Jessie Hill Roberson, a nuclear fixture for more than 40 years, called it a career Wednesday when she retired as a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. 

Now, she plans to take three months or so to decompress from about 14 years with the board, spread over various terms dating back to 1999. She did not immediately plan to pursue any sort of full-time occupation. 

Since graduating from the University of Tennessee, and working as an intern for Westinghouse, Roberson has worked in nuclear power, cleanup, regulation and safety. In 1981 Roberson joined Dupont, which was running the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for the Department of Energy. There, she was one of four women in a management training program.

During her nuclear odyssey, Roberson worked on the Clinch River Breeder reactor near Oak Ridge, Tenn., before the program was killed during the Jimmy Carter administration, spent time with nuclear plant operators such as Exelon and logged more than a decade with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. This included a stint in the top spot as the Senate-confirmed assistant secretary or EM-1. 

Four years before ascending to the top DOE cleanup post, Roberson ran the agency’s Rocky Flats Office in Colorado. There, the young DOE manager encountered a workforce still rattled by the aftermath of a FBI raid of the weapons facility more than a decade earlier.

In an interview Monday with the Exchange Monitor at Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) headquarters in Washington, D.C., Roberson looked back on her career. 

[The following has been edited for length and clarity.]

Exchange Monitor: How are these last days going? Packing?

Roberson: I am separating the things that I am taking with me and the things that I want to leave. Photos of different scenes from across the complex. I’m just separating out the memorabilia.

EXM: I’m guessing there is not an over-abundance of African-American women in managerial jobs around the nuclear weapons complex today and even fewer in the 1980s?

That’s correct. There were few minorities and even fewer technical women of any color in the complex. It was lonely. Again, I don’t know why but there were people who developed great confidence and hope in me. Sometimes you just need them to help you grow. But you see more [minorities in key nuclear positions]. There is still a wall. You will often see them more in the lower ranks of an organization. There are still challenges to ascend. But some have. There is definitely more diversity here and everywhere I see.

Talk about some of your non-DNFSB experiences. You served on something of a weapons complex Holy Trinity: Nuclear contractor, DOE and safety oversight at the board?

At the University of Tennessee, we had great benefit in being able to learn and experiment with some of the research reactors at Oak Ridge. I actually worked for Westinghouse as a student. [When the Clinch River Breeder reactor was called off, it was] very traumatic as a nuclear engineer. … I also worked for Georgia Power as well as Exelon.

You have a LinkedIn page, but …

It’s bare. I don’t do social media. … Now when I retire, I could become scary.

You were nominated by, or served under, four different presidents from both parties.

[Counting them, comes up with five: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and finally, Joe Biden]. It was quite an honor. I will tell you that.

You were also nominated by President Obama in 2015 to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but were never confirmed?

Congress changed, things changed, it took a long time.

How did serving as DOE field boss at the Rocky Flats weapons site in the mid-to-late 1990s, after the FBI raided it to investigate alleged environmental crimes, prepare you for later federal posts?

The timing was not totally coincidental. When I went to Rocky, what I learned is that people are very fragile. Even though it had been a number of years since that had happened the workforce was very much impacted emotionally. I was very young, so I learned on the go that you have to take care of people and they will take care of you. I was “Rambo” and came to realize the importance of people versus implementing a plan. … I learned so much there. I became a good manager. [The site was also moving from] making stuff [to cleanup and this was a cultural shift].

What was the DNFSB like during your first tour in 2000, compared with today?

I came to the Board from Rocky Flats at the end of 1999. I was here with the original gang [including A. J. Eggenberger and John Conway] I was privileged to get to work with them even for that period of time. They were there when the board was formed. Nobody understood better how it was supposed to function. The board was a tremendously strong organization technically.

[Today,] I think the board is strong. I wish the board had more board members. The board is at its best when it actually has a full complement of board members. After all, it relies on the integration of knowledge and expertise of people that come from different parts of the complex. I remain in awe of the staff.

You could have stayed on the board for a while?

The law says I could stay. To maintain quorum, a board member who[se term] has expired can stay on until replaced. But I think it’s important to know when to go. [Now down to two members,] the board needs to be rebuilt.

DNFSB Chair Joyce Connery and vice chair Thomas Summers can continue to issue safety recommendations to DOE for up to a year? Their terms expire in 2024 and 2025 What then?

It’s never been tested. The two remaining board members I had the opportunity to work with, they work well together. The decision-making still relies on the board. My advice is less to the board members [than to elected leaders] to ensure you put together a team that gels and can work together. Even now the replacement for Ms. Connery needs to be in process. You need another candidate all the time.

Patricia Lee of the Savannah River National Laboratory has been nominated but not gotten a committee vote or hearing yet.

We are glad she is in committee. At least I know that if you can get through committee magic can happen. People are anxious to have her complete that process.

The DNFSB has gone through turbulent times. Low morale and other issues were cited in a 2018 report by the National Academy of Publication Administration. Have the problems been fixed?

A large majority have been addressed. But an organization is an organism. You think you have addressed one challenge or set of challenges and then others pop up. [The current challenges] are not of the same caliber [and productivity is] sky-high. I think employees are happy.

We had a lot of turnover in board members [prior to 2018]. Stability is very important when you have people learning how to live together. Stability in the board will directly affect comfort and stability in the staff.

During the Trump administration there was an order issued about DOE interactions with DNFSB.

[DOE] tried to shut the board out. [It] got too far off the rails [but] the [Trump] administration was very supportive of the board. Sometimes people don’t want to hear critique or criticisms. [I]t’s not a lovefest. There is always a degree of conflict.

Any retirement plans? 

People ask me this all the time and you know what I tell them? I am going to retire. I am not going to buy a new recliner.