The DOE issued an order in mid-May that outlined new limits on an independent oversight board, which assesses safety concerns at nuclear facilities.
What happened: The Department of Energy (DOE) issued an order in mid-May that outlined new limits on an independent oversight board, which assesses safety concerns at nuclear facilities that could pose a grave risk to workers and the public. These limits are broad and extensive – taking away the board’s access to sensitive information related to safety, adding legal hurdles to board staff, and requiring that DOE officials speak “with one voice” when communicating with the safety board.
Why it matters: Federal science and technical advisory boards are composed of the country's best independent experts and their input is considered essential for guiding decisions related to public health. Limiting the safety board’s ability to access safety information also limits the ways that we can protect nuclear facility workers and the members of the public with the best data available. In the words of Senator Tom Udall (D-NM), the safety board plays a “critical role as an independent watchdog for public health and safety” and that “we have seen too many serious safety and security lapses at DOE nuclear sites to accept any attempts to weaken” the board.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) order (DOE O 140.1) places broad restrictions on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which could exclude thousands of DOE workers from the board’s oversight and could cut the number of buildings that are subject to the board’s jurisdiction by 71%. The order dictates that board members can no longer speak to lab staff without express permission from DOE officials, a process that could stop board members from gaining time-sensitive information during an emergency. Additionally, the order may make it difficult for the board to gain access to records on how much radiation workers are exposed to, and it may prevent board members from attending fact-finding meetings after a nuclear accident. When developing the order, the DOE failed to consult with the people that are directly impacted by the order, like members of the board, workers’ unions or residents who live near nuclear facilities, although several private contractors were consulted about the order.
Even acting board chairman Bruce Hamilton – who previously wanted to cut the board’s staff by 32% and wanted the board staff give the weekly safety reports orally in order to avoid publicly embarrassing the DOE – believes that the order went too far. Hamilton described the order as being inconsistent with the Atomic Energy Act and called the order “a subtle attempt to say that the board doesn’t get to decide” when its intervention in a potential safety problem is warranted. The DOE and its National Nuclear Security Administration, the branch which oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, described the order as rather innocuous and as “not intended to harm,” framing the order as a needed update of a 17-year-old manual that will increase efficiency and decrease costs. Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) are both protesting the DOE order by writing a letter to congressional appropriators to ask that language be added to the DOE’s budget for next year that will stop the DOE’s attempt to limit the safety board.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board was created by Congress in 1988 as a way to add a layer of accountability and transparency to the DOE and to combat widespread concerns about safety of nuclear facilities at the time. While there have been previous efforts to sideline the safety board, advocates of the board say that the pressure has gotten worse in the past year. Last summer, the board’s then-chairman proposed dissolving the board entirely. A few months later, the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration tried to stop the board from publishing weekly safety reports on the national laboratories, reports they found unflattering because the media has previously referenced them.
The order has already had a detrimental effect on the safety board, according to testimony by the board’s technical director. The board has recently been blocked from gaining access to safety data at nuclear facilities, like documents on a “nuclear explosive safety” issue at the Pantex Plant in Texas and the documents on the “redefinition” of what constitutes a highly explosive reaction at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
This is not the first time that federal science and technical advisory boards have been sidelined under the Trump administration (see here and here). One year into the Trump administration, a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that advisory committees met less often, decreased by an average of 14%, and that there was a wide pattern of neglect and disrespect of committees by agency officials. However, sidelining the DOE’s nuclear safety board may be a particularly egregious act. Nuclear facilities, some of which are showing signs of aging, are being asked to perform more work on the US stockpile of weapons than they have in decades, as the United States undertakes a comprehensive initiative to maintain and upgrade its entire nuclear arsenal. As one board member puts it, “this seems to be the perfect storm for accidents to happen and this is a time when we should be doubling down on safety.” By limiting, neglecting and sidelining the advisory board that was designed to protect people from the potential dangers at nuclear facilities, the current administration is heightening the risk to public health and is demonstrating a complete lack of regard towards science-based oversight at our federal institutions. Because the safety board cannot draft evidence-based policies at nuclear facilities without access to safety data, this policy has the very real possibility of increasing the death and injury rate of workers and members of the public.