The Donald Trump administration is close to a mostly Republican Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but is still operating with a Democratic-leaning Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The White House in January began an ideological shift at both five-member groups, but the NRC, which regulates commercial nuclear power plants and civilian nuclear waste, is further along in its transformation than the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), which issues safety recommendations for nuclear weapons facilities and cleanup sites such as the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Both the NRC and DNFSB are nominally apolitical, but in practice presidents can and do try to tilt the balance toward their own political party. Each group may have up to three members who belong to the same political party, under federal law.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had two vacancies when Trump took office, and Bush administration appointee Kristine Svinicki’s term was due to end on June 30.
Trump appointed Svinicki as NRC chairman within a week of taking office, and the Senate last month confirmed her for a third term, through June 30, 2022. This month, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved floor votes for Trump’s two remaining NRC commissioners-designate: Republican Senate staffer and nuclear engineer Annie Caputo and former South Carolina Public Service Commissioner David Wright. Those floor votes had not been scheduled at deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor.
The administration has not taken such drastic steps at DNFSB, which was already fully staffed on Inauguration Day. Board members serve five-year terms but may remain at their posts after those terms expire, until the Senate confirms a replacement. Three board members are currently serving past the end of their formal terms.
Trump began to tilt DNFSB Republican in January by appointing Sean Sullivan chairman and Bruce Hamilton vice chairman. Each of the nuclear Navy veterans confirmed their Republican leanings this week in separate phone interviews with Weapons Complex Monitor.
Sullivan flirted with a political career in 2008, when he ran for Congress in the 2nd District of Connecticut, and in 2010, when he ran for State Senate. He was on the Republican ticket both times. Sullivan joined the DNFSB in 2012.
Hamilton said he is part of the Republican side of the board, although he is not a registered member of the GOP. He succeeded Democrat Jessie Hill Roberson, the vice chair during the final years of the Obama administration.
But for now, DNFSB still leans Democratic, thanks to three three members appointed to the board during the Barack Obama administration: Joyce Connery, Roberson, and Daniel Santos. All three gave money to Democratic political candidates at some point in the last six election cycles. Roberson was identified as a Democrat in 2016 by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) when she was nominated to be an NRC commissioner.
Real or perceived, the ideological leanings of DNFSB and NRC members have consequences, even if the only consequence is who gets to serve.
Roberson remains with DNFSB in large part because Inhofe implied he was unwilling to approve her for a seat on the NRC unless the Obama administration accompanied a Republican to go with her. When that didn’t happen, Roberson wound up staying on at DNFSB.
Connery, Roberson, and Santos declined to speak with Weapons Complex Monitor this week.
In theory, Roberson is the Democratic-leaning DNFSB member Trump could replace the quickest. Connery and Santos are still serving their five-year terms, but Roberson’s last term expired Oct. 18, 2013.
Santos’ term expires on Oct. 18, 2017, while Connery, chair of DNFSB in the final years of the Obama administration, serves at least through Oct. 18, 2019.
Sullivan and Hamilton are also serving beyond the expiration of their last terms. Sullivan’s term expired in 2015, while Hamilton’s expired in 2016.
The Obama admnistration renominated Roberson and Hamilton, but the Senate never acted on either nomination, and the paperwork was returned to the White House shortly before Inauguration Day this year.
There is at least one recent example of the three Democratic-leaning members of DNFSB voting together on a piece of board business.
On July 11, Connery, Roberson, and Santos voted against disclosing transcripts of three DNFSB meetings that took place in 2015. During these meetings, members discussed “deficiencies in emergency preparedness and response at the Los Alamos National Laboratory,” according to a record of the July 13 vote posted on the board’s website.
New DNFSB Chairman Sullivan — who along with Vice Chair Hamilton voted in the minority for disclosure — argued that because the board did not issue a formal recommendation to the secretary of energy for correcting these deficiencies, the transcripts should be released publicly.
His colleagues did not agree.
At deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor, the Trump administration had not nominated or renominated anyone for a spot on DNFSB.
