The Energy Department may assess civil penalties against contractors that retaliate against whistleblowers within their ranks, under a new agency rule that goes into effect Jan. 26.
The agency released a summary of the final rule last week in the Federal Register.
Senate Democrats from Washington state and Oregon, major stakeholders in the cleanup of the Hanford Site on the Columbia River that divides those two states, have criticized DOE for allowing its contractors to muffle employee concerns about nuclear safety.
The impending rule, set to kick in the week after Donald Trump is sworn in as president of the United States, clarifies that DOE’s “prohibition against whistleblower retaliation is a DOE Nuclear Safety Requirement to the extent that it concerns nuclear safety.”
Over the summer, Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a bill aimed at simplifying what they said are convoluted, overly bureaucratic whistleblower protocols at DOE. The bill — which will be rendered null and void in the new Congress set to gavel in Jan. 3 — would also have created new whistleblower protections and new consequences for contractors who subvert them.
In 2012, DOE halted construction on significant portions of the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) Bechtel National is building to treat liquid waste at the Hanford Site after an employee at a WTP subcontractor blew the whistle over safety concerns — a move the employee, engineer Walter Tamosaitis, said cost him his job.
