DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD: 

THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS 

A Report Prepared by the Federal Research Division, 

Library of Congress 

under an Interagency Agreement with the 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) 

September 2009

 Author: Priscilla Offenhauer 

 Project Manager: Alice R. Buchalter 

 Federal Research Division

Library of Congress

 Washington, D.C. 20540−4840

 Tel: 202−707−3900 

 Fax: 202−707−3920 

 E-Mail: frds@loc.gov 

 Homepage: http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/ 

p 61 Years of Service to the Federal Government p

1948 – 2009 
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PREFACE 

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB or the Board), an independent 

oversight organization within the executive branch, was created by Congress in 1988 to provide 

advice and recommendations to the secretary of energy regarding public health and safety at the 

defense nuclear facilities managed by the Department of Energy. 

This study captures how the Board met the competing national security, health and 

safety, environmental, government, and public demands placed upon DOE’s defense nuclear 

facilities, explicating the principles and techniques the Board employed to efficiently function as 

a federal agency and effectively fulfill the Board’s unique mandate under the Atomic Energy Act 

of 1954, as amended. While it chronicles events, the study also serves as the tutorial for those 

charged with the future administration of the Board’s enabling legislation, making available to 

the current and future leadership the philosophical and jurisprudential underpinnings of the form 

of governance captured in the Board’s enabling legislation and the resolution of changing and 

sometimes opposing national requirements. 

The first chapter discusses the handling of safety issues in the defense nuclear complex 

prior to the creation of the Board. The chapter also examines historical circumstances that 

produced pressures to move toward more external regulation, including major accidents 

involving nuclear technology (especially Chernobyl), the waning of the nuclear arms race, and 

the lifting of the secrecy about the safety risks and environmental damage. 

The second chapter reviews the debates in Congress that led up to the legislative 

compromise that created the Board as an expert body that would act as an independent adviser to 

the secretary of energy, rather than as a regulator. 

The third chapter describes the development of the Board’s manner of proceeding when it 

conducted oversight, in particular, how it interacted with the Department of Energy, 

congressional oversight committees, and the public, and how it wielded the tools that Congress 

granted it to exert authority that was effectively action-forcing. 

The fourth chapter examines important recommendations on nuclear safety, both sitespecific and complex-wide, that the Board issued to the secretary of energy, and how their 

follow-up was handled. 

The fifth chapter discusses the shift of emphasis in the Board’s activities that occurred 

with the end of the nuclear arms race and weapons production in 1992, mainly, the shift to 
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greater emphasis on the stabilization and safe storage of surplus nuclear materials, as well as the 

safe execution of weapons dismantlement. 

The sixth chapter focuses on the Board’s advocacy of Integrated Safety Management to 

support longer-term, more comprehensive safety planning in the weapons complex, and the 

reexamination by policymakers and the Board of whether current oversight arrangements 

sufficed to ensure safety. In addition, the chapter examines the Board’s increased technical 

oversight activities of design and construction projects throughout the DOE defense nuclear 

complex. 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PREFACE .................................................................................................................................. i 

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 

CHAPTER 1: NUCLEAR SAFETY REGULATION BEFORE THE BOARD’S 

CREATION ............................................................................................................ 9 

NUCLEAR POLICIES, GOVERNANCE, AND MAJOR U.S. NUCLEAR LEGISLATION 

UP TO THE ABOLITION OF THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION .................................. 9 

The Manhattan Project, Atomic Energy Act of 1946, and Atomic Energy Commission ......... 9 

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 ............................................................................................. 15 

Divergent Safety Regimes in the Nuclear Power Industry and the Weapons Program .......... 18 

NUCLEAR DOUBTS AND THE ENERGY CRISIS.................................................................. 25 

The Breakup of the AEC......................................................................................................... 26 

The Birth of the Department of Energy in the Era of Energy Crises ...................................... 27 

THE THREE MILE ISLAND SHAKEUP: AFTERMATH ........................................................ 30 

CHERNOBYL BRINGS HOME THE NEED FOR SAFETY REFORMS AND 

STEPPED-UP OVERSIGHT IN DOE’S NUCLEAR OPERATIONS ........................................ 36 

DOE’s Internal Reforms Prior to Chernobyl .......................................................................... 38 

DOE’s Internal Reforms after Chernobyl ............................................................................... 39 

CHAPTER 2: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BOARD, 1987 TO 1989 ..................................... 43 

CONGRESSIONAL PUSH FOR EXTERNAL SAFETY OVERSIGHT IN DOE’S 

NUCLEAR OPERATIONS .......................................................................................................... 43 

Bolstering the Case for an Oversight Board with Strong Powers ........................................... 49 

Debating Glenn’s Bill and How a Safety Board’s Statutory Mandate Should Read .............. 53 

THE BOARD’S ENABLING STATUTE AND LAUNCH ......................................................... 66 

Challenges Grow in the Year Preceding the Board’s Start-up ............................................... 70 

Formation of the Board ........................................................................................................... 73 

CHAPTER 3: THE BOARD’S OPERATIONS IN THE EARLY YEARS ............................... 77 

THE START-UP OF BOARD OPERATIONS ............................................................................ 77 

ESTABLISHING THE BOARD’S OVERSIGHT PROGRAM .................................................. 83 

Site Visits and Other Fact-Gathering Activities ..................................................................... 83 

Interaction with DOE and the Recommendation Process ....................................................... 89 

Interfacing with the Public ...................................................................................................... 95 

Public Meetings and Hearings.......................................................................................... 98 
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Early Criticisms for Insufficient Transparency in the Board’s Operations ................... 104 

CHAPTER 4: TECHNICAL NUCLEAR SAFETY ACTIVITIES OF THE BOARD ........... 111 

SITE-SPECIFIC SAFETY OVERSIGHT .................................................................................. 111 

Savannah River Recommendations: Readiness for Safe Reactor Restart ............................ 111 

Rocky Flats Recommendations: Resuming Plutonium Operations ...................................... 116 

Hanford Recommendations: Nuclear Waste Safety and Waste Characterization ................ 122 

COMPLEX-WIDE SAFETY ISSUES ....................................................................................... 125 

Development and Application of Standards Related to Nuclear Safety: Key Problem 

Area ....................................................................................................................................... 125 

The Board’s Concern for Technical Personnel Quality in the DOE Nuclear Complex ....... 132 

CHAPTER 5: POST–COLD WAR REDIRECTION OF THE DEFENSE NUCLEAR 

COMPLEX AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BOARD’S WORK ................ 137 

DOWNSIZING AND MISSION CHANGE IN THE COMPLEX: NEW DUTIES 

FOR THE BOARD ..................................................................................................................... 137 

Broadened Board Jurisdiction and Activities ....................................................................... 138 

Cutoff of Defense Production, Heightened Safety Challenges Requiring Board 

Oversight ............................................................................................................................... 140 

SAFE MANAGEMENT OF A REDUCED NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAPABILITY .............. 142 

Toward Improving Safety of Weapons Disassembly: Standards and Procedural 

Reviews ................................................................................................................................. 143 

Knowledge Preservation: Mitigating the Loss of Safety Expertise in Weapons 

Operations ............................................................................................................................. 145 

Board Support for Criticality Studies at the National Defense Laboratories........................ 148 

The Board Weighs in on the Defense Laboratories and Stockpile Stewardship .................. 149 

NUCLEAR MATERIALS STABILIZATION AND SAFE STORAGE: GROWING 

BOARD FOCUS FROM 1994 ................................................................................................... 152 

CHAPTER 6: INTEGRATION: THE BOARD’S WATCHWORD FOR THE 

LONGER TERM ................................................................................................ 163 

INTEGRATED SAFETY MANAGEMENT (ISM): ESTABLISHMENT, FOLLOW-UP ...... 165 

REVISITING CONGRESS’S REGULATORY COMPROMISE: 1995–2000 ......................... 170 

Proposed Regulatory Alternatives ........................................................................................ 171 

Defenses of the Regulatory Compromise that Created the Board ........................................ 175 

THE BOARD’S OPERATIONS: GROWTH, REFINEMENT, FORMALIZATION .............. 181 

Personnel: Stability at the Top, Expertise Throughout ......................................................... 181 

Formalization of Board Activities ........................................................................................ 185 
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BOARD OVERSIGHT IN THE AREA OF DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION ...................... 188 

Major Board Efforts in the Design Review Area.................................................................. 190 

The Push for Earlier Incorporation of Nuclear Safety in Design .......................................... 193 

Public Meetings and New Guidance on Integrating Safety into Design ........................ 194 

Congressional Action on Safety in Design...................................................................... 195 

THE BOARD GOING FORWARD ........................................................................................... 197 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: SELECTED SOURCES ............................................................................ 201 

APPENDIX 1: Board Enabling Legislation ............................................................................. 215 

APPENDIX 2: Board Recommendations ................................................................................. 235 

APPENDIX 3: Board Technical Reports .................................................................................. 237 

APPENDIX 4: Board Biographies ............................................................................................ 241 

TABLE 

Table 1. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Membership, 1989–2009 ............................. 182 
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INTRODUCTION 

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, (DNFSB or the Board), an independent 

executive-branch organization, was established by Congress in 1988 to provide technical 

oversight of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) defense nuclear facilities in order to protect the 

health and safety of the public and workers. The Board was charged with identifying potential 

safety threats posed by the facilities, elevating such issues to the highest levels of authority, and 

informing the public. 

In creating the Board, one aim of Congress was to provide an expert body to act as an 

adviser to DOE on establishing, and operating in accordance with, standards comparable to those 

that prevailed in the commercial nuclear power industry. The Board’s responsibilities to review 

the standards that underpinned safety pertained to all life-cycle phases of defense nuclear 

facilities⎯design, construction, operation, and decommissioning. The Board is also responsible 

for investigating any event or practice at a DOE facility that had or could adversely affect public 

health and safety, for analyzing design and operational data pertinent to safety, and for preconstruction design reviews and construction oversight for DOE nuclear facilities. 

Congress provided the Board with a variety of powers to carry out its oversight mission, 

chief among them, the power to issue formal recommendations to the secretary of 

energy⎯recommendations that the secretary is not required to accept, but is required to answer. 

In its efforts to formulate its recommendations and other advice, the Board is empowered to 

conduct investigations and studies, gather information, issue subpoenas, hold public hearings, 

and establish reporting requirements for DOE. The Board is statutorily required to make reports 

to Congress at least annually on its oversight activities, any recommendations issued to the 

secretary of energy, and improvements in safety achieved at defense nuclear facilities as a result 

of its activities. 

DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD: A COMPROMISE SOLUTION 

The Board emerged at a particular historical juncture that made the prevailing type of 

governance in the nuclear weapons complex appear less tenable. Since the inception of the 

complex during World War II and the early Cold War years, it had been managed by the 

Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies without independent external oversight 
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within the executive branch. The nuclear arms race and the Cold War sense of urgency about 

maintaining a strong nuclear deterrent force legitimized secretive operations in the complex and 

the prioritization of production needs over safety concerns.1 The waning of the nuclear arms race 

in the late 1980s eroded the justification for secrecy and undermined public acceptance of 

production/safety trade-offs that sacrificed safety. This erosion was compounded by accidents 

involving nuclear technologies, such as the Chernobyl reactor accident, which aroused 

generalized public concern about nuclear safety. In addition, revelations mounted about the 

environmental and safety issues that had accumulated at the aging facilities in the weapons 

complex in the course of the nuclear arms race. These factors engendered increasing public 

distrust and led public officials and lawmakers to question the capacity of DOE to manage the 

complex and ensure the safety of operations without independent external oversight. 

At the same time, the international security environment was highly unsettled in the late 

1980s, making the period one of significant uncertainty in terms of what U.S. national security 

needs were and what the nation’s nuclear deterrent posture would be. Although the Cold War 

was winding down and downsizing of the nuclear weapons arsenal and complex was in the 

offing, national security policymakers did not know how much production capacity would still 

be needed. Fearing interference with national security imperatives, they were reluctant to impose 

a type of regulation on the weapons complex that might endanger national security by inhibiting 

the freedom of the national security establishment to make necessary security-related decisions. 

Policymakers were wary of stringent forms of full regulation that would produce what amounted 

to, as they put it, “unilateral disarmament” by imposing undue delay and expense in the name of 

safety on the defense production mission of the weapons complex. Many policymakers resisted 

full regulation as ill suited to handling the extremely complex technical issues affecting the U.S. 

nuclear deterrent capability. At the same time, they recognized that a precondition for the 

ongoing public support for U.S. nuclear deterrent policy was to decrease the radiological risks 

posed by the nuclear weapons complex, and to do so in a way that was convincing to an alarmed 

public. 

The complicated sets and crosscurrents of concerns about the nuclear weapons complex 

fueled a contentious debate when Congress took up the question of establishing an external 

1

 F.G. Gosling and Terrence R. Fehner, Closing the Circle: The Department of Energy and Environmental 

Management, 1942–1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, 1994), 5. 
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oversight body. The extended debate within Congress and the administration turned not so much 

on the need for such a safety body but rather on defining its form and providing it with powers 

that struck the right balance among competing and conflicting goals. The debate eventually 

produced a compromise piece of legislation that sought to give the newly created Board 

sufficient powers to further safety and to establish credibility with the public, but not so much 

power as to permit the Board’s insistence on safety upgrades that were at the expense of essential 

production for national security needs. 

The legislative compromise embodied in the Board’s enabling legislation took into 

account the special defense-related considerations dictating that the Board not be a full-blown 

regulator. The enabling legislation did not give the Board formal regulatory authority or 

enforcement powers. Instead, the Board was an expert body that would provide independent 

oversight and act as an adviser to the secretary of energy. However, the legislation contained 

elements designed to ensure that the Board’s advice would carry significant weight with the 

secretary of energy and could not be lightly dismissed or disregarded. Providing the Board’s 

advice with such weight, and the Board with substantial power, was key to engendering public 

confidence, as well as ensuring safety improvements in the weapons complex. 

Among the elements designed to lend weight to the Board’s advice were provisions that 

imposed requirements on the secretary of energy to respond in specified ways to the Board’s 

advice, recommendations, reporting requirements, and requests for information. In the case of 

formal recommendations, DOE’s obligations for response were laid out as a definite sequence of 

actions in a specified time frame. These requirements contributed to the seriousness with which 

the secretaries of energy always took Board advice and recommendations. In the two decades of 

the Board’s operation, the secretary accepted, and formulated implementation plans for, all of the 

formal recommendations the Board issued. 

Another important key to the Board’s power was the make-up of the Board, specifically, 

the eminence and capabilities of the five Board members. The Board’s enabling legislation called 

for a five-member Board composed of recognized technical experts. The composition of the 

Board as envisioned by the lawmakers was a unique blend of technical nuclear-safety expertise 

and proven managerial capability. The idea was to create a body of seasoned experts who would 

become honest brokers of technical information to ensure that the administration and Congress 

would have unbiased and timely information on the state of the DOE nuclear complex as regards 
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the health and safety of workers and the public.2

 Congress and the administration sought wellrespected leaders capable of addressing problems in the defense nuclear complex from an 

engineering perspective, and of navigating the uncharted territory of external oversight in a 

highly dynamic period in the international security environment and in the nuclear deterrent 

posture of the United States. The lawmakers expected the Board members to balance their efforts 

to improve safe operations at the U.S. defense nuclear facilities with their recognition of DOE’s 

duty to do its essential national defense work of maintaining an effective nuclear deterrent 

without unjustifiable delay or expense. 

The five-member inaugural Board assembled by the administration in the course of 1989 

more than fully embodied the requirements of the Board’s congressional creators. The exemplary 

group collectively brought many decades of high-level engineering and management experience 

in various aspects of nuclear safety⎯ideal experience for organizing a highly technically 

competent staff, interacting effectively with the Department of Energy and Congress, and 

communicating with the public to restore public confidence. Above all, as intended by the 

legislative creators of the Board, the Board brought a depth of scientific, technical, and 

managerial skills commensurate with the enormity of the safety challenges and the unique 

hazards that the nuclear weapons complex posed. 

THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS COMPLEX AND ITS CHALLENGES FOR SAFETY 

OVERSIGHT 

The U.S. nuclear weapons complex and nuclear arsenal, products of the nuclear arms 

race, achieved their 1989 size and character a quarter century earlier, in the late 1960s.3 At its 

peak, the complex⎯an immense, widely dispersed industrial, laboratory, and testing 

enterprise⎯consisted of some 16 major installations and many smaller facilities spread over a 

dozen or so states.4

 A number of the defense nuclear sites occupied vast tracts of land, including 

the Hanford Site in the state of Washington, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the 

Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, the Nevada Test Site, and the Oak Ridge Reservation in 

Tennessee. The Hanford Site alone was huge. The largest of the three original World War II–era 

2

 Interview, Kenneth M. Pusateri (Board general manager, 1989–2006), Washington, DC, January 3, 2008. 

3

 Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940

(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 491. See also U.S. Department of Energy, Office of 

Environmental Management, “History,” August 26, 2008, http://www.em.doe.gov/pages/History.aspx. 
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sites for nuclear weapons production⎯Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Los Alamos National 

Laboratory⎯Hanford was roughly half the size of Rhode Island, at nearly 600 square miles.5

The Idaho site topped 800 square miles, and Savannah River occupied 300 square miles.6

Evolving since World War II, the weapons complex engaged up to the late 1980s in four 

types of arsenal-building operations, which were concentrated at particular facilities and 

sites⎯research, nuclear materials production, the manufacturing of weapons components, and 

weapons testing.7

 Weapons research and design was conducted at DOE’s three defense 

laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratory in California. The processing and production of nuclear 

materials, notably plutonium and tritium, took place chiefly at the Hanford Site and the Savannah 

River Site. For example, Hanford, with its nine plutonium reactors built between 1943 and 1963, 

along with five reprocessing facilities, produced 64 metric tons of plutonium over 40 years.8

Uranium processing was a task of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and the Feed 

Materials Production Center in Ohio. The fabrication of warhead components took place at the 

Rocky Flats plant in Colorado, the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, the Mound plant in Ohio, and 

several other locations. Weapons assembly was conducted at the Pantex plant in Texas, and 

nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site.9 Collectively, in the period up to 1989, the facilities 

manufactured tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, and conducted more than one thousand test 

nuclear detonations.10

At the time the Board began operations in 1989, with its mandate to identify and mitigate 

radiological risk in the weapons complex, the hazards that the Board expected to confront 

included those associated with DOE’s production of nuclear materials, most notably, hazards 

posed by operating nuclear reactors. Although all of the major production facilities were then in 

a stand-down condition, having recently been shut down for safety reasons, DOE expected that 

production would resume once safety upgrades of the production infrastructure were made. Thus 

4

 Gosling and Fehner, 2. 

5

 U.S. Department of Energy, Hanford Site, “Hanford Overview,” March 25, 2008, http://www.hanford.gov/? 

page=215& parent=0. 

6

 U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, “Savannah River Site Overview,” September 

10, 2008. http://www.em.doe.gov/SiteInfo/SavannahRiver.aspx?PAGEID=MAIN. 7

 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Complex Cleanup: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear 

Weapons Production, OTA–O–484 (Washington, DC, February 1991), 15, http://www.fas.org/ota/reports/9113.pdf. 8

 U.S. Department of Energy, Hanford Site, “Hanford Overview.” 

