The Senate Armed Services Committee is eyeing major changes at the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), including limiting its members to a single consecutive term and bringing on an executive director to improve management.
The measures, contained in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act approved by the committee in May and released last week, are a response to a lacerating November 2018 report on DNFSB operations by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA).
The agency, currently led by three board members while two spots remain vacant, is intended to be the health and safety monitor for Department of Energy nuclear sites around the country. However, the Senate panel said, the NAPA report “paints a disturbing picture” of an organization that provides little value to the Energy Department amid deep interpersonal issues between board members.
’In the same time period, employee satisfaction and morale has declined precipitously,” the Senate NDAA report says. “These issues, in addition to insufficient attention to professional development and career stewardship, have contributed to high levels of personnel turnover and difficulties in recruiting and retention of talented staff.”
The Senate panel seeks to address those issues via a number of amendments to the Atomic Energy Act. The NDAA language, if passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, would establish the position of executive director of operations, answerable directly to the DNFSB chairman.
The NDAA would specify that a board member, as of next April 1, could not serve two consecutive terms or remain on in an expired term.
The National Academy of Sciences would prepare a list of qualified members for the board, if the legislation becomes law.
The NDAA would authorize $29.5 million in funding for the DNFSB in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
