In an unexpected turn of events yesterday, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board did not approve a draft memorandum endorsing a call to better integrate the National Nuclear Security Administration within the Department of Energy. SEAB members gathered for a teleconference quibbled over language in the letter related to a recommendation of the panel to make it a requirement for an Energy Secretary to have a background in nuclear security. Some SEAB members were concerned that such a requirement would commit future presidents to a candidate with those kinds of qualifications. “I don’t see realistically how anyone can commit future presidents to appoint a cabinet secretary that has those skills,” said former MIT professor Paul Joskow, a member of the SEAB. “It’s a good idea but how does one make a commitment like that.”
The governance panel, chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine and former Strategic Command chief Richard Mies, said moving the NNSA out of DOE into the Department of Defense or making it an autonomous agency is a “clearly inferior choice” to requiring the Secretary of Energy to possess nuclear security qualifications. In their draft memo to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the SEAB said it “unanimously and strongly agree[s]” with the main recommendation of the panel. “SEAB stresses that the consequence of taking no action risks continuing deterioration of DOE’s ability to fulfill its national security mission and the morale throughout the complex,” the panel said in its draft letter. “We urge you to encourage the administration and Congress, vigorously and vocally, both publically and within the DOE/NNSA community, to endorse the Panel’s constructive approach and implement the needed legislative change to the DOE Organization Act.”
SEAB Chairman John Deutch said he would seek to “repair” the memorandum to better reflect the opinion of the Board, which he said was still supportive of many of the main ideas of the governance report. “I certainly do not want to say … if you don’t have a secretary that has nuclear security experience then you ought to redo the department,” Deutch said. “I don’t want to say that. That’s really the way it’s written here, that’s what it implies. I do want to say that the SEAB, with deep expertise, unanimously and strongly agrees with the conclusions of the Augustine/Mies panel, but that doesn’t mean on every element.”
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