Outgoing DNFSB Chairman Fears More Changes to Board Statute

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has easily absorbed recent Congressionally mandated changes to its statute, but outgoing Board Chairman Peter Winokur said yesterday that he feared that more drastic proposals for the Board would be damaging to the Board’s mission. Led by House Republicans, Congress directed the DNFSB to run its recommendations by the Department of Energy and also required the Board to have an Inspector General. Other proposals, like a requirement to force the Board to perform cost-benefit analyses on its recommendations, were met by opposition from Congressional Democrats, but could resurface if the Senate were to be controlled by Republicans. “The board is not the Secretary of Energy,” Winokur said at the Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum yesterday. “The Secretary of Energy has the responsibility for putting all of the puzzle pieces together and getting the mission done. The Board provides only one set of inputs. Asking the Board to be doing things like cost-benefit analysis, that begins to intrude on the Secretary’s responsibilities.”