Chairman: Abolish nuke safety panel
Letter tells budget office the board is a Cold War ‘relic’
The chairman of a panel charged with protecting workers at nuclear weapons facilities as well as nearby communities has told the White House he favors downsizing or abolishing the group, despite recent radiation and workplace safety problems that injured or endangered people at the sites it helps oversee.
Sean Sullivan, a Republican appointee and former Navy submarine officer, told the director of the Office of Management and Budget in a private letter that closing or shrinking the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board he chairs is consistent with President Trump’s ambition to cut the size of the federal workforce, according to a copy of Sullivan’s letter. It was written in June and obtained recently by the Center for Public Integrity.
The five-member Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, chartered by Congress in 1988, has a staff of 120, and its warnings have helped persuade the federal government to impose tighter safety rules and regulations at most of the eight sites where nuclear weapons and their parts are produced or stored.
In recent years, the nuclear weapons complex has repeatedly experienced alarming safety problems, including the mishandling of plutonium, a radioactive explosive; the mis-shipment of hazardous materials, including nuclear explosive materials; and the contamination of work areas and scientists by radioactive particles — shortcomings detailed in a recent Center for Public Integrity investigation.
Sullivan’s position is consistent with the longstanding preferences of the large private contractors that produce and maintain the country’s nuclear arms, most of which also contribute heavily to congressional election campaigns and spend sizable sums lobbying Washington. The board and its expert staff are now probing what it considers to be additional safety lapses or deficiencies that would cost weapons contractors millions of dollars to fix.
Three other board members, all Democrats, have said in written complaints about Sullivan’s proposal that he was not speaking for them, and argued that that other government agencies assigned to safeguard nuclear workers and the public near weapons sites are not capable of handling the task by themselves.
A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob Wood, declined to comment about the letter but said no announcement would be made by the White House about the issue until February, when the board’s fate will be decided as part of a Trump administration reorganization and consolidation plan.
Funding for the board’s operation in fiscal 2018 remains in versions of the defense funding bill, and in an effort to block Sullivan’s request, a Senate Democrat has added language to his chamber’s version that would bar the board’s elimination. But the bill is still being discussed between the Senate and House.
Eliminating the safety board entirely would annually save the government about $31 million a year in direct costs, while an alternative proposal to trim and disperse its personnel would save $7.2 million, Sullivan said in his June 29 letter to OMB director Mick Mulvaney.
Sullivan, who was a member of the board’s Republican minority for more than four years until Trump’s election elevated him to its top post, minced no words in his missive, calling the board he chairs a “relic” of the Cold War that performs work duplicative to the safety oversight provided by the Energy Department or the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which fi- nances the contractors’ work.
“Although the Board may have been helpful in providing for the adequate protection and public health and safety during its early years, that value today is provided only on the margins,” Sullivan’s letter said.
Sullivan, who has sparred with other board members and repeatedly voted against sending safety warning notices to the Department of Energy, said further that the board’s recommendations have imposed “myriad unnecessary” costs for the department.
Under the board’s charter, its advice can be ignored. But the Secretary of Energy is obligated by law to state publicly whether he or she agrees or disagrees. And in many cases, the department has reacted by imposing safety rules and requirements that con- tractors have complained are excessive.
At the Uranium Processing Facility under construction at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, for example, the board’s technical staff identified shortcuts contractors had taken that elevate the risk of a fire or a nuclear chain reaction by eliminating protective barriers that had once been part of the plan.
In a letter to NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz dated June 26 Sullivan said NNSA’s technical staff found the construction contractors’ plans called for fire-suppression pumps that could fail in an earthquake. And the building design called for the wrong kind of glass enclosures for work stations where highly enriched uranium would be housed.
Ten technical experts from the board stationed at five of these weapon sites prepare weekly public reports on safety practices, providing a unique public window into contractors’ periodic mistakes, some of which may affect the safety of workers and communities that live nearby.
“DOE’s own operational challenges demonstrate a continuing need for truly independent nuclear safety oversight,” wrote Democrat Jessie Roberson, a former assistant secretary of Energy who has been on the board since 2010, in a June 30 letter.
Joyce Connery, a former DOE and National Security Council staff member, wrote that the board “provides confidence to Congress and stakeholder communities these facilities are operating safely” and said Sullivan failed to understand “the importance of independent safety oversight.”
Sullivan’s statement to the White House budget office “does not reflect the collective opinion of the Board and does not reflect my opinion or support,” board member Daniel Santos said.
Asked for comment, Sullivan said he regards his letter as a privileged communication, and declined to comment about it.
“Although the Board may have been helpful in providing for the adequate protection and public health and safety during its early years, that value today is provided only on the margins.”
A letter by Sean Sullivan, chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.