9

 OTA, Complex Cleanup, 18–19. 
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the Board’s review of potential contributors to risk initially included a focus on DOE’s 

preparations to restart production. When DOE’s production mission definitively ended with the 

end of the Cold War in 1992 and the downsizing of the weapons complex, DOE’s mission 

shifted, and the Board’s safety focus shifted accordingly. The risks and safety issues on which 

the Board focused became exclusively those involved in maintaining the safety and reliability of 

the nation’s remaining, smaller nuclear weapons stockpile and in cleaning up contaminated sites 

and facilities. The Board’s oversight focused on the safe execution of the dismantlement of 

nuclear weapons to achieve arms control objectives, the storage and disposition of surplus 

fissionable materials, and the decontamination and decommissioning of facilties.11

Notwithstanding this early shift of the Board’s specific safety focus, the magnitude of the 

risks the Board sought to mitigate was formidable, and indeed only heightened by the cessation 

of production and the cleanup efforts that followed. Nearly 50 years of nuclear weapons 

production had left a legacy of vast quantities of nuclear waste and surplus materials. The 

complex held in storage millions of gallons of high-level radioactive liquid waste in tanks 

awaiting treatment, and still larger quantities of waste with lower levels of radioactivity.12 Other 

radioactive wastes and residues in processing lines and deteriorating temporary packaging 

existed throughout the complex in sufficient quantities to pose the risk of criticality accidents and 

radioactive releases to the environment. Radioactive and other toxic materials had already 

resulted in widespread contamination of soil and groundwater at DOE sites. Numerous potential 

mechanisms for the release of hazardous materials posed ongoing risks to workers and the 

public, e.g., fire, inadvertent detonation of explosives, chemical reactions, equipment 

malfunctions, natural disasters, failures in aging facilities, and human error. Other hazards in the 

complex were associated with the arsenal of nuclear weapons itself and the activities required to 

maintain the enduring stockpile, as well as to dismantle thousands of excess or obsolete 

weapons. Such activities posed dangers unique to the weapons complex, because they involved 

co-located explosives and nuclear material. As the Board often pointed out, 

Unlike commercial nuclear facilities, the risks at these defense nuclear facilities 

are not solely a function of the quantities of nuclear material present but more 

10 Gosling and Fehner, 2. 

11 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, “About DNFSB: Who We Are,” http://www.dnfsb.gov/about/index.php. 12 U.S. Congress, Congressional Budget Office, Cleaning Up the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Weapons 

Complex (Washington, DC, 1994), 1, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/49xx/doc4914/doc26.pdf. 
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importantly, the material processes involved and the potential for explosive 

dispersal of radioactive materials or inadvertent nuclear detonation.13

13 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, FY 2010 Budget Request to the Congress (Washington, DC, May 2009), 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/about/files/budget/budget_fy2010.pdf. 
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CHAPTER 1: NUCLEAR SAFETY REGULATION BEFORE THE BOARD’S 

CREATION 

NUCLEAR POLICIES, GOVERNANCE, AND MAJOR U.S. NUCLEAR LEGISLATION 

UP TO THE ABOLITION OF THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION 

The nuclear weapons complex had its origins during World War II in the Manhattan 

Project, the “epic, top-secret engineering and industrial venture” that created atomic weapons in 

less than three years.14

The Manhattan Project, Atomic Energy Act of 1946, and Atomic Energy Commission 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, beginning in 1942, directed the Manhattan Project, 

rapidly developing and managing the construction of a nationwide network of research and 

production facilities that operated in secret.15 During the race to create the bomb, the three main 

sites developed were Los Alamos, New Mexico, with its weapons design laboratory, Oak Ridge, 

Tennessee, with its monumental uranium-enrichment plants, and Hanford, Washington, with its 

three plutonium production reactors and two reprocessing plants to extract plutonium from the 

reactor fuel.16

To build and operate the complex, which was federally owned, the army’s project 

leadership used the practice of hiring private corporations as contractors.17 This recourse to a 

consortium of contractors, which was justified by the wartime national emergency, set the 

precedent for the government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) system that has prevailed in 

the nuclear weapons complex ever since.18

14 U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Environmental Management: History

(Washington, DC, August 8, 2008), http://www.em.doe.gov/pages/History.aspx. 

15 A. Costandina Titus, Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics (Reno: University of Nevada 

Press, 1986), 7. 

16 F.G. Gosling, and Terrence R. Fehner, Closing the Circle: The Department of Energy and Environmental 

Management, 1942–1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, 1994), 1. The first three reactors at the 

Hanford site remained in operation for some 20 years. The B-reactor began production in September 1944 and shut 

down in February 1968. The D-reactor, operational in December 1944, and the F-reactor, producing by February 

1945, shut down in June 1967 and June 1965, respectively. In 2008 the B-reactor was declared a National Historic 

Landmark. 

17 George T. Mazuzan, and J. Samuel Walker, Controlling the Atom: The Beginnings of Nuclear Regulation, 1946–

1962 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 10–11. 18 Barton C. Hacker, Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear 

Weapons Testing, 1947–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 10–11. According to Hacker, about 

seven-eighths of the 44,000-strong wartime workforce in the Manhattan Project were private-sector employees. See 
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Another precedent set during the Manhattan Project was that the nuclear weapons 

complex was “self-regulating,” in that it had the “authority to regulate its own nuclear safety.”19

The project’s leaders in the Corps of Engineers managed the project without independent 

oversight by any agency or staff external to the project. In managing nuclear safety, the project 

leadership disseminated in an ad hoc fashion the then-limited knowledge of its project scientists 

about mitigating the hazards of the use of nuclear energy.20 The leadership augmented the 

scientists’ advice with the expertise of the project’s private-industry contractors in matters of 

general industrial and chemical safety. Participants in the project had great leeway to use their 

own judgment in applying such safety-related information. 

After World War II, the U.S. Congress took up the question of the future governance of 

the nuclear weapons complex and the future utilization of atomic energy. One of the major issues 

was whether the nuclear enterprise should remain under military management or be transferred 

to control by a civilian government agency.21 After a protracted debate, Congress passed 

legislation that affirmed civilian government control while leaving “military applications” of 

atomic energy the “paramount” mission of the nuclear enterprise.22 The legislation, the Atomic 

Energy Act (AEA) of 1946, was the first major nuclear-era statute and has remained a 

cornerstone of U.S. nuclear policy.23 The act established the civilian-led U.S. Atomic Energy 

Commission (AEC), a single federal agency that for the next 29 years combined the functions of 

managing and regulating the production and uses of atomic energy.24 As prescribed by the 1946 

also U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Hazards Ahead: Managing Cleanup Worker Health and 

Safety at the Nuclear Weapons Complex, OTA–BP–O–85 (Washington, DC, February 1993), 62. 19 Glenn Russell George, “Negotiated Safety: Intragovernmental Risk Regulation in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons 

Complex” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, May 1995), 50, 57 (accessed via Proquest). On the concept of “selfregulation,” see also, “Appendix 2: Statement by Joseph J. DiNunno Relative to the Report of the Advisory 

Committee on External Regulation,” A2/1–2, in Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Report to Congress on the 

Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Regarding Regulation of DOE’s Defense Nuclear Facilities

(Washington, DC, November 1998), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/rc_199811.pdf. Joseph J. DiNunno, 

Board member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, uses the term “self-regulation” in several historical 

accounts of regulatory arrangements that prevailed in the nuclear weapons complex prior to the 1980s. 20 Joseph J. DiNunno, “Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, A 

Discussion Paper,” October 26, 2001, 2/2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/ts_200110_multi.pdf. 21 Mazuzan and Walker, 3. 

22 Titus, 27. 

23 Atomic Energy Act of 1946, Pub. L. No. 79–585, ch. 724, 60 Stat 755, August 1, 1946. See also Bert Chapman, 

“The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Decade,” Journal of Government Information 27 (2000): 347, 

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib research/70. 

24 J. Samuel Walker, A Short History of Nuclear Regulation, 1946–1999 (Washington, DC: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission, January 2000), 43. 
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law, the new agency took over the army’s responsibilities for the nuclear weapons complex, 

beginning in January 1947. 

The commission authorized by the 1946 law was composed of five civilian members 

nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for staggered five-year terms of 

office.25 The commissioners were not required to be nuclear scientists or experts and, indeed, 

were more usually legal, business, or management professionals.26 Not scientists themselves, the 

commissioners relied for scientific and technical advice on one of the several support committees 

provided for by the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, the General Advisory Committee, which consisted 

of nine presidentially appointed civilian atomic scientists. Another mandated advisory 

committee, the Military Liaison Committee, was made up of military officers appointed by the 

secretaries of war and of the navy, and provided the AEC with Pentagon input.27 The third 

statutory committee, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), ensured a continuing 

prominent role for Congress in nuclear matters. The JCAE, until disbanded in 1977, was the sole 

congressional committee with nuclear responsibilities.28 Made up of nine members each from the 

Senate and House of Representatives, the JCAE served as a legislative-branch “watchdog” to 

keep Congress apprised of atomic affairs and to monitor the operations of the five-member 

executive-branch AEC.29 The bicameral and bipartisan committee was vested with full 

jurisdiction over “all bills, resolutions, and other matters in Congress relating to the Commission 

or to the development, use or control of atomic energy,” including budget authorizations for the 

AEC and international nuclear agreements.30 Through public hearings and other public 

informational activities, the committee eventually played a significant role as a champion of 

commercial nuclear power. 

25 Mazuzan and Walker, 4. 

26 Robert Pool, Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 

191. 

27 Mazuzan and Walker, 3. 

28 On committee oversight, see Stephen I. Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight of the Bomb,” in Stephen I. 

Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: 

Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 513–17. See also Titus, 19. 

29 Interview, John T. Conway, March 26, 2008. Conway was an inaugural member of the Board and its first 

chairman, serving from October 1989 to April 2005. Previously, he had served as staff director on the JCAE. On the 

JCAE, see also Mazuzan and Walker, 11–12. 

30 Pub. L. No. 79–585, ch. 724, Section 2(b), 60 Stat 755, 757. See also Titus, 28. Uniquely among modern joint 

committees, as Conway observed, the JCAE had the authority to produce, as well as to report bills. The committee 

also produced studies and publications and held hearings in both public and secret executive sessions. 
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In the initial eight years, the AEC devoted itself almost exclusively to its military 

mission, the management of the design and production of a stockpile of nuclear weapons.31 This 

predominance of the military mission, notwithstanding that the AEC was a civilian body, was in 

accordance with the 1946 AEA. The act clearly specified that the primary purpose of atomic 

development, at least in the short run, was to produce a nuclear arsenal for defense. The act 

contained the provision that the president “from time to time” could direct the commission to 

deliver “weapons to the armed forces for such use as he deems necessary in the interest of 

national defense.”32 The act also provided for a second eventual goal⎯one envisioned to involve 

the private sector⎯of developing atomic energy for peaceful purposes. However, the 1946 act 

mandated that the AEC establish a military-headed Division of Military Applications and give its 

functions priority.33 The emerging Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union and the 

imperatives of the resultant nuclear arms race reinforced this statutory priority of military 

production.34 As the Cold War developed, most of the AEC’s resources were absorbed in 

defense-related activities as the commission refurbished the production and research facilities 

built during the war, and expanded the defense nuclear complex.35 For the first 15 years of the 

AEC’s 29-year existence, 70 percent of its expenditures went to the weapons-development 

programs carried out by the commission’s Division of Military Applications.36 For another half 

decade, military-related programs commanded the most of the AEC’s time and the major portion 

of the budget.37

The statutory priority and Cold War urgency of the AEC’s military mission made for 

considerable continuity between the wartime management of the nuclear weapons complex and 

31 Mazuzan and Walker, 13, 17–18. 

32 Pub. L. No. 79–585, ch. 724, Section 6(a), 60 Stat 755, 763. 

33 The 1946 Atomic Energy Act mandated four operational AEC divisions: research, production, engineering, and 

military application. Research was later subdivided into sections for physical research and biomedical research. 

