Sunday, September 2, 2018
The Trump administration reins in a nuclear weapons safety watchdog
"The Trump administration, acting in an open partnership with the profit-making contractors that control the industrial sites where U.S. nuclear bombs are made and stored, has enacted new rules that limit the authority and reach of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, created by Congress in 1988 amid broad public concerns over civil and military nuclear safety lapses."
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/08/30/22191/trump-administration-reins-nuclear-weapons-safety-watchdog
Friday, August 31, 2018
NM senators speak out on nuclear safety board order
New Mexico senators speak out on nuclear safety board order
By Rebecca Moss | rmoss@sfnewmexican.com
New Mexico’s U.S. senators are asking Congress to block a Department of Energy order that would limit a federal board’s access to information about nuclear facilities and could hinder its ability to oversee worker health and safety.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the leaders of a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall also ask their colleagues to block impending staff cuts and a broad reorganization at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. New Mexico is home to three of the 14 nuclear facilities under the board’s jurisdiction: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
“We feel strongly that these two matters facing the [safety board] and its future must be suspended while Congress and the public have time to review and offer constructive feedback” on how to maintain and improve the board, the senators wrote to Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairman and ranking member of the energy and water development subcommittee.
Spokespeople for Alexander and Feinstein said their senators were still reviewing the proposal. Both senators have large nuclear facilities in their states.
The nuclear safety board, which falls under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction, was established in 1988 to provide additional oversight and transparency to the Department of Energy’s largely self-regulating nuclear complexes, which were plagued by contamination and negligent safety practices.
The board reviews incidents and near-misses, and it provides safety recommendations and advice to the energy secretary. But there have been efforts to hamper the board, and over the last year, it has faced a series of attacks on its independence and very existence, even from its own leadership.
Last summer the board’s then-chairman suggested his agency be dissolved, calling it a relic of the Cold War. And a few months later, the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy that oversees nuclear facilities, proposed eliminating written weekly reports on safety issues at the labs to avoid public scrutiny. Neither of these proposals were adopted.
This month, the board approved a plan to slash staff at its Washington headquarters, which would be partially offset by increasing the number of inspectors working at national laboratories and nuclear plants. The measure was approved by three of the four board members. Board member Joyce Connery wrote in her dissenting vote that the public should have had an opportunity to weigh in on the plan, which it did not.
On Tuesday, the board convened a hearing with officials from the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration to discuss the new order limiting the board’s access to information. Board members criticized the order, saying it appears to contradict the U.S. Atomic Energy Act.
Board members said neither they nor workers nor members of the public were formally consulted on the order, and it has already prevented them from accessing safety information at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas.
Energy officials said the order is intended to update a 17-year-old guideline for how the Department of Energy and the board should interact.
But Udall and Heinrich said Thursday that neither action should have moved forward without “real consultation with Congress.” They are asking that the board’s next public hearing on the order take place in New Mexico next month.
At a campaign event in Santa Fe this month, Heinrich said the order was among “a whole series of policy decisions by this administration that frankly weren’t even in their best long-term interest.”
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/new-mexico-senators-speak-out-on-nuclear-safety-board-order/article_446add7f-b6e5-54d8-a8ce-5084cfff6688.html
By Rebecca Moss | rmoss@sfnewmexican.com
New Mexico’s U.S. senators are asking Congress to block a Department of Energy order that would limit a federal board’s access to information about nuclear facilities and could hinder its ability to oversee worker health and safety.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the leaders of a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall also ask their colleagues to block impending staff cuts and a broad reorganization at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. New Mexico is home to three of the 14 nuclear facilities under the board’s jurisdiction: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
“We feel strongly that these two matters facing the [safety board] and its future must be suspended while Congress and the public have time to review and offer constructive feedback” on how to maintain and improve the board, the senators wrote to Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairman and ranking member of the energy and water development subcommittee.
