Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
2/20/2015
In an unexpected turn of events this week, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board did not approve a draft memorandum endorsing a call to better integrate the National Nuclear Security Administration within the Department of Energy. SEAB members gathered for a teleconference Feb. 17 to approve the memorandum—and voice support for the findings of the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise—ended up disagreeing over language in the letter related to a panel recommendation that would have made it a requirement for an Energy Secretary to have a background in nuclear security.
The idea was put forth by the governance panel, which was chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine and retired Strategic Command chief Adm. Richard Mies, but some SEAB members were concerned that such a requirement would commit future presidents to a candidate with those kinds of qualifications. “I don’t see realistically how anyone can commit future presidents to appoint a cabinet secretary that has those skills,” said former MIT professor Paul Joskow, a member of the SEAB. “It’s a good idea but how does one make a commitment like that?”
SEAB ‘Unanimously and Strongly Agree[s]’ With Panel’s Main Recommendation
In addition to its recommendation to strengthen the nuclear security credentials of the Secretary of Energy, the governance panel said moving the NNSA out of DOE into the Department of Defense or making it an autonomous agency is a “clearly inferior choice” to folding the NNSA back into DOE and requiring the Secretary of Energy to possess nuclear security qualifications. The panel also suggested renaming DOE to reflect the focus on nuclear security and also called for dubbing NNSA the Office of Nuclear Security.
In their draft memo to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the SEAB said it “unanimously and strongly agree[s]” with the main recommendation of the panel. “SEAB stresses that the consequence of taking no action risks continuing deterioration of DOE’s ability to fulfill its national security mission and the morale throughout the complex,” the panel said in its draft letter. “We urge you to encourage the administration and Congress, vigorously and vocally, both publically and within the DOE/NNSA community, to endorse the Panel’s constructive approach and implement the needed legislative change to the DOE Organization Act.”
SEAB to ‘Repair’ Memorandum
SEAB Chairman John Deutch said he would seek to “repair” the memorandum to better reflect the opinion of the Board, which he said was still supportive of many of the main ideas of the governance report. “I certainly do not want to say … if you don’t have a secretary that has nuclear security experience then you ought to redo the department,” Deutch said. “I don’t want to say that. That’s really the way it’s written here, that’s what it implies. I do want to say that the SEAB, with deep expertise, unanimously and strongly agrees with the conclusions of the Augustine/Mies panel, but that doesn’t mean on every element.”
In its draft letter, the SEAB also said it agreed with another of the panel’s findings—that too much reliance has been placed on award fees across the weapons complex—but said it “doubts” that the panel’s recommendation to move toward the use of award-term extensions and fixed fees would help repair the relationship between the NNSA and its contractors. The SEAB also said “substantially more attention should be paid to improving the morale and creative atmosphere at the weapons laboratories and the production facilities. The tension that has existed between the NNSA and M&O contractors is corrosive to the maintaining technical excellence that is the essential underpinning of the laboratory capability. Finding and keeping the most talented employees is the responsibility of every part of the management chain, especially the laboratory leadership.”
