The head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will attend a Nov. 28 public hearing about a controversial agency order the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) fears will limit its access to defense-nuclear sites across the country.
Anne Marie White, assistant secretary for environmental management, accepted the invitation on or around Tuesday of this week, according to a letter that day from acting DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton.
“Your portion of the hearing should last no more than one hour,” Hamilton wrote to the “EM-1.”
The board was adamant that White, and no other EM office official, attend the hearing.
“As the Board specifically desires your perspective, this invitation may not be delegated,” Hamilton wrote in separate Oct. 16 invitations to White and Paul Dabbar: DOE undersecretary for science and White’s direct boss at the department.
While White is now confirmed to attend the hearing, Dabbar evidently will not participate. That is according to a draft agenda the board posted on its website last week. In Dabbar’s stead, the DNFSB hopes one of the seven Environmental Management field office managers will attend.
Which of the seven will merit an invitation is unclear; the board’s agenda agenda lists “Field Office Manager (TBD)” as one of participants on the first panel of the meeting, along with White and Chris Roscetti, DNFSB technical director. Yet-unidentified representatives from stakeholder groups would populate the second panel.
In May, the Department of Energy issued Order 140.1, which set strict new guidelines for how the agency and its contractors interact with DNFSB personnel. Order 140.1 would cut off the DNFSB’s access to about 70 percent of the Department of Energy nuclear sites the agency now inspects, Roscetti said in an August board hearing called to discuss the order publicly for the first time. That includes active nuclear weapon sites and Cold War nuclear-weapons cleanup facilities.
The DNFSB claims the Department of Energy lacks the legal authority to limit the board’s congressionally authorized access to defense nuclear sites and the people who work there.
The Energy Department says the order will allow it to speak with “one voice” to the DNFSB, which regularly visits and inspects facilities including the Hanford Site in Washington state, Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Pantex Plant in Texas, and the the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
