The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety board (DNFSB), mandated to oversight of certain DOE activities, confirms SRS “denied or delayed access to information, facilities, or personnel meetings that were necessary for the Board to perform its mission.” This action may have been unlawful given DNFSB’s mandate under the law. We have wondered for many months which DOE sites denied access, etc.
See this revelation in the DNFSB’s report to Congress, posted on March 18, 2020:
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
30th Annual Report to Congress
March 2020
Lots of interesting stuff on LANL, Y-12, SRS, etc:
pages 4-5:
In addition to denying access to nuclear explosive safety study deliberations, DOE prevented the Board’s staff from receiving ready access to certain information, personnel, and facilities needed to perform independent oversight effectively. Specifically, the Board’s resident inspectors stationed at Los Alamos National Laboratory have not received timely access to routine correspondence between DOE’s Environmental Management field office and its contractor in functional areas related to defense nuclear facilities. Further, personnel at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Los Alamos National Laboratory field office, and the NNSA Savannah River field office have denied or delayed access to information, facilities, or personnel meetings that were necessary for the Board to perform its mission. In most instances, DOE eventually provided access; however, the delays required every level of the Board’s organization to spend significant amounts of time and effort to ameliorate. As a result, DOE’s actions have caused delays in the Board’s ability to provide timely oversight, and siphoned away resources from safety oversight activities.
Overall, the Board believes that DOE’s implementation of DOE Order 140.1 has impacted the long-standing productive relationship between the Board and DOE, as evidenced by the examples provided above.
Report linked here: