The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board asked Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette for an in-person meeting by “early fall” to discuss a possible memorandum of understanding about a now two year-old DOE order that limits the agency’s contact with the board.
This summer, DOE finalized changes to Order 140.1, adding congressionally mandated language requiring that Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) staff receive “prompt and unfettered” access to any DOE personnel and facilities that the board deems necessary to its mission of protecting the public from hazards at active and shuttered nuclear-weapon sites.
Those changes resolved DNFSB’s concern that DOE was trampling the board’s legal authority — the board said it alone could determine what access was necessary to protect the public, and that DOE’s original order attempted to usurp that judgement — but not the basic, day-to-day rules for interactions between DNFSB and DOE personnel at the sites.
To that end, Bruce Hamilton, the board chair, has asked for a memorandum of understanding, or agreement, between the agencies to “resolve operational interface issues between our agencies that will not be resolved through the Order.”
COVID-19 has made it much harder to arrange a face-to-face meeting, Hamilton wrote in an Aug. 4 letter to Brouillette, but the time has now come to arrange one, in spite of the ongoing pandemic, the board chair wrote.
Congress, which essentially ordered DOE to relax Order 140.1 in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, has “encouraged us to work towards a Memorandum of Agreement or Understanding,” Hamilton wrote to Brouillette.
A DNFSB spokesperson said DOE had acknowledged receipt of Hamilton’s letter. A DOE spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment about whether Brouillette, or a designee of his, would meet with the board.
DNFSB is a roughly $30-million federal agency that can make health and safety recommendations about defense-nuclear sites, except nuclear naval sites, with which the Secretary of Energy must publicly agree or disagree. Order 140.1 generally requires DOE contractors and employees to loop in DOE headquarters any time the DNFSB wants something at a site.
In his Aug. 4 letter, Hamilton proposed nine topics for inclusion in the possible memo:
- Agency Roles and Responsibilities
- Board Public Hearings and Meetings
- Board and Department Written Communications
- Headquarters and Site Interactions
- Board Recommendations and Implementation Plan Development
- Board Resident Inspectors
- Access to Information and Facilities
- DOE Directives Interface
- Process to Resolve Interface Issues
It was unclear whether the agencies had yet scheduled a meeting. DNFSB and DOE spokespersons did not immediately reply to requests for comment Wednesday.
