Thomas Summers, the acting chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), is scheduled to see his tenure on the safety watchdog for Department of Energy defense nuclear sites come to an end later this month.
Summers, a retired Air Force colonel who has also served as a senior adviser in the Office of Defense Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will see his DNFSB tenure expire on Oct. 18.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Summers to DNFSB in July 2020. Although board rules would allow Summers to stick around longer if it helped preserve a quorum, currently there is no quorum to preserve.
Set up as a five-member panel, DNFSB lost its quorum with the February retirement of long-term member Joyce Connery, who chaired the panel during the Joe Biden administration. Her departure left two members, Summers and Patricia Lee. Lee, who was confirmed in July 2024, will become the lone member of the panel by the end of the month.
While DNFSB lacks actual regulatory authority, it was set up to provide independent safety analysis and recommendations for DOE’s nuclear defense facilities. DOE is not required to abide by DNFSB recommendations but must publicly respond to them in writing.