The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is willing to let Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) personnel attend meetings of the secretive Nuclear Explosives Safety Study Group at the Pantex Plant in Texas on a “trial” basis, according to a letter published this week.
The two federal agencies have fought since 2018 over whether DNFSB technical inspectors are allowed to sit in on deliberative meetings of the Nuclear Explosives Safety Study Group: a panel of nuclear-weapon experts who examine the procedures, people, and equipment involved with assembling and dismantling weapons in order to identify and prevent shortcomings that could lead to an unintentional nuclear explosion.
“Given the Board’s oversight and advisory role, NNSA supports the Board’s involvement in the process,” NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty wrote in an April 23 letter to DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton.
Nuclear Explosives Safety Study Group deliberations precede every assembly or disassembly of the multitudes of nuclear weapons serviced and modified at Pantex.
The obstruction began in March 2018 — even before the Energy Department issued Order 140.1 that May, requiring its employees and contractors to clear communication with the board through DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. The DNFSB says the order violates its legal authority to make health and safety recommendations about DOE nuclear-weapon sites.
That denial of access continued as late as this April 13, when an NNSA employee at Pantex denied a board inspector access to a Nuclear Explosive Safety Study Group meeting on the grounds it was prohibited under Order 140.1.
That set off the board, which in an October 2019 letter to Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette from Hamilton said it would tell DNFSB inspectors to attempt to attend Nuclear Explosives Safety Study Group meetings, whether DOE approved or not.
By the time of this month’s standoff, President Donald Trump had signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which required the Energy Department to give the DNFSB “prompt and unfettered access” to nuclear-weapon sites and personnel — something Hamilton reminded Brouillette of in an April 16 letter.
Gordon-Hagerty’s letter to the board went back the other way about a week later. In it, the NNSA boss qualified that the DNFSB was only getting access to the Nuclear Explosives Safety Study Group on a trial basis, and that board staff attending the meetings should be seen and not heard.
“NNSA will evaluate the process to ensure the needed exchange of our experts is not hampered in any way by the Board Staff’s presence [and] reserve the right to restrict personnel outside the [Nuclear Explosives Safety] Study Group itself,” Gordon-Hagerty wrote.