Spokespeople for Alexander and Feinstein said their senators were still reviewing the proposal. Both senators have large nuclear facilities in their states.
The nuclear safety board, which falls under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction, was established in 1988 to provide additional oversight and transparency to the Department of Energy’s largely self-regulating nuclear complexes, which were plagued by contamination and negligent safety practices.
The board reviews incidents and near-misses, and it provides safety recommendations and advice to the energy secretary. But there have been efforts to hamper the board, and over the last year, it has faced a series of attacks on its independence and very existence, even from its own leadership.
Last summer the board’s then-chairman suggested his agency be dissolved, calling it a relic of the Cold War. And a few months later, the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy that oversees nuclear facilities, proposed eliminating written weekly reports on safety issues at the labs to avoid public scrutiny. Neither of these proposals were adopted.
This month, the board approved a plan to slash staff at its Washington headquarters, which would be partially offset by increasing the number of inspectors working at national laboratories and nuclear plants. The measure was approved by three of the four board members. Board member Joyce Connery wrote in her dissenting vote that the public should have had an opportunity to weigh in on the plan, which it did not.
On Tuesday, the board convened a hearing with officials from the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration to discuss the new order limiting the board’s access to information. Board members criticized the order, saying it appears to contradict the U.S. Atomic Energy Act.
Board members said neither they nor workers nor members of the public were formally consulted on the order, and it has already prevented them from accessing safety information at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas.
Energy officials said the order is intended to update a 17-year-old guideline for how the Department of Energy and the board should interact.
But Udall and Heinrich said Thursday that neither action should have moved forward without “real consultation with Congress.” They are asking that the board’s next public hearing on the order take place in New Mexico next month.
At a campaign event in Santa Fe this month, Heinrich said the order was among “a whole series of policy decisions by this administration that frankly weren’t even in their best long-term interest.”
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/new-mexico-senators-speak-out-on-nuclear-safety-board-order/article_446add7f-b6e5-54d8-a8ce-5084cfff6688.html
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Weakened oversight
Acting DNFSB Chairman claims DOE order is at odds with Atomic Energy Act
The dispute between the political appointees of the DOE and those of the DNFSB resulted in all members of the DNFSB, both democrat and republican appointees, joining together to question if the DOE order is consistent with the existing law.
Nuclear Safety Board Slams Energy Department Plan to Weaken Oversight
"The Trump administration defended an order that could be used to withhold information about nuclear facilities from a federal board, but its leader says the action is not consistent with the U.S. Atomic Energy Act."
https://www.propublica.org/article/nuclear-safety-board-slams-energy-department-plan-to-weaken-oversight
The dispute between the political appointees of the DOE and those of the DNFSB resulted in all members of the DNFSB, both democrat and republican appointees, joining together to question if the DOE order is consistent with the existing law.
Nuclear Safety Board Slams Energy Department Plan to Weaken Oversight
"The Trump administration defended an order that could be used to withhold information about nuclear facilities from a federal board, but its leader says the action is not consistent with the U.S. Atomic Energy Act."
https://www.propublica.org/article/nuclear-safety-board-slams-energy-department-plan-to-weaken-oversight
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Nuclear Safety Board Slams DOE
Nuclear Safety Board Slams Energy Department Plan to Weaken Oversight
By Rebecca Moss | rmoss@sfnewmexican.com
A new Department of Energy order that could be used to withhold information from a federal nuclear safety board and prevent the board from overseeing worker safety at nuclear facilities appears to violate longstanding provisions in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, the board’s members said Tuesday.
Members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, both Democrats and Republicans, were united in their criticism of the Energy Department’s order, published in mid-May. It prevents the board from accessing sensitive information, imposes additional legal hurdles on board staff and mandates that Energy Department officials speak “with one voice” when communicating with the board.
The New Mexican and ProPublica first reported on the order’s existence in July, but the board recently called for a special hearing, saying its members had no formal input before the document was finalized.
