When Jessie Hill Roberson walks out of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s office for the last time as a federal employee on Wednesday, it will mark the end of a 40-plus year career in the nuclear field.
It also means the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), created by Congress in 1988 as a five-member panel, will lose its three-person quorum for probably the first time ever, Roberson said Monday.
Roberson talked with Exchange Monitor about her career, which includes serving on the board, as the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary of environmental management and as a DOE manager for cleanup of the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado.
The board has successfully made a “generational transition,” Roberson said. “I think the board is strong. I wish the board had more board members. … The board is at its best when it actually has a full complement of board members,” she said. “After all, it relies on the integration of knowledge and expertise of people that come from different parts of the complex” and science backgrounds.
Changes enacted through the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act enable the DNFSB to continue providing nuclear site safety advice and recommendations to the secretary of energy for up to a year.
But with only two members left, chair Joyce Connery and vice chair Thomas Summers, the personnel needs become more acute, Roberson said, noting that Connery’s term is scheduled to expire one year from now.
Patricia Lee, a manager at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, has been nominated by the Joe Biden White House but Senate Armed Services has yet to hold a hearing on the nomination.
Roberson could have continued to serve until a successor was in place but is ready to retire.
“I think it is important to know when to go,” she said.