Production was responsible for producing nuclear material. Engineering was concerned with building reactors. And 

military application dealt with nuclear weapons. See Mazuzan and Walker, 4; and Titus, 27. 34 See Titus, 22–31. 35 On the growth of the nuclear weapons complex, see Kevin O’Neill, “Building the Bomb,” in Stephen I. Schwartz, 

ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings 

Institution Press, 1998), esp., 35–41, 64–69. To meet the early Cold War’s escalating requirements for fissionable 

material, the AEC authorized major overhauls of the original reactors and two new plutonium reactors for the 

Hanford plant. At Oak Ridge, an addition to the existing K–25 plant was built, along with a third gaseous diffusion 

plant for the production of uranium 235. 

36 Titus, 27. 

37 Alice L. Buck, A History of the Atomic Energy Commission, DOE/ES–0003/l (Washington, DC: U.S. Department 

of Energy, July 1983), 1, http://www.atomictraveler.com/HistoryofAEC.pdf. 
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its governance under the early Cold War AEC. The AEC, for example, placed a similar premium 

on maintaining secrecy about nuclear activities. A major provision of the Atomic Energy Act of 

1946 justified atomic secrets in the name of national security.38 In turn, the need for secrecy 

made the continuation of government ownership of nuclear facilities attractive, because of fear 

that private possession could jeopardize military secrets. The 1946 act maintained the federal 

government’s monopoly over nuclear energy and technology. All nuclear reactors and 

production facilities were government-owned, and all technical information and research results 

were under commission control. At the same time, for the actual operation of the complex, the 

law allowed the AEC to let contracts, and it chose to continue the system of private-sector 

contractor operation initiated during the Manhattan Project.39 A further element of continuity 

with wartime management was the exceptional freedom the AEC enjoyed to marshal the services 

of highly qualified scientists and technical personnel. In the case of the AEC, Congress provided 

the commission with privileged appointment and position classification authorities whereby its 

employees, although federal personnel, were exempt from many of the restrictions and 

limitations of the Civil Service system. 

The AEC’s statutory responsibility for fostering and managing the nuclear enterprise was 

coupled in the 1946 act with a second charge for the commission, namely, the obligation to 

regulate the very activities and facilities it managed. In particular, according to the dual mandate 

specified in the act, the AEC was responsible for the achievement of safety in the fulfillment of 

its nuclear weapons mission. While managing the operations of the nuclear weapons complex, 

the AEC was authorized to ensure their safety or, in the wording of the act, Section 12(a), to 

(2) establish by regulation or order such standards and instructions to govern the 

production and use of fissionable and byproduct materials as the Commission 

may deem necessary or desirable to protect health or to minimize danger from 

explosions and other hazards to life or property.40

The act omitted any detail as to how the commission should regulate the health and safety 

aspects of the nuclear enterprise. The act provided only that the AEC would “establish . . . 

38 Eugene A. Rosa and William Freudenburg, “The Historical Development of Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: 

Implications for Nuclear Waste Policy,” in Riley E. Dunlap et al, eds. Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste: Citizens’

Views of Repository Siting (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 33. 39 Mazuzan and Walker, 7, 9–11. Among the early industrial firms contracted to operate the weapons production 

facilities were DuPont, Union Carbide, Monsanto, and Philips Petroleum. See also DiNunno, Ideas for Improving 

Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, 2/4. 40 Pub. L. No. 79–585, ch. 724, Section 12(a)(2), 60 Stat 755, 770. 
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standards and instruction” for the complex, and implied that it would carry on the same kind of 

self-regulation that prevailed during the Manhattan Project. That is, the standards and 

instructions would be established and enforced in processes entirely internal to the commission 

itself.41

For help in carrying out the safety and health component of its dual mandate, the AEC 

made provisions early on to set up advisory committees on various aspects of nuclear safety.42

Such committees were a source of expert advice for both the federal personnel of the AEC and 

its corporate contractors. Among the panels advising on safety, the most important was an 

independent advisory committee of scientists first assembled in late 1947 “to counsel the AEC 

on reactor safety.”43 Originally known as the Reactor Safeguards Committee, the body was soon 

merged with a panel on facility siting under the new name of Advisory Committee on Reactor 

Safeguards (ACRS).44 This expert body, although strictly advisory and without statutory 

authority in its first decade, performed such vital tasks as reviewing the designs of existing and 

proposed reactors and advising on the potential hazards of their operation.45 An early issue 

addressed, for example, was whether the safety of a reactor necessitated its enclosure in a 

concrete radioactivity-containment vessel or could be sufficiently assured by geographic 

isolation and the use of ventilation systems with filters.46 The committee accepted the latter, 

unenclosed design in the case of the military’s early large reactors, while later calling for 

containment structures for commercial reactors.47 The committee’s advice and recommendations 

41 George, 52. 

42 Pub. L. No. 79–585, ch. 724, Section 2(b), 60 Stat 755, 757. 

43 Pool, 90. 

44 Pool, 90, 190–97. See also George, 53. 

45 See Pool, 190. After 1957, Congress mandated that the ACRS review all applications to build and operate nuclear 

power plants. 

46 Michele Stenehjem Gerber, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (Lincoln: 

University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 24–26. See also The History of Nuclear Power Safety, http://users.owt.com/

smsrpm/nksafe/forties.html, which states: “In the earliest large reactors, the plutonium production reactors at 

Hanford, the role of geographic isolation in protecting the safety of the general public was emphasized. At its first 

meeting in 1947, the Reactor Safeguards Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission considered containment for 

protection of the general public.” Eventually, analyses by the ACRS of “maximum credible accidents” contributed 

to the adoption of containment vessels for reactors. Used as of the mid-1950s in commercial power plants, such 

vessels were recommended as a safer alternative to the filtered ventilation system previously used to ensure against 

accidental radiological releases. See Pool, 91ff, and O’Neill, 73. 47 On the ACRS’s view of containment domes, see Gerber, 102–3. See also J. Samuel Walker, Containing the Atom: 

Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1963–1971 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 57–

59. 
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on such issues as containment were in no way binding.48 The AEC was not required to respond 

to such recommendations in any particular way, or to implement them. 

Other early expert advisory panels provided advice to the AEC on safety topics besides 

the design safety of nuclear facilities. For example, shortly after the AEC began operations, it set 

up a 12-person Safety and Industrial Health Advisory Board to survey health and safety issues 

throughout the complex, such as fire-protection practices and hazardous waste management. On 

the topic of waste disposal, the advisory panel warned as early as 1948, “The disposal of 

contaminated waste in present quantities and by present methods (in tanks or burial grounds or at 

sea), if continued for decades, presents the gravest of problems.”49 The panel called for more 

laboratory and field study of waste disposal and other issues, and for less diffused managerial 

responsibility for health and safety. Another group of subject matter experts in the Division of 

Biology and Medicine, beginning in 1948, conveyed its research results on the biological effects 

of radiation on people and the environment to the AEC, which largely relied on its contractors to 

make use of the results. As in the case of its other advisory panels, the AEC was free to disregard 

the safety recommendations of its own experts.50

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 

By 1954, under the AEC’s direction, the defense nuclear complex had greatly expanded, 

and a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons had been accumulated. The nation’s security 

interests appeared more reconcilable than before with the private-sector use of nuclear 

technologies for civilian commercial purposes.51 Such use had been envisioned in the AEA of 

1946 but had taken a back seat to defense-related applications of nuclear energy in the buildup of 

nuclear weapons during the early Cold War years.52 Advocates of civilian uses, including the 

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, now urged Congress 

to change the Atomic Energy Act to accommodate private enterprise in nuclear matters.53

48 Pool, 90. 

49 Gosling and Fehner, 8.

50 Pool, 90. 

51 Titus, 31. 

52 Mazuzan and Walker, 19–22, 25–29. 

53 In 1952 the JCAE issued a paper entitled “Atomic Power and Free Enterprise” that urged the private sector to 

develop nuclear power for commercial purposes. Two years later, President Eisenhower called for turning “atomic 

swords into plowshares” and urged Congress to enact the necessary legislation. See “President Eisenhower’s 

“Atoms for Peace” Speech, Before the General Assembly of the United Nations on Peaceful Uses of Atomic 
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In 1954 Congress passed a sweeping revision of Atomic Energy Act of 1946 to permit for 

the first time private-sector development of a commercial nuclear power industry.54 The Atomic 

Energy Act of 1954 as amended, which remains the primary U.S. statute governing nuclear 

matters, both commercial and defense-related, loosened many of the earlier AEA restrictions to 

create the necessary conditions for private-sector nuclear activity.55 The amended act modified 

the conditions pertaining to ownership and use of nuclear materials and reactors, and ended the 

government’s eight-year monopoly on such ownership, making possible the private ownership of 

nuclear power plants by utility companies. The act also lifted the government’s exclusive control 

of technical data on nuclear matters, thereby diminishing the hindrance that secrecy posed to the 

advancement of nuclear technology for non-military purposes.56

With the opening up of the nuclear enterprise to private development, the AEC acquired 

augmented statutory responsibilities. From 1954 until the elimination of the AEC in 1974, the 

commission’s charge encompassed both military and civilian applications of nuclear energy. The 

law contained the proviso that defense applications were still the top priority of the commission; 

it was to pursue peaceful applications of nuclear energy only “to the maximum extent consistent 

with the common defense and security and with the health and safety of the public.”57 However, 

most of the amended act dealt with the AEC’s new charge of helping to establish a viable 

commercial nuclear enterprise. The structure of the commission was divided into two distinct 

categories: those dealing with atomic energy and those with atomic weapons. A new Division of 

Civilian Applications, headed by a civilian, was assigned primary responsibility for the 

development and application of civilian uses of atomic energy.58 The Division of Military 

Applications, whose director by law still was a member of the armed forces, retained 

responsibility for weapons development.59

As in the case of military uses of nuclear energy, the AEC had a dual mandate vis-à-vis 

civilian applications. The act assigned the AEC the functions both of advancing the use of 

commercial nuclear power and of regulating its safety. In its role as a promoter of nuclear power, 

Energy,” December 8, 1953, atomicarchive.com, http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/Atomsforpeace. 

shtml. 

