Jessie Hill Roberson, a fixture in the public and private sectors of the nuclear field for more than 30 years, plans to exit the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board this October when her latest term expires, a board spokesperson said Monday.
The exit of the longtime nuclear hand could, temporarily at least, leave only two remaining members on a board set up for five. The board would be able to operate even if it gets down to one member; the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2023 granted the chair power to run things for up to a year.
Roberson, last confirmed by the Senate in July 2020, plans to leave the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) when her term expires Oct. 18, although current rules would allow her to stay on until a replacement is made, the spokesperson said in response to a telephone inquiry Monday.
The nuclear veteran Roberson once led environmental remediation at the Department of Energy and has spent most of the past 25 years working for nuclear-related branches of the government, according to her board biography.
Roberson has also worked for an electric company, Exelon Nuclear. She started her career working as an operations manager for Dow Chemical in 1981, according to her LinkedIn page.
Roberson has served multiple stints on DNFSB, the first of which began in January 2000 after her nomination by President Bill Clinton, according to another online bio, which also says she was once manager of DOE’s Rocky Flats site in Colorado.
In July 2015, Roberson was nominated by President Barack Obama to a seat on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission but was never confirmed.
President Joe Biden has announced plans to nominate Patricia Lee, a digital portfolio manager at the Savannah River National Laboratory, to the safety board. But Lee, who has also worked at the DOE Office of Environmental Management as a liaison to DNFSB, has not yet had a confirmation hearing scheduled in Senate Armed Services Committee.
If a new member is not confirmed by the Senate within five months, the safety watchdog panel built for five members, would be down to two— chair Joyce Connery, whose term ends in 2024, and vice-chair Thomas Summers whose term ends in 2025. The current trio has made up the board since September 2020 when then-chair Bruce Hamilton resigned.
