NS&D Monitor
3/21/2014
IN DOE
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has made its 18 selections to a Congressionally mandated Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories, and now it’s up to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to whittle that list down to nine. Moniz has until May 1 to make his selections for the panel after PCAST forwarded its 18 selections to the Department of Energy last week. The names of the selections have not been released publicly. The commission, created by a Senate-drafted provision in the Fiscal Year 2014 omnibus appropriations act, has a broad mandate, as language in the bill tasks it to examine whether the national laboratories are properly aligned with DOE strategic goals, are not “unnecessarily redundant and duplicative,” effectively support current and future national security challenges, are sized correctly, and provide a benefit to other government agencies. The commission is also expected to weigh in on whether there are “opportunities to more effectively and efficiently use the capabilities of the national laboratories, including consolidation and realignment, reducing overhead costs, reevaluating governance models using industrial and academic bench marks for comparison, and assessing the impact of DOE’s oversight and management approach.”
IN THE DNFSB
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is seeking a small boost in funding next year to hire additional staff the Board says are needed to handle additional workload requirements. The DNFSB’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, released late last week, seeks $30.15 million, an increase of approximately $2 million from the Board’s current funding levels. Approximately half of the requested funding increase would be used to add five new full-time equivalents (FTEs) in response to “the need for increased resources for safety oversight” at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant; the assignment of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Inspector General to also provide IG serves to the Board; and changes made by lawmakers to how the Board operates, such as requiring the Board to assess risk when preparing recommendations, the request states. Defending its proposed funding increase, the Board said in its request, “The cost of re-engineering and making post-construction safety modifications to complex DOE defense nuclear facilities due to the late identification of significant design flaws would require significantly more resources than the Board’s requested budget. When incomplete or incorrect safety features are identified late in the design stage (or worse, in the construction stage) project costs are increased and schedules are delayed.”