54 Walker, A Short History, 2–5. 55 Atomic Energy Act of 1954, Pub. L. No. 83–703, ch. 1073, 68 Stat 919, August 30, 1954. 56 Walker, A Short History, 5. See also Titus, 31–33. 57 Pub. L. No. 83–703, ch. 1073, 68 Stat 919, 921. 

58 George, 54. 

59 Hacker, 12. See also Titus, 32–33. 
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the AEC was “to encourage widespread participation in the development and utilization of 

atomic energy for peaceful purposes.”60 The AEC was also to provide the fledgling nuclear 

power industry with technical, research, and financial assistance in adapting nuclear fission to 

the generation of electricity.61 With the backing and urging of Congress’s Joint Committee on 

Atomic Energy, the AEC became heavily engaged in nuclear reactor projects, seeking acceptable 

reactor designs. The AEC performed such research in collaboration with private utility vendors 

and in parallel with the U.S. Nuclear Navy’s Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, led by Admiral 

H. G. Rickover. The navy’s program to develop nuclear reactors for naval-vessel propulsion, the 

Naval Reactors Program, was also under AEC oversight jurisdiction and proved to be a crucial 

source of engineering expertise and management discipline for building a commercial nuclear 

power industry.62 The navy’s own task of harnessing fission to produce a controlled release of 

energy to propel a naval vessel demanded design and testing rigor, system reliability, and a 

strong regard for safety, all characteristics reinforced by Rickover’s leadership.63 Rickover 

emphasized strong top management guidance to contractors, training, adherence to safety 

standards, and standards and procedures designed with major input by system designers.64 The 

contractors for early civilian reactors relied heavily on the experience their engineers and 

scientists had gained through the work on the naval projects, as well as projects in the nuclear 

weapons program. The AEC’s Reactor Development Division also brought naval and weaponsdevelopment experience to bear in its work with private utility vendors on reactor designs.65

Besides the development help on technical matters provided to the nuclear power 

industry by the AEC, another major service the AEC performed to advance the industry was to 

support necessary changes in the law pertaining to nuclear matters. In particular, the AEC 

supported the need for indemnity legislation that would shield private utility owners from huge 

liability claims in the event of a catastrophic accident in a nuclear power plant. Utility owners 

60 Pub. L. No. 83–703, ch. 1073, 68 Stat 919. 

61 Walker, A Short History, 4. 62 Pool, 46–52, 194. 

63 Mazuzan and Walker, 16–17, 21–22. 

64 Interview, John W. Crawford Jr., September 21, 2008. An inaugural Board member on the Defense Nuclear 

Facilities Safety Board, Crawford served for 10 years in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program under Admiral 

Rickover, becoming Deputy Manager, Naval Reactors Program. 

65 See Mazuzan and Walker, 21–22. Soon after enactment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, Duquesne Light 

Company received permission to design and build the first “commercial” nuclear power plant at Shippingport, 

Pennsylvania. The project began in September 1954, with Westinghouse as the contractor. The U.S. Navy had 
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were hesitant to pursue nuclear power as long as they could be destroyed financially by the 

liability arising from a nuclear accident.66 Thus, a precondition for stimulating the private capital 

investment necessary to launch the industry was to ensure an upper limit on private liability 

claims. The AEC backed an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act that would provide 

government coverage for liability claims in excess of a specific cap. Congress enacted the 

amendment, known as the Price-Anderson Act, in 1957.67 This third significant nuclear-era law, 

which added Section 170 to the AEA, authorized the AEC to enter into indemnification 

agreements with the owners of private reactors.68 These owners were obliged to carry $60 

million in private insurance coverage for each reactor, the maximum available from the 

consortium of insurers.69 However, as that amount did not approach the AEC’s estimates of 

possible liability costs arising from a nuclear accident, the AEC, per the Price-Anderson Act, 

would supplement the private protection with an amount up to $500 million. 

Divergent Safety Regimes in the Nuclear Power Industry and the Weapons Program 

The dual mandate of the AEC, after the expansion of its jurisdiction to the commercial 

sector, included, as before, responsibility for regulating the safety of the nuclear enterprise. 

Under the 1954 AEA, the purview of the AEC’s regulatory power now extended to private, 

commercial applications of nuclear energy, as well as to federal, defense-related applications. 

The amended act of 1954 reiterated much of the general language of its 1946 predecessor, 

assigning the AEC broad regulatory authority and directing it to “(1) protect health, (2) minimize 

danger to life or property, and (3) require the reporting and permit the inspection of work 

performed thereunder, as the commission may determine.”70 Section 161 of the act made 

reference to tools⎯standards and instructions⎯that the AEC was to use to promote safe nuclear 

operations. According to Section 161, 

contracted with Westinghouse in the late 1940s to provide a research facility and technical expertise for the 

development of a nuclear propulsion plant for naval vessels. 

66 Walker, A Short History, 13–15. 67 Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, Pub. L. No. 85–256, 71 Stat 576, September 2, 1957. 68 See Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as Amended, § 170, which was added by Pub. L. No. 85–256 § 4, 71 Stat 576. 

See also Mazuzan and Walker, 199–212. 

69 Chapman, 348. 

70 Pub. L. No. 83–703, ch. 1073, Section 31(c), 68 Stat 919, 927. 
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In the performance of its functions the Commission is authorized to⎯

. . . 

b. establish by rule, regulation, or order, such standards and instructions to govern 

the possession and use of special nuclear material, source material, and byproduct 

material as the Commission may deem necessary or desirable to promote the 

common defense and security or to protect health or to minimize danger to life or 

property . . . 

(i) (3) to govern any activity authorized pursuant to this Act, including standards 

and restrictions governing the design, location, and operation of facilities used in 

the conduct of such activity, in order to protect health and to minimize danger to 

life or property.”71

The 1954 AEA, like its 1946 predecessor, allowed the AEC to establish “standards and 

instruction” to protect health and safety.72 The 1954 act did make one expectation clear about the 

AEC’s enlarged regulatory mission, namely, that its oversight would proceed along different 

paths for private commercial and defense-related activities. In the case of privately owned 

facilities, Congress envisioned a licensing arrangement as the means of furthering the protection 

of public health and safety. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 required all commercial nuclear 

facilities to be licensed and gave the AEC the authority to act as a nuclear licensing agency.73

Licensing was a mechanism by which continuing public control over private activities could be 

exercised. Such continuing control was a precondition for the acceptability of the private 

ownership of nuclear facilities, the private use of fissionable material, and private industrial 

access to needed technical information. For defense-related nuclear operations, Congress 

established no licensing scheme.74 The exempted facilities were owned by the federal 

government and bore a different relationship to the public interest. Their regulation was not 

taken up as a matter requiring statutory change. 

The introduction of a licensing requirement for the commercial nuclear power industry 

and its omission for the defense nuclear complex contributed over time to a widening divergence 

in their respective regimes for regulating safety. The divergence between the commercial and 

defense sides of the nuclear enterprise in regard to safety began slowly at first and then 

71 Pub. L. No. 83–703, Section 161(b) and 161(i)(3), ch. 1073, 68 Stat 919, 948–49. 

72 See U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level 

Radioactive Waste, OTA–0–171 (Washington, DC, March 1985), 83, 

95, http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1985/ 8514_n.html; 

Mazuzan and Walker, 30–31; and Rosa and Freudenburg, 34. 

73 Buck, 6. 

74 George, 175. 
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accelerated. Eventually, the two sides, although broadly similar as users of nuclear technologies, 

addressed safety issues in a different manner. 

Driven by licensing dynamics, this growing difference was masked initially by the fact 

that the two sides both had rather loose safety standards and casual safety management. Under 

the licensing arrangement, the authorization to build or operate a commercial nuclear power 

plant was contingent upon safety reviews by AEC staff of the potential private licensee’s 

facilities and operating practices. During the infancy of nuclear power, such reviews leading to 

the issuance or denial of a license, had much in common with safety reviews performed as part 

of health and safety programs in the weapons complex. In both instances, reviews proceeded on 

a case-by-case basis and without reference to clearly defined standards as to what constituted 

safe installation design or operations.75 The basis for judgments about safety, given the still 

limited and fluid knowledge about nuclear matters in the mid-1950s, was the “consensus of 

experts.”76 Another commonality that marked early nuclear safety reviews of both governmentowned defense and commercial facilities was their reliance on the same organizational source of 

expertise on reactor designs, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, the AEC’s 

principal safety group.77 The ACRS grew in influence after 1957, when an amendment to the 

Atomic Energy Act upgraded its status to that of a statutory advisory committee to the AEC, 

with a mandate to review all applications to construct and operate nuclear power plants.78

Offering the AEC independent technical safety evaluations, the ACRS not only reviewed every 

proposal for a power reactor, but also performed periodic safety reviews of such defense 

facilities as Hanford’s new production reactor⎯the N-reactor, built in 1963––and the Savannah 

River production reactors.79

Although nuclear safety reviews performed for the purpose of licensing commercial 

nuclear facilities and those performed in the weapons complex did not at first sharply 

75 Walker, A Short History, 8. 76 DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, 2/4. 77 Walker, A Short History, 13. The ACRS, interested in how to ensure reactor safety, drew upon the engineering 

expertise of the national laboratories, which researched the technical aspects of reactors, for example, how fuel 

elements would react if the temperature of the core exceeded normal operating temperature, how much pressure a 

reactor containment vessel could withstand, and whether an emergency core-cooling system would perform as 

designed. 

