The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) posted an open hearing that was scheduled for next week in Aiken, S.C., about the future of the Savannah River Site.

The independent federal nuclear health and safety watchdog temporarily called off the event because of witness availability, and has not rescheduled it yet, a board spokesperson said this week.

The board wants Department of Energy officials to testify at the hearing, but has had trouble getting the guest list to gel, the spokesperson said. The board and Energy Department seemed unable to agree on which agency officials were best suited to attend. The added logistical difficulties imposed by tighter DOE travel guidelines, laid down this week on account of the COVID-19 viral disease, complicated matters.

The DNFSB had proposed DOE witnesses including:

• William (Ike) White, Department of Energy senior adviser for environmental management.
• Jeff Griffin, DOE Office of Environmental Management associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, who left the the agency this week.
• Dae Chung, DOE Environmental Management deputy assistant secretary for safety, security, and quality assurance.
• Michael Mikolanis, DOE-Savannah River’s assistant manager for nuclear material stabilization.
• DOE-Savannah River’s chief engineer.

The DNFSB intended to bring a webcast production crew along to the University of South Carolina, meaning the meeting would have been streamed online for those who could not attend in person — something that is increasingly appealing as COVID-19 spreads swiftly across the country.

The goal of the hearing, according to the DNFSB, is to “discuss Department of Energy (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) actions that could impact the safety posture of particular operations at SRS.”

The DNFSB is attempting to get ahead of the curve with the hearing about the Savannah River Site’s future, in which DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) looms larger and larger each year.

Currently, about 65% of the roughly $2 billion of funding provided for Savannah River in fiscal 2020 comes from the Environmental Management office, 27% from the NNSA, and 8% from other agencies, according to presentations at this year’s annual Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix.

By fiscal 2025, the Environmental Management funding will drop to 45%, while NNSA support increases to 50%. The semiautonomous nuclear weapons agency plans to produce new plutonium pits — fissile nuclear weapon cores — at the South Carolina facility beginning in 2030. The NNSA has admitted it is challenged to make that date, but it is for now holding fast to the notion that Savannah River will have a working pit plant for decades to come.

Meanwhile, major Environmental Management projects at the South Carolina facility should be significantly advanced five years from now. For example, the Salt Waste Processing Facility is scheduled to begin operations in a matter of weeks.

The DNFSB hearing will also give DOE and its safety overseer another chance to smooth over a relationship that has become increasingly frayed since 2018.

That was the year the department laid down the controversial Order 140.1, which curtailed DNFSB access to some DOE facilities and personnel. In the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 that became law last year, Congress required that DOE give DNFSB “prompt and unfettered” access to anything the board says it needs to assess whether the public is safe from hazards at nuclear sites.

As a result, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said last week his agency is revising Order 140.1, and would soon brief the board about it. A board spokesperson said Thursday the meeting is scheduled for April 2.

Tensions between the two agencies tightened further after DOE took the unprecedented step in September of rejecting a DNFSB recommendation regarding the Savannah River Site’s tritium infrastructure. The board said DOE should better protect workers at these facilities, and throughout the site, from fires, explosions, and other accidents that could expose the public to radiation.

The NNSA owns the tritium facilities, and has told the DNFSB that ongoing and planned improvements to both the tritium infrastructure and operations and Savannah River will address the board’s concerns.

Tritium is a radioactive gas used to boost the power of thermonuclear weapons.

Wayne Barber, reporter for Weapons Complex Monitor, contributed to this story from Phoenix.