Nearly lost amid higher-profile nomination hearings in high-octane committees this week is a nuts-and-bolts piece of legislation that could open the door for more whistleblower disclosures in the nuclear weapons, waste, and power industries.
The bill, one of many discussed in a Thursday hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources energy subcommittee, is sponsored by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.): a freshman lawmaker whose burgeoning national notoriety has little to do with nuclear matters. The subcommittee did not markup the bill for the full committee’s consideration, and time is rapidly running out to pass legislation in the 115th Congress; the legislature plans to end the current two-year session Dec. 14. Any unsigned bills would become null and void when the new session gavels in come January.
Duckworth’s 18-line “Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Whistleblower Protection Act of 2018” would close a loophole in a 1974 federal law that created the NRC and a precursor to DOE, and which Duckworth said allows either agency to easily dismiss certain whistleblower complaints.
The 1974 Energy Reorganization Act “empower[s] DOE and NRC to dismiss any whistleblower claim brought against them under the Energy Reorganization Act’s employee protection authorities,” Duckworth’s office wrote in a May 24 press release introducing her bill.
Mechanically, the measure would tweak the law to clarify that DOE and NRC are legally considered a “person.” That, according to Duckworth’s office, would prevent the agencies from asserting sovereign immunity — a government legal aegis against prosecution — to dismiss whistleblower complaints raised under the 1974 act.
Duckworth’s bill has been sitting in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee since Illinois’ senior senator, Sen. Dick Durbin (D), introduced the measure in the upper chamber on Duckworth’s behalf at the beginning of the summer.