78 Pool, 90. See also Buck, 6. This upgrade of the ACRS reflected the recognition by proponents of nuclear power 

that a single accident in a nuclear reactor could severely weaken the nascent industry. 
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differentiate the regulatory regimes of the two sides of the nuclear enterprise, the requirement of 

licensing for commercial plants resulted in a regulatory regime and approach quite different from 

that pursued in the weapons complex. The licensing requirement produced a number of 

interacting effects.80 One was increased pressure on the commercial nuclear industry to develop 

consistent and measurable standards as the foundation upon which licensing could rest. Another 

effect was to necessitate the enlargement and organizational consolidation of the regulatory staff 

charged with processing applications for licenses and monitoring compliance with their terms. A 

third effect was to open up the commercial nuclear enterprise to increased public scrutiny, 

because of the public’s right to request public hearings or review as part of licensing 

proceedings, and its right to prior notice and an opportunity to comment⎯“prior notice and 

comment”⎯on standards proposed for promulgation as regulations in the U.S. Code of 

Regulations.81

With respect to standards, the need for a clear and publicly defensible technical basis for 

the licensing of commercial plants prompted the AEC to step up its efforts to specify the safety 

requirements to which the private vendors of nuclear power were obliged to adhere. The AEC 

sought standards and requirements that embodied available scientific information and, following 

the lead of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, moved increasingly to the use of written 

standards.82 During the 1960s, the AEC worked toward greater rigor in several important areas, 

including standards on protection measures against radiation exposure, requirements to prevent 

major radiation releases from a power reactor, and standards relating to reactor safety 

engineering issues, such as pressure vessel integrity and emergency core cooling systems. 

Gradually the AEC’s standard setting on the commercial side took the form of promulgating 

legally binding regulations in a formal process that included prior issuance for public comment. 

The first topic addressed in this formal rulemaking process was the required elements in a reactor 

79 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and 

Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities: Hearings on H.R. 783, H.R.. 2047, and H.R. 3123, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 

November 5, 19, 1987, 34. See also Buck, 6. 

80 J. Samuel Walker, Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1963–1971 (Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 1992), 37ff. 

81 Interview, Sherri Wasserman Goodman, Alexandria, VA, September 10, 2008. Goodman was on the professional 

staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee when the creation of the Board was debated. See also Walker, A 

Short History, 13. The Price-Anderson Act included a provision that required public hearings on all reactor 

applications. 

82 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Fifth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1995), 

78, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_Congress/all/rc.php. 
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site. In 1962 the AEC’s specification of reactor siting criteria, which emphasized quantitative 

measures, was codified in Title 10, Part 100, of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations.83 Other 

regulations followed, along with regulatory guides to aid in judging compliance. In connection 

with private-sector licensed operators, the AEC operated increasingly as a true regulator. Besides 

the power to define standards and promulgate regulations, it also had enforcement authority, 

including the power to maintain surveillance of licensed reactors and to threaten operators with 

the withholding, suspension, or non-renewal of a license. 

The AEC’s efforts to develop standards and regulations necessitated organizational 

changes that gave greater prominence to its regulatory arm. In 1961 the AEC modified its 

internal structure to separate regulatory functions from operating functions and upgraded the 

former by placing them under a newly created director of regulation, who reported directly to the 

commissioners.84 The AEC also expanded its regulatory staff. A larger staff was needed to 

handle the increased workload brought on by the formalization of standard setting and 

regulation, as well as the mid-1960s boom in orders and construction of commercial nuclear 

power plants. From a slow start of only eight small power reactors ordered prior to 1966, 52 

reactors were on order by November of that year, flooding the AEC with applications for 

licenses.85

In addition to strengthening the AEC’s regulatory arm and standard setting, its licensing 

and regulatory activities under the 1954 act provided the avenues for public as well as judicial 

involvement in its processes of decision-making about commercial nuclear power.86 For 

example, by law, following any change in a licensing application, the public had a specified 

period during which a public hearing could be requested to provide a forum for airing concerns 

83 For discussion of 10 CFR Part 100 in a meeting before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, see Public 

Meetings and Hearings, 1991, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, vol. II of II (Washington, DC: 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1991), 187–90. See also J. Samuel Walker, Three Mile Island: A Nuclear 

Crisis in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 52–62. 84 Buck, 8. 

85 Merritt E. Langston, “Continuing Evolution of U.S. Nuclear Quality Assurance Principles, Practices and 

Requirements,” Part I, August 2005, 5, http://www.hss.energy.gov/CSA/CSP/qa/NQAStandardsEvolution1.doc. 

An exponential growth in the nuclear power plant market began in 1965. This growth followed the 

successful demonstration of commercial nuclear power at the Shippingport, Pennsylvania, nuclear plant. At 

that time, eight reactors with a combined capacity of 4,870 megawatts electrical (Mwe) were on order. In 

the first eight months of 1966, 15 more reactors with a total capacity of 11,800 Mwe were ordered. By 

November 1966, there were 52 civilian power reactors with a total capacity of 26,890 Mwe on order. The 

AEC predicted an increase in capacity of from 80,000 to 110,000 total Mwe by 1980. Plant capacity had 

increased in size from several hundred to 1,100 Mwe. 
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and opinions.87 Similarly, opportunities for public comment were part of the formal process for 

promulgating regulations. In addition, licensing decisions became subject to judicial review. 

During the early years of commercial nuclear power, such avenues for outside involvement drew 

largely benign public and media attention to the industry and served to elicit community 

acceptance of industry and AEC decisions, for example, on plant siting.88 As the industry rapidly 

grew during the 1960s and early 1970s, however, the avenues for involvement brought 

interventions by outside parties that challenged industry and AEC freedom of action. Such 

parties included local citizens groups, media, state and local governments, antinuclear and 

environmental activists, and, finally, the judiciary, all of which questioned the industry’s 

handling of safety, health, and the environment.89 By the early 1970s, when the nuclear power 

industry and the AEC were increasingly under fire by such outside parties, citizen activists 

frequently exploited the hearing process to delay the construction and raise the costs of nuclear 

power plants.90

The type of answerability to public concerns that the AEC’s licensing procedures brought 

to the commercial nuclear power industry and its AEC regulators did not pertain on the defense 

side of the nuclear enterprise or to the staff in charge of the commission’s health and safety 

programs in the nuclear weapons complex. The evolution of such programs, although exhibiting 

some parallels to that of the AEC’s private-sector regulation, did not involve the institution of 

any practices that would normally occasion or allow public hearings. The federally owned 

nuclear facilities were exempt from licensing by statute, and the AEC staff for these facilities 

developed health and safety standards without recourse to the formal processes of promulgating 

regulations.91 The staff did pursue improved definitions of standards and requirements and 

86 Anthony R. Buhl, Thomas Murley, George Edgar, and Donald Silverman. “NRC Regulation of DOE Facilities,” 

Nuclear News, May 1997, 29. 87 Rosa and Freudenburg, 41–42. 

88 Rosa and Freudenburg, 34. 

89 Walker, Three Mile Island, 9–17. 90 Pool, 195. 

91 George, 54. See DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, 

2/4. According to DiNunno, 

In 1959, for closer scrutiny of the operations of its own nuclear facilities, the AEC consolidated its 

subject matter experts in applied health physics, fire protection, and industrial health and safety 

standards into an Operational Safety Division. These experts, along with those in the Division of 

Biology and Medicine, had been largely advisory to weapons production managers . . . .The 

establishment of the Operational Safety Division marked the first forceful federal insertion of 

safety expectations into the production programs of the government’s weapons contractors. 
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captured them informally in a Manual of Standards.92 However, the standards they developed, 

mainly designated as orders and directives, had a different status from legally binding regulations 

and could be instituted and changed without public notice and comment. The absence of 

practices that invited public involvement shielded the nuclear weapons side of the nuclear 

enterprise from public scrutiny. Another contributor to the absence of public involvement in the 

weapons program was national security concerns. 

The comparative invulnerability of the defense side of the nuclear enterprise to public 

scrutiny and challenge, even as the public mood concerning nuclear activities darkened by the 

late 1960s, contributed to the continuation of a relatively relaxed safety regime in the weapons 

complex. Under this safety regime, for example, the processes of defining, using, and enforcing 

standards were pursued without a great sense of urgency. A key task of the weapons program’s 

health and safety staff was to formulate orders and directives to be written into contracts and 

followed by the weapons contractors.93 This task of formulation was given to delay, allowing 

contractors to rely on their own experience for many safety issues.94 In these tasks, the 

contractors typically continued the ad hoc and case-by-case approach of the nuclear enterprise’s 

earlier days, and contractors neither offered, nor were systematically called upon to give, 

feedback that could inform the ongoing efforts of AEC staff on the defense side to formalize 

safety-related standards. 

With respect to the standards⎯the orders and directives⎯that had been defined and 

written into contracts, compliance was far from a given. Accustomed to working according to 

their own standards, contractors tended to view the safety orders and directives written into their 

contracts as “'goals’ to be met over time,” rather than as strict requirements demanding 

adherence.95 Both the means and the will to punish contractors for their non-adherence to 

contractual standards were limited. Numerous factors hampered stringent enforcement, including 

insufficient numbers of technically qualified AEC staff to monitor and inspect operations and 

facilities. Also, the AEC was highly dependent on its consortium of contractors to realize the 

weapons production goals that were part of the commission’s dual mission of production and 

92 DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, 2/4. 93 National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Committee to Assess Safety and Technical Issues at 

DOE Reactors, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors: A Report to the U.S. Department of Energy

(Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1987), esp., 222–26, in “Appendix H, Structure of the DOE Safety 

System: Technical Discussion,” http://books.google.com/books?id=q2MrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage. 94 Office of Technology Assessment, Hazards Ahead, 54. 
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safety. While in theory contractor non-compliance with a contract’s built-in safety orders could 

be grounds for abrogating a contract, in practice the AEC’s dependence on its contractors 

undercut its leverage to enforce their attention to the safety of operations. The priority of 

production goals limited the AEC’s incentive to enforce safety requirements. 

The weaknesses of the weapons program’s system for ensuring safety escaped sustained 

public, media, and congressional criticism longer than did safety issues in the commercial 

nuclear power industry. The main safety issue related to nuclear weapons that received attention 

prior to the mid-1980s was the radioactive fallout resulting from aboveground nuclear weapons 

testing.96 The flare-up of concern about that issue subsided with the 1963 ban on aboveground 

testing of nuclear weapons, leaving the commercial nuclear power industry the chief target of the 

public’s increasing skepticism about the nuclear enterprise and growing distrust of its governing 

body, the AEC.97

By the 1970s, citizen activists opposed to nuclear technology took advantage of the 

AEC’s comparatively wide avenues for public involvement in commercial nuclear activities and 

appeared regularly at AEC licensing hearings for nuclear power plants to express safety 

concerns, e.g., about the chances of a large-scale accident and the hazards of long-lived 

radioactive waste, as well as economic arguments. Opponents of nuclear technology filed 

petitions with the AEC and legal motions with the courts, seeking to stall the licensing and 

operation of nuclear power plants, and thereby to block the nuclear industry’s expansion. 

