The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) wants a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Energy to further improve the contentious relationship between the federal agencies. That would be an additional measure on top of DOE’s revision to the controversial Order 140.1 that revised its interactions with the board.
The revision comes after Congress last year directed the Energy Department to give the board “complete and unfettered access” to defense nuclear sites. The agency in February shared a draft of the revision of the order with the DNFSB, which believes the proposed changes “will satisfactorily resolve the statutory concerns we expressed” about the 2018 directive, according to a Feb. 28 letter from board Chairman Bruce Hamilton to Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette.
The DNFSB posted the letter online this week. The revised Order 140.1 has not been made public. DOE says the order was supposed to streamline its interactions with the DNFSB. The board says the order impinges on its legal duty to oversee safety and health hazards at defense-nuclear sites.
The board has said Order 140.1 illegally asserted DOE can decide whether the DNFSB needs access to certain facilities or information in order to make health and safety recommendations about defense-nuclear facilities. Congress created the small agency in 1988 to make these nonbinding recommendations for sites other than naval nuclear facilities.
While DOE’s retooling of 140.1 might alleviate the legal concern, the DNFSB is still wary that the order could handcuff its technical staff at sites managed by both the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Office of Environmental Management.
To that end, the board seeks “a bilateral memorandum of understanding between our Agencies,” Hamilton wrote to Brouillette. “Such an agreement should resolve operational interface issues between our agencies that will not be resolved through the Order.”
A DNFSB spokesperson did not immediately reply to a query seeking details. The agency, like many others, has staffers working remotely in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Among other things, the DNFSB has complained that Order 140.1 requires DOE site personnel to get headquarters approval from Washington before responding to questions or comments from board inspectors. The board is also concerned that the Energy Department is limiting its access to certain site activities, including meetings of the Nuclear Explosive Safety Study Group at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.
