At a time of much Department of Energy turnover at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a government safety watchdog says DOE relies too heavily on staff expertise.
As a result, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Chair Joyce Connery wants a report and briefing before Christmas on DOE steps to upgrade its facility representative program.
DOE’s field representative program ensures that competent DOE staff people are assigned to oversee the day-to-day contractor operations at the agency’s hazardous nuclear and non-nuclear facilities, according to a 2021 DOE document.
“As a self-regulator, DOE must maintain proper independent safety oversight and cognizance of contractor safety performance,” Connery said in a letter dated June 14. In the letter to Candice Robertson, the recently-appointed senior adviser in charge of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, Connery said DOE relies “too much on the expertise of its facility representatives.”
The letter asks for a report and briefing on the issue within six months. DNFSB has been looking at Savannah River for about 18 months and questions if the current framework is rigorous enough.
“Given recent attrition and the short tenure and experience of many current facility representatives, reliance on expertise has not been an adequate substitute for implementation of requirements,” Connery said.
According to the letter, DNFSB fears DOE’s Savannah River facility representatives are not consistently identifying key trends, providing adequate facility coverage, doing high-quality assessments or offering necessary guidance and safety oversight.
For example, there were “a significant number of conduct of operations issues during 2023” at the the Defense Waste Processing Facility that were not sufficiently reflected in an annual assessment by the facility representatives, DNFSB said.
DOE Savannah River Site leadership “broadly agreed with the identified weaknesses in its facility representative program and has initiated efforts to improve the program,” Connery said in the letter.
“Regarding the letter, as Chair Connery notes, we have been aware of the staff’s concerns for some time and began taking appropriate action well before receiving this letter,” a DOE spokesperson said in a Tuesday email response to Exchange Monitor. “We are committed to ensuring our facility representatives are providing exceptional safety oversight of our operations and are confident that our new program guidance will ensure a more effective program going forward.”
DNFSB is a small agency within the executive branch charged with providing outside advice and recommendations to the DOE for its nuclear defense facilities.
DNFSB staff inspect both DOE Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) facilities at Savannah River. Management of Savannah River formally transfers to NNSA from Environmental Management Oct. 1.
NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby and Savannah River’s NNSA field boss Michael Mikolanis were among those copied on the letter.
