The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday approved the nomination of David Jonas to be Department of Energy general counsel by a 14-9 vote.
The roll-call vote split almost entirely along party lines, with only Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) Angus King (I-Vt.) breaking ranks with the Democrats to support Jonas’ nomination. There was no discussion of the nomination before or after the vote.
Jonas is currently a partner at the Fluet, Huber & Hoang law firm in Virginia. The Marine Corps veteran previously served as general counsel for both DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. He left the latter position after raising concerns in 2014 about the work environment at the DNFSB General Counsel’s Office and the conduct of then-board Chairman Peter Winokur.
The Senate panel also approved Trump administration nominees to two positions within the Interior Department and two nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Jonas now joins two other DOE nominees waiting for confirmation votes from the full Senate: Mark Wesley Menezes, a lobbyist for Berkshire Hathaway Energy, to be undersecretary for the Department of Energy; Paul Dabbar of J.P. Morgan to be DOE’s undersecretary for science.
If appointed, Menezes would lead the section of DOE that includes legacy nuclear cleanup programs managed by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management. In the department’s current organizational hierarchy, the assistant secretary for environmental management reports directly to the undersecretary office Menezes would occupy if confirmed.
The only confirmed political appointees to DOE to date are Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette. The administration has yet to submit any nominees for a number of positions at DOE and other Cabinet agencies, including assistant energy secretary for environmental management and administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico failed to keep watch over suppliers’ capacity to carry out their quality assurance (QA) directives, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said in a new report that highlighted several QA challenges at the site.
The report, dated Sept. 14 and released this week, found that some of the faulty practices predated two February 2014 accidents that closed the underground transuranic waste repository for nearly three years.
“We concluded that these weaknesses were attributable to limited oversight by the Carlsbad Field Office,” the DOE operation that oversees WIPP, according to the report. The Inspector General’s Office said it brought the weaknesses to the field’s office attention.
“While we did not identify a direct connection between the accidents and the weaknesses identified in our report, the delay to the Department’s cleanup mission and increased financial burden to the taxpayer as a result of the accidents from February 2014 highlight the importance of minimizing the risk of future operational delays,” the IG’s Office said.
Such practices also have implications for WIPP’s plan to build a new permanent ventilation system needed to increase airflow in the mine, the audit says.
In particular, WIPP didn’t always do an adequate job in providing “commercial grade dedications” to ensure that safety-related products or services pass muster with American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) requirements for nuclear facilities. In addition, WIPP didn’t always properly vet vendors’ ability to meet specific quality assurance marks “prior to and after contract award.” The IG also identified gaps in WIPP management of important records.
Official at WIPP and the Carlsbad Field Office “concurred with our recommendations” and have started correcting issues highlighted in the audit report, the report says. WIPP submitted a “corrective action plan” in October 2016 to address concerns about commercial grade dedications, according to the audit.
The National Academies will, over the next year, evaluate technology development activities within the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM).
The study, led by the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, is being conducted at the request of DOE EM. It has two primary purposes: reviewing the office’s technology development activities, including the means DOE EM uses to select particular systems to be developed; and evaluating “technologies and/or alternative approaches” that could cut expenses, hasten the pace of work, relieve potential issues, and offer other enhancements to the $6 billion-plus annual remediation mission.
The review is expected to last more than a year.
The Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board is seeking specialists within fields such as chemistry, engineering, geoscience, risk analysis, and waste processing and management to help with the process. The deadline to nominate experts is Sept. 29. For information, email the study director, Rania Kosti, at [email protected].
A federal judge last week set the schedule in a discrimination lawsuit against the liquid waste management contractor for the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, but has not set a date for trial.
Adrienne Saulsberry, an African-American woman and former employee of 23 years at Savannah River Remediation (SRR), alleged in an August 2016 lawsuit that she was terminated in 2013 because of her role in a different incident that also had racial overtones. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for South Carolina, and is currently being handled by Magistrate Judge Paige Jones Gossett.
In spring 2013, a white SRR employee was terminated after an internal investigation confirmed he had made threats toward then-President Barack Obama while in the presence of African-American co-workers, according to Saulsberry’s lawsuit.
Saulsberry, at the time a radiological first-line manager for SRR, confirmed to management that the white employee had made racially motivated comments. The complaint alleges she subsequently faced backlash from other white co-workers who were friends of the fired employee, including a manager who initiated her termination. She is seeking reinstatement, back pay, and payment of her attorney fees from SRR.
Savannah River Remediation has denied many of Saulsberry’s claims, and said her other claims had insufficient information to evaluate their validity. In court documents, the contractor has said she was let go as part of a formal reduction in force.
In the latest case filing on Sept. 13, Gossett gave each side a series of deadlines. By Oct. 8, Saulsberry’s lawyers must provide names, phone numbers, and addresses for each person they expect to call as a witness. SRR must do the same by Nov.7. Each party then has until Nov. 24 to file objections to the other’s witness list.
The parties will have until Jan. 7, 2018, to complete discovery, the fact-finding phase of the case ahead of trial. During discovery, the parties can request information from each other, gain access to relevant documents, and request depositions. After discovery, the sides will have until Jan. 21 to file any additional motions.
Finally, the parties will have until March 29 to complete an optional mediation, in which they would attempt to resolve the case without going to trial.
