Staff at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board still suffer from low morale, and board leadership has not been able to improve the mood, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspector general wrote in a report published this week.
The NRC inspector general doubles as an internal watchdog for the five-member Defense Nuclear Safety Facilities Board’s (DNFSB). In a May 29 report titled Audit of the DNFSB’s Implementation of Its Governing Legislation, the IG cited “stark disagreement among Board members” as a contributing factor to low employee morale.
The inspector general said that, over the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, the board was sharply divided on how often to use its authority to compel the Department of Energy to reply to questions about “public health and safety at DOE defense nuclear facilities.”
The answers to such questions — compelled by the board through a mechanism known as a reporting requirement — could be published online in reports compiled by resident DNFSB inspectors at DOE nuclear facilities. Three board members generally supported reporting requirements in fiscal years 2017 and 2018, while two generally opposed them, the inspector general wrote. For most of this time, the board was split between Republicans Sean Sullivan, who has since left the DNFSB, and Bruce Hamilton, and Democrats Jessie Hill Roberson, Daniel Santos, and Joyce Connery.
This divisive “tone at the top,” the NRC inspector general said, demoralized the board’s staff. As evidence of worsening morale, the inspector general cited data from the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey conducted by the Office of Personnel Management, which showed a sharp drop in satisfaction among board employees from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2017.
“Low employee morale and lack of Board collegiality are significant organizational challenges for DNFSB,” according to the NRC inspector general.
The report covers an especially tumultuous period for the board, which got new leadership early in President Donald Trump’s first term in the form of Sullivan: a Republican and former naval officer who spent only about a year as DNFSB chairman before resigning after the Center for Public Integrity reported he recommended the White House ask Congress to legislate the DNFSB out of existence.
That left the board in the hands of acting Chairman Hamilton: now the DNFSB’s lone Republican.
While he did not say exactly how the board has attempted to improve morale at the small, 120-person agency in the heart of Washington, Hamilton acknowledged the attempts are not yet working.
“The Board acknowledges actions taken thus far have not effectively identified or addressed the underlying reasons for low employee morale, although in some cases they may not have had adequate time to demonstrate effect,” Hamilton wrote in an official comment appended to the IG’s report.
The inspector general made two recommendations:
- Develop and implement agency guidance for issuing reporting requirements.
- Develop and implement a plan of action to address the issues of low employee morale and board collegiality.
Hamilton said the board would comply with both recommendations.
The DNFSB has no regulatory power over DOE, but it can issue safety recommendations for the agency’s active and shuttered defense-nuclear sites, with which the secretary of energy must publicly agree or disagree.
