A bipartisan group of four senators reintroduced a bill to protect whistleblowers at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from retaliation, according to a recent press release.
Before the Senate adjourned last week, Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Ron Wyden (D-Wash.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) announced that they filed their “Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Whistleblower Protection Act.”
The bill — more or less the same as one Duckworth introduced last Congress, which never saw a vote in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — would amend Section 211 of the Energy Reorganization Act (ERA) to clarify the rights of DOE and NRC whistleblowers “precisely as Congress intended … when it passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005,” a joint press release said.
While the Department of Labor provided guidance to help NRC and DOE employees file complaints about whistleblower retaliation after Congress passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005, the law didn’t “provide the clear and unequivocal waiver of sovereign immunity” required by the Supreme Court to enforce whistleblower complaints against the U.S. government, the Senators said.
The new whistleblower bill “simply clarifies current law to provide the clear and unequivocal waiver of sovereign immunity that will enable Section 211 ERA whistleblower protection rights to be enforced against all covered employers,” the lawmakers said.
Duckworth’s home state of Illinois hosts several nuclear power plants regulated by NRC, including Exelon’s Byron and Dresden Nuclear Generating Stations, which were saved from impending shutdown last month by a $700 million bailout from the state government.
Wyden also has skin in the game. A longtime whistleblower advocate, his state of Oregon is on the other side of the Columbia River and the Department of Energy’s Hanford site in Washington state.
