DEFENSE BOARD SEEKS $30M FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is seeking a funding level of approximately $30 million for Fiscal Year 2013. The Board’s budget request of $29.4 million, sent to Congress last week, is roughly in line with current funding levels, though it does call for an additional $200,000 to enter into an agreement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for Inspector General services as required by lawmakers. The Board said its requested funding level, which would allow for a slightly increased staffing level of 120 full-time equivalents, “is necessary to ensure that the scientific and technical resources required to oversee nuclear safety issues are available to review DOE’s expanding design and construction, remediation, and future weapons programs in a timely and efficient manner, and address congressional concerns.”

The request also says, “The Board notes that the cost of re-engineering and making post-construction modifications to complex DOE defense nuclear facilities, due to the late identification of significant design flaws that could impact public and worker health and safety, would require significantly more resources than the Board’s requested budget. When incomplete or incorrect safety features are identified late in the design stage (or worse, in the construction stage) project costs are increased and schedules are delayed while corrections are made. With DOE’s design and construction budget exceeding $25 billion, each increase in project cost of one percent (1%) equates to an increase of more than $250 million.” The Board’s full FY 2013 request can be found here.