At that hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning, the first of three on the topic, officials from the Energy Department and its National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, said the changes were largely innocuous and were necessary to update a 17-year-old guidance manual.
“It certainly is not intended to harm” the relationship between the department and the board, said William “Ike” White, chief of staff and associate principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration. He said the changes are designed to ensure agency leaders “have ownership and accountability for the decisions they make.”
But board members said such statements were at odds with the language of the order, which outlines broad restrictions and could exclude thousands of Department of Energy workers from the board’s safety oversight.
“To me, the primary question is: Is [the order] consistent with the Atomic Energy Act?” said acting board Chairman Bruce Hamilton. “In my view, it is not.”
Board members also questioned whether the department was systematically changing its approach to nuclear safety, which agency officials denied.
Already, the order has been cited in denying the board access to information about safety studies related to explosives at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and about a worker’s complaint and the reclassification of explosive reactions at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a technical expert for the board said.
The five-member board, which currently has one vacancy, was formed in 1988 near the close of the Cold War, as the public and Congress began to question the lack of accountability at the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies. Since the end of the Manhattan Project, the agencies had made their own rules and been largely self-regulating. Negligent safety practices contributed to cancer and other illnesses in nuclear workers exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals without proper protections, studies have shown.
Under the law, the board was granted wide access to information in order to make nuclear safety recommendations and add a layer of accountability and transparency to the Energy Department.
The Department of Energy has attempted to limit the safety board’s oversight function for more than a decade, but pressure has increased within the past year, advocates of the board say. Last summer, for example, the board’s then-chairman, who had been elevated into that role by the Trump administration, proposed dissolving the board entirely.
A few months later, the National Nuclear Security Administration said the board should stop publishing weekly reports on issues at national laboratories because they were unflattering, citing media articles that referenced the reports. Neither of those steps was implemented.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/nuclear-safety-board-slams-energy-department-plan-to-weaken-oversight/article_3f04d808-2dd4-53eb-97a5-d1caad5ef8a5.html
By Rebecca Moss | rmoss@sfnewmexican.com
A new Department of Energy order that could be used to withhold information from a federal nuclear safety board and prevent the board from overseeing worker safety at nuclear facilities appears to violate longstanding provisions in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, the board’s members said Tuesday.
Members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, both Democrats and Republicans, were united in their criticism of the Energy Department’s order, published in mid-May. It prevents the board from accessing sensitive information, imposes additional legal hurdles on board staff and mandates that Energy Department officials speak “with one voice” when communicating with the board.
The New Mexican and ProPublica first reported on the order’s existence in July, but the board recently called for a special hearing, saying its members had no formal input before the document was finalized.
At that hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning, the first of three on the topic, officials from the Energy Department and its National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile, said the changes were largely innocuous and were necessary to update a 17-year-old guidance manual.
“It certainly is not intended to harm” the relationship between the department and the board, said William “Ike” White, chief of staff and associate principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration. He said the changes are designed to ensure agency leaders “have ownership and accountability for the decisions they make.”
But board members said such statements were at odds with the language of the order, which outlines broad restrictions and could exclude thousands of Department of Energy workers from the board’s safety oversight.
“To me, the primary question is: Is [the order] consistent with the Atomic Energy Act?” said acting board Chairman Bruce Hamilton. “In my view, it is not.”
Board members also questioned whether the department was systematically changing its approach to nuclear safety, which agency officials denied.
Already, the order has been cited in denying the board access to information about safety studies related to explosives at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and about a worker’s complaint and the reclassification of explosive reactions at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a technical expert for the board said.
The five-member board, which currently has one vacancy, was formed in 1988 near the close of the Cold War, as the public and Congress began to question the lack of accountability at the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies. Since the end of the Manhattan Project, the agencies had made their own rules and been largely self-regulating. Negligent safety practices contributed to cancer and other illnesses in nuclear workers exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals without proper protections, studies have shown.
