote in the letter published on the board’s website this week.” “We appreciate your personal attention to this matter.”
DOE told DNSFB last month it would complete a revised implementation plan by June 30. Connery, in the June 3 letter, asked DOE to submit a report containing the revised implementation plan no later than 30 days after the revision is finished.
DNFSB, in 2014, formally recommended DOE create an emergency response plan that ensures its defense nuclear facilities are “survivable, habitable, and maintained to function during emergencies, including severe events that can impact multiple facilities and potentially overwhelm emergency response resources.”
