Four years after an agreement apparently resolved a federal safety watchdog’s access to staff and records at Department of Energy nuclear sites, the dispute appears to be back.
In an April 29 letter to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s (DNFSB) lone member said DOE is not complying with its Atomic Energy Act obligation to provide “prompt and unfettered access to facilities, personnel, and information that the board deems necessary to carry out its statutory nuclear safety oversight.”
The letter on Midcycle Open DOE deliverables is signed by Patricia Lee, the only current member on the safety board which is designed as a five-member panel of experts. President Donald Trump has not forwarded any new DNFSB nominations to the Senate so far in his second term.
DNFSB was set up by Congress in 1988 to “provide timely and comprehensive advice to the secretary of energy to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety at DOE defense nuclear facilities,” DNFSB said in the letter.
But since the board’s January 2026 report to Congress, DOE has responded to only two of nine DNFSB “reporting requirements,” according to the board’s letter. “In addition, DOE has begun to rescind some of the board’s staff longstanding access to meetings and electronic systems in a manner that is inconsistent with the existing memorandum of understanding between our agencies.”
Recent DOE restrictions were laid out in a March 10 memo to field office managers from DOE executives with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM).
“DOE recognizes its obligation to facilitate DNFSB’s mission,” according to the DOE memo. But, among other things, the memo said “DOE’s own independence, including the executive privileges of the president and the secretary, must be recognized, asserted, and protected during interactions with the DNFSB.”
The DNFSB said that on Jan.28, 2026, NNSA denied a request to restore access to a conference call “after it revoked longstanding access, indicating that the call was only for NNSA personnel and its contractors. NNSA provided written presentation materials shared during the call; however, these written materials do not contain the full details of content shared on the call,” DNFSB said in the letter.
The DOE’s March memo said there are limits to DNFSB authority. The department said DNFSB’s “primary tool is the issuance of formal recommendations” and it lacks “enforcement powers or authority to direct operations.”
The memo from NNSA’s James McConnell and EM’s Greg Sosson is titled “clarifying instructions” on interacting with DNFSB.
The letter from the two DOE officials says: “Health and safety standards [involving DNFSB] include approved orders, regulations, and requirements, but do not include information involving excluded functions under 42 U.S.C. § 2286a(c), which excludes functions relating to the safety of atomic weapons from the board’s authority.”
In board materials, DNFSB asserts much of DOE’s recent stance is similar to the first Trump administration in 2018 in the form of former DOE Order 140.1. In response Congress inserted language into the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act “to limit the secretary’s ability to deny access to the board’s staff responsibilities.”
“Over the years, DOE has supported DNFSB in the execution of its mission, providing it broad access to DOE facilities and information consistent with the DNFSB’s statutory authority,” an Environmental Management spokesperson said in an email reply to an Exchange Monitor inquiry Tuesday.
Spokespeople at DOE, EM and NNSA did not immediately respond to a Tuesday morning email seeking comment. A DNFSB spokesperson said DOE has yet to respond to the board’s April 29 letter.