Under the law, the board was granted wide access to information in order to make nuclear safety recommendations and add a layer of accountability and transparency to the Energy Department.
The Department of Energy has attempted to limit the safety board’s oversight function for more than a decade, but pressure has increased within the past year, advocates of the board say. Last summer, for example, the board’s then-chairman, who had been elevated into that role by the Trump administration, proposed dissolving the board entirely.
A few months later, the National Nuclear Security Administration said the board should stop publishing weekly reports on issues at national laboratories because they were unflattering, citing media articles that referenced the reports. Neither of those steps was implemented.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/nuclear-safety-board-slams-energy-department-plan-to-weaken-oversight/article_3f04d808-2dd4-53eb-97a5-d1caad5ef8a5.html
So much for Mason's claim
So much for Mason's claim that all employees will work for Triad and not for one of the industrial partners.
https://www.theladders.com/job/chief-operating-officer-capital-projects-fluor-los-alamos-nm_37318621
Fluor Government Group (FGG) is seeking candidates to support the FGG scope of work at the Los Alamos national Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory has a capital project portfolio in excess of $4 billion dollars covering multiple line item projects valued in excess of $50 million each. In addition to the line item projects, there is an annual budget covering small capital projects of approximately $200 million. The Triad National Security Capital Projects organization is responsible for delivery of the facilities in a safe, secure, reliable and cost effective manner.
The Director for Capital Projects is seeking a Chief Operating Officer (COO-CP) in support of delivering the capital projects. Responsibilities of the Capital Projects team include:
Reporting to the Associate Laboratory Director, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) provides operational and technical leadership for the integration, capability stewardship and mission execution functions within the Directorates supporting Capital Projects. This position is responsible for the operational success of the Directorates, including partnership with the Division Directors and integration of all resources needed to support Directorate operations. Incumbent provides operational leadership, vision, and advice in support of achieving operational excellence and achieving directorate mission strategy. Emphases include developing and implementing high-value approaches for laboratory operational efficiency and assured excellence, with a focus on safe, compliant, cost effective operations, and development and implementation of robust operational assurance methods. This position has a critical role in the Directorate’s success against a range of metrics including operating costs, strategic hiring, customer satisfaction, and performance metrics.
https://www.theladders.com/job/chief-operating-officer-capital-projects-fluor-los-alamos-nm_37318621
Fluor Government Group (FGG) is seeking candidates to support the FGG scope of work at the Los Alamos national Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory has a capital project portfolio in excess of $4 billion dollars covering multiple line item projects valued in excess of $50 million each. In addition to the line item projects, there is an annual budget covering small capital projects of approximately $200 million. The Triad National Security Capital Projects organization is responsible for delivery of the facilities in a safe, secure, reliable and cost effective manner.
The Director for Capital Projects is seeking a Chief Operating Officer (COO-CP) in support of delivering the capital projects. Responsibilities of the Capital Projects team include:
Reporting to the Associate Laboratory Director, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) provides operational and technical leadership for the integration, capability stewardship and mission execution functions within the Directorates supporting Capital Projects. This position is responsible for the operational success of the Directorates, including partnership with the Division Directors and integration of all resources needed to support Directorate operations. Incumbent provides operational leadership, vision, and advice in support of achieving operational excellence and achieving directorate mission strategy. Emphases include developing and implementing high-value approaches for laboratory operational efficiency and assured excellence, with a focus on safe, compliant, cost effective operations, and development and implementation of robust operational assurance methods. This position has a critical role in the Directorate’s success against a range of metrics including operating costs, strategic hiring, customer satisfaction, and performance metrics.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Rocky start
Where is the list of the Triad board members that was promised by a Triad spokesperson to a national news outlet? If they make such statements, they should follow through on them or understand that credibility is lost. Coupled with the botched GRT decision, things look to be off to a rocky start for the new contractor.
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