NUCLEAR DOUBTS AND THE ENERGY CRISIS 

The safety concerns involving commercial nuclear power were attributed in part to the 

AEC’s dual mandate, now widely seen as involving conflicting, perhaps even irreconcilable, 

objectives, i.e., on the one hand, to advance the growth of a private commercial nuclear industry 

and, on the other hand, to ensure its safety. To be sure, the AEC had striven to balance these 

objectives. After the early period of the nuclear industry, when the industry’s launch and growth 

had priority, the AEC had upgraded its regulatory arm, giving more influence to those charged 

with safety, and acted as a far more stringent regulator. Still, balancing these objectives was 

95 Buhl, et al., 29. 

96 Walker, A Short History, 17–21. 97 Buck, 4–5. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 banned atmospheric testing while permitting underground 

testing. 
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difficult to achieve, and many viewed the commission as still too caught up with the industry it 

regulated. 

The Breakup of the AEC 

After years of public debate, Congress judged the AEC’s dual mission to be no longer 

tenable and enacted the Energy Reorganization Act (ERA) in 1974 to separate the commission’s 

two conflicting objectives and assign them to different federal agencies.98 Senator Abraham 

Ribicoff, chairman of the committee with primary jurisdiction for the act, explained its rationale, 

[T]he development of the nuclear power industry has been managed by the same 

agency responsible for regulating it. While this arrangement may have been 

necessary in the infancy of the atomic era after World War II, it is clearly not in 

the public interest to continue this special relationship now that the industry is 

well on its way to becoming among the largest and most hazardous in the Nation. 

In fact, it is difficult to determine . . . where the commission ends and the industry 

begins.99

The legislation of 1974 disbanded the AEC and assigned its responsibility for nuclear safety in 

civilian nuclear applications, including all commercial nuclear plants, to the newly created U.S. 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The NRC, an independent regulatory agency that began 

operations in January 1975, inherited “all the licensing and related regulatory functions of the 

Atomic Energy Commission.”100 The 1974 act transferred the AEC’s regulatory arm intact, 

including existing regulations and the staff and programs that governed safety in the nuclear 

industry.101 The NRC also was assigned some units that had previously provided safety support 

to both the power industry and the weapons program. The NRC inherited, for example, the 

98 Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, Pub. L. No.93–438, 88 Stat. 1233, October 11, 1974, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 

Sec. 5801 et seq. 99 120 Cong. Rec. 28129 (1974) (statement of Senator Ribicoff). Ribicoff, who chaired the Committee on 

Government Operations, reported the act to the Senate in June 1974. 

100 Pub. L. No. 93–438, Sec. 201(f), 88 Stat 1233, 1243. See Terrence R. Fehner and Jack M. Holl, Department of 

Energy, 1977–1994: A Summary History (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy, November 1994), 18–

20, http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/10106088-mgIkuD/webviewable/10106088.PDF. Although the NRC’s 

mandate generally restricted NRC authority to the regulation of the commercial nuclear industry, the NRC licensed 

some government-owned nuclear facilities, including some operated for the military. None of these NRC-licensed, 

government-owned facilities were involved in weapons production. See also Buhl et al, 28–30. 

101 Interview, John E. Mansfield, Board vice chairman (since 2007; Board member, 1997–present), Washington, DC, 

August 25, 2008. See also Pool, 196; and George, 55. 
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Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety, whose focus became almost exclusively commercial 

nuclear activities.102

With the enactment of the 1974 act, the NRC was not given any developmental, 

operational, or promotional responsibilities for either commercial nuclear power or the weapons 

program. A second new agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), 

was given these non-regulatory responsibilities of the AEC⎯mainly, managing the nuclear 

weapons and naval reactor programs⎯as well as energy development programs.103 Becoming 

the managing agency for the nuclear weapons complex, ERDA also assumed responsibility for 

safety in the weapons program, since, when the NRC was created, no comparable independent 

safety authority was created for defense nuclear facilities.104 Under the new arrangement of 

1974, the duties to ensure safety and production continued to reside in the same agency, 

ERDA.105 Thus, the agency restructuring of 1974, while undoing the problematic duality of the 

AEC’s mission on the civilian side of the nuclear enterprise, left such a duality of agency 

mission in place on the side of the weapons program. This difference in agency arrangements for 

the power industry and the weapons program was ultimately to reinforce and sharpen over time 

the divergence that had already developed in the two spheres’ respective safety regimes. 

The Birth of the Department of Energy in the Era of Energy Crises 

In 1977 further organizational changes occurred in the energy arena, this time 

precipitated not by dissatisfaction with the AEC, but by the nation’s ongoing energy crisis and 

concerns about U.S. vulnerability to energy supply–disrupting events, such as the oil embargo of 

102 The ACRS is subject to the NRC regulations set forth in 10 CFR Part 7. 103 Pub. L. No.93–438, Section 102(g), 88 Stat 1233, 1235–37. The Energy Reorganization Act perpetuated the 

AEC’s compartmentalization of military applications by stipulating a statutory position, “Director of Military 

Applications” within ERDA. ERDA assumed “activities relating to research and development on the various sources 

of energy (and) other functions, including but not limited to the Atomic Energy Commission's military and 

production activities and its general basic research activities.” 

104 Pub. L. No. 93–438, Section 2a, 88 Stat 1233. The statute that established ERDA charged it with operating the 

agency to “advance the goals of restoring, protecting and enhancing environmental quality, and to assure public 

health and safety.” 

105 DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, 2/6. According 

to DiNunno, 

ERDA’s organization included an Assistant Administrator for Environment and Safety. The 

functions of this Environment and Safety group, like those of its predecessors, were largely in 

support of the line. The functions included a lead role in sponsoring biomedical and environmental 

research, oversight of a health and safety laboratory, development of environmental control 
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1973. To the Carter administration, the energy crisis demonstrated a need for comprehensive 

national energy planning and coordination. The Carter administration wanted both to raise 

energy issues to a higher level on the policy agenda and to enhance energy-planning efficiency 

by centralizing the dispersed energy-related activities of various federal agencies. The 

administration concluded that the reorganization of 1974, in its establishment of ERDA, was 

inadequate to current needs and proposed to replace ERDA with a new cabinet-level department 

that incorporated ERDA’s functions, along with some others.106 At the administration’s urging, 

Congress enacted the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, creating the Department 

of Energy (DOE), which began operations on October 1, 1977.107 The act transferred to DOE the 

duties previously performed by the short-lived ERDA, including control of the nuclear weapons 

complex.108 For the defense-related tasks so transferred, Congress required a continuing 

compartmentalization of weapons-related activities under an assistant secretary for defense 

programs and national security functions. In addition, the DOE enabling legislation expanded the 

new department’s non-nuclear management responsibilities beyond the non-nuclear duties, 

primarily research, that ERDA had performed. DOE inherited and consolidated, for example, 

non-nuclear energy regulatory programs, including those of various cabinet-level departments.109

Thus, with the establishment of DOE, responsibilities for the weapons complex came to 

reside in an organization whose functions were more encompassing than those of its immediate 

predecessor, ERDA, as well as quite different from those of the AEC, whose focus had been on 

nuclear matters exclusively. As the successor to both the AEC and ERDA for defense nuclear 

activities, however, DOE was still the carrier of a dual mission, inheriting both managerial and 

regulatory responsibilities. DOE’s charge was both to manage the production of nuclear weapons 

and to ensure the safe operation of DOE production facilities. Assigning DOE the broad goal of 

technologies, development of safety standards, compliance oversight, coordination of safety 

reactor research, and waste management and transportation. 106 Fehner and Holl, 22–23; Titus, 35. 107 Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, Pub. L. No. 95–91, Title II, Section 201, 91 Stat 565, 569. See 

also U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Linking Legacies: Connecting the Cold 

War Nuclear Weapons Production Processes to Their Environmental Consequences (Washington, DC, January 

1997), http://www.em.doe.gov/Publications/linklegacy.aspx. 

108 These defense functions were transferred to DOE by Pub. L. No. 95–91, Title II, Section 203(a)(5), 91 Stat 565, 

570. 

109 George, 56. See also DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear 

Facilities, C/2. 
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protecting public health and safety, and mentioning environmental protection, the act stated that 

DOE’s mission was to include: 

[I]ncorporation of national environmental protection goals in the formulation and 

implementation of energy programs and to advance the goals of restoring, 

protecting, and enhancing environmental quality, and assuring public health and 

safety.110

The act made clear that DOE’s statutory authority included the power to establish, impose, 

oversee, and enforce compliance with nuclear safety requirements.111 Otherwise, like earlier 

nuclear-related legislation, the act lacked specifics as to how to accomplish safety aims. As the 

National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council later commented about the law that 

created DOE, “Congress gave DOE nearly complete discretion to determine how it should go 

about protecting the public.”112

The newly created DOE focused the bulk of its attention on activities to address the 

energy crisis ⎯energy development and regulation to promote efficiency and 

conservation⎯rather than on the nuclear weapons complex.113 Regarding the weapons complex, 

DOE, following its AEC/ERDA predecessors, emphasized the production of nuclear materials 

and weapons. With respect to such issues in the weapons program, DOE carried forward the 

system of “self-regulation” inherited from its predecessors, and continued to develop and 

maintain the internal system of orders and directives under which nuclear safety had been 

regulated. DOE specified the set of orders to be written into its management and operation 

(M&O) contracts and formulated other types of guidance for its contractors.114 In doing so, DOE 

often adopted NRC standards as part of its internal orders.115 Otherwise, DOE remained resistant 

to outside pressures for improvement in environment, safety, and health (ES&H) protection 

measures in its nuclear operations, for example, pressures arising from the growing national 

environmental protection movement. From the time of its establishment in 1977, DOE came 

under pressure to comply at DOE weapons-production sites with environmental statutes and 

110 Pub. L. No. 95–91, Section 102 (13), 91 Stat 565, 568; 42 U.S.C. Section 7101 et seq., section 7191. 111 Pub. L. No. 95–91, Section 102 (13), 91 Stat 565, 568. 112 National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors, 

224. 

