The deadline came and went Monday for the Department of Energy and other federal agencies to terminate at least one-third of their federal advisory committees, but it was not clear this week whether the agency had complied with the directive.
A DOE spokesperson did not reply to multiple requests for a list of committees cut in accordance with President Donald Trump’s June 14 executive order to eliminate federal advisory committees that are obsolete, too expensive, or which have been replaced in function by other bodies.
The Department of Energy has around 20 federal advisory committees, fewer than half of which deal with the agency’s nuclear programs.
At least two DOE advisory committees apparently survived. The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, which provides independent management advice to the agency, met Wednesday in Chicago. Late last week, the White House announced it would continue the DOE-organized President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology: a group that provides a broad swath of science and science policy advice.
Among the most active DOE advisory committees is the Environmental Management (EM) Site-Specific Advisory Board: a single committee with eight local boards that provides a conduit between federal officials and citizens who live near badly contaminated nuclear-weapon-production facilities. The Energy Department forecasts that cleanup of the old weapons complex will last well into the late 21st century.
The department must renew the EM Site-Specific Advisory Board’s charter every two years.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), steward of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, also has a federal advisory committee: the Defense Programs Advisory Committee, which provides classified advice behind closed doors about nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs managed by the semiautonomous DOE branch.
For DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, the part of the agency concerned with civilian nuclear waste created by power plants, there is the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee.
Any of these advisory committees could have been spared from the culling. Trump’s order permitted agencies to retain panels that the head of that department and the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget agree are necessary.