113 Fehner and Holl, 22–26. 114 Interview, Mansfield. Within DOE’s safety regime, standards-based operation was relatively strong in relation to 

reactors, but weaker in other areas. For a description of the various types of standard-like instruments that DOE used 

to promote safety, see National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, Safety Issues at the Defense 

Production Reactors. 
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regulations, e.g., the recently enacted Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 or 

RCRA, administered by the states, and, slightly later, the Comprehensive Environmental 

Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA, also known as “Superfund,” 

which was administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).116 However, DOE, like 

its predecessors, was intent on remaining “self-regulating” for health and safety matters at 

defense nuclear facilities and resisted being compelled to comply with such laws, claiming 

exemption under the terms of the Atomic Energy Act.117

While DOE initially was successful in fending off pressures to submit its nuclear 

facilities to the external constraints, such as environmental laws, similar kinds of pressure 

brought dramatic change to the commercial side of the nuclear enterprise and its regulator, the 

NRC. The commercial industry faced environmental and civic activism generated by 

deteriorating public confidence in the safety and environmental benignity of nuclear 

technologies, and by alarm at the long-standing, apparently intractable problem of nuclear waste. 

Such intensified public concern and activism, plus the high costs of nuclear power generation, 

brought an abrupt halt to further growth of the industry.118 After 1978, no U.S. utility company 

ordered a nuclear power reactor, and all orders placed after 1974 were eventually canceled.119

This collapse of new orders in turn changed the NRC’s focus. The NRC continued its licensing 

and regulatory activities, gradually developing “a full set of legally binding regulations and a 

wide range of interpretive guidance to judge compliance.” However, with the end of new 

applications for plant construction, the NRC’s focus in standard setting was less on the safe 

design of reactors than on the safety standards for their operation and maintenance.120

THE THREE MILE ISLAND SHAKEUP: AFTERMATH 

The efficacy of such efforts to improve safety management in the two sides of the nuclear 

enterprise was suddenly called into question at the end of that decade by the trauma of the core115 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 208. 116 Pub. L. No. 94–580, 90 Stat 2795, and Pub. L. No. 96–510, 94 Stat 2767. 117 Len Ackland, Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (Albuquerque: University of New 

Mexico Press, 2002), 200, 205. 

118 Walker, Three Mile Island, 42. 119 U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, The Changing Structure of the Electric Power 

Industry, 2000: An Update, DOE/EIA–0562(00) (Washington, DC, October 2000), 161, http://www.eia.doe.gov/ 

cneaf/electricity/chg_stru_updated/toc.html. 120 See Walker, A Short History, 61. 
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melt accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The accident, 

the most serious in U.S. commercial nuclear plant operating history, began at the plant’s Unit 2 

on March 28, 1979.121 About half of the radioactive, heat-producing core melted before the 

reactor could be brought to a “cold shutdown” a month later.122 For a time, the events in progress 

at the plant raised fears that widespread radioactive contamination would escape the containment 

vessel⎯fears fueled by an erroneous NRC warning about an explosive “hydrogen bubble” 

within the reactor.123 The crisis ended without a major radiation release, injuries, or the need for 

a general evacuation, but it hardened preexisting public and media suspicion about the nuclear 

enterprise, both the technology and its governance. As had been the case in earlier flare-ups of 

public alarm about nuclear technology, public concern was relatively undifferentiated, pertaining 

to all things nuclear, whether commercial or defense-related. 

While the Three Mile Island accident was a major setback for trust in all things nuclear, 

the accident was an impetus for safety improvements. Although the accident brought added 

scrutiny of nuclear safety across both sides of the nuclear enterprise, the direct and immediate 

impact of the accident as a driver of safety upgrades was much greater in the commercial 

industry and at the NRC than in the weapons program and at DOE.124 Accounting for this 

difference in part was still the greater vulnerability of the commercial side to the exertion of 

various kinds of public pressure. Another reason for the difference in the immediate impetus to 

safety improvements was simply the fact that the TMI accident involved a commercial plant, 

whose regulation was the NRC’s responsibility. 

In the aftermath of the accident, a presidential commission, the Kemeny Commission, 

was set up to investigate the accident and directed, among other things, to address whether 

licensed commercial nuclear power reactors should be allowed to continue operating.125 The 

Kemeny Commission answered in the affirmative but identified, and proposed as a precondition, 

significant items requiring industry-wide corrective measures. Because analyses of the accident 

121 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC: Our History, February 3, 2009, n.p., http://www.nrc.gov/aboutnrc/history.html#aec. 

122 Walker, Three Mile Island, chapters 4–8. 123 William Lanouette,” The Atom, Politics, and the Press” (Washington, DC: Media Studies Project, Woodrow 

Wilson International Center for Scholars, December 1989), 106.

124 Interview, Goodman. 125 For an account of post-TMI safety-related changes in the commercial industry, see Joseph V. Rees, Hostages of 

Each Other: The Transformation of Nuclear Safety Since Three Mile Island (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 

1996). 
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underscored that severe accidents could result from small equipment failures compounded by 

human error, the NRC henceforth placed far greater emphasis on the training of reactor operators 

and “human factors” in plant performance.126 The NRC also called upon the industry to make 

wide-ranging improvements in emergency-response planning, the documentation of plant 

operating histories, radiation protection practices, and human factors engineering. In addition, 

the NRC tightened and stepped up its regulatory oversight activities. Based on a recommendation 

of the Kemeny Commission, the NRC, for example, established onsite inspectors at all its 

licensed sites.127

In making these post-TMI reforms, the NRC attempted to emulate the most successful 

model in the history of nuclear technology, Rickover’s Nuclear Navy. Based on observation of 

navy practices, the NRC and the industry remedied a good deal of pre-TMI sloppiness in 

operations, establishing more detailed rules and specifications covering more seemingly minor 

matters, as well as more disciplined record-keeping.128 In addition, the NRC augmented its own 

efforts by delegating some of its responsibilities to a new industry group, the Institute of Nuclear 

Power Operations (INPO), which was founded in response to a recommendation of the Kemeny 

Commission Report.129 Funded by the U.S. nuclear power industry, INPO was created to 

improve the sharing of operational experience and best practices among nuclear power plants.130

INPO conducted nuclear plant evaluations, identified strengths and common operational 

deficiencies, and disseminated its findings and data analyses within the nuclear industry, 

typically without revealing the names of particular plants or making its findings public.131 In 

addition, based on the data it collected, INPO set performance objectives, defined benchmarks of 

quality in reactor operations, and disseminated guidelines industry-wide.132

126 Walker, A Short History, 51–53. 127 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 174. 128 Pool, 204. 129 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy 

Conservation and Power, Nuclear Reactor Safety, 99th Cong., 2d sess., May 22 and July 16, 1986, 3. 130 Interview, Mansfield. Pointed out that DOE contractors on the defense side of the nuclear enterprise eventually 

formed a counterpart on INPO, the Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG), which had the similar aim of 

sharing best practices. On INPO, see Rees, 41ff. 

131 On INPO’s treatment of its data as “proprietary,” see House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy 

Conservation and Power, Nuclear Reactor Safety, 3. 132 Matthew L. Wald, “10 Years After Three Mile Island,” New York Times, March 23, 1989, 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DF1738F930A15750C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&page

wanted=print. 
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Similarly sweeping and direct post-TMI changes did not take place in the nuclear 

weapons complex or at DOE. Among notable short-run effects of the TMI accident was a 

comprehensive self-assessment conducted in 1981 for the secretary of energy on the safety of 

DOE’s production reactors.133 The 1981 report, known as the Crawford Committee report, was 

authored by a panel whose head, John W. Crawford Jr., would later become an inaugural 

member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The Crawford Committee report 

revealed numerous safety deficiencies in DOE nuclear operations and DOE.134 The report faulted 

DOE on a number of grounds, including a lack of adequate standards, inadequate requirements 

for ensuring the quality of operating personnel, and spottiness in implementing lessons learned 

from the TMI accident. On the issues of standards and training, the report criticized DOE in 

explicitly comparative terms, chiding it for falling short in safety upgrades compared to the NRC 

and the commercial nuclear industry. The report stated, 

• DOE Headquarters policies, instructions, and other information relating to nuclear 

matters . . . have not been upgraded to take into account the standards and 

requirements reissued by NRC. 

• A coordinated DOE-wide program relative to TMI Lessons learned has not been 

established, and only isolated corrective measures are evident at reactor sites. 

• DOE lags behind the commercial nuclear industry in issuing uniform 

unambiguous requirements for the selection, training, and qualification of reactor 

operating personnel.135

The report concluded with a call for further study, as well as recommendations for internal 

organizational changes in DOE that would elevate the status of ES&H functions. 

The findings of the Crawford Committee report accorded with a later summary 

assessment by a congressional staff participant in the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s 

establishment, namely, that the nuclear weapons complex, relatively speaking, “did not benefit 

from the safety upgrades prompted by the Three Mile Island accident.”136 The staffer mentioned 

several reasons, both long-term and shorter term, for the relatively slight effect of the Three Mile 

133 U.S. Department of Energy, A Report on a Safety Assessment of Department of Energy Nuclear Reactor: Report 

of the Crawford Committee, DOE/US–0005 (Washington, DC, March 1981). 134 See U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear 

Deterrence, Safety Oversight for Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 100th Cong., 1st sess., October 22, 26, 27, 

30, November 3, 1987, 305, on the Crawford Committee, also known as the Nuclear Facility Personnel Qualification 

Committee. The panel’s head, John W. Crawford Jr., was then the deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy. See 

also DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, C/3. 135 DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, C/3. 
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Island accident on safety activities in the nuclear weapons complex compared to the shakeup it 

produced in the nuclear industry and NRC. The long-term reason, already suggested, was that the 

legacy of secrecy that had always prevailed in the defense nuclear complex remained in force, 

rendering DOE nuclear facilities and DOE safety activities still relatively sheltered from outside 

scrutiny. Not particularly subject to outside pressure to force remedial action on safety issues, 

DOE was also temporarily restrained from taking action on its own account because of a 

significant increase in the demand for nuclear weapons production in the early 1980s. This 

increased demand began with President Carter’s last defense budget, whose request roughly 

coincided in time with the Three Mile Island accident. The buildup of weapons continued well 

into the Reagan years, making the early to mid-1980s a period of intense nuclear weapons 

production. DOE was called upon to expand significantly its output of nuclear materials and 

weapons, as well as its research and development of nuclear weapons.137 The buildup of the 

nuclear arsenal took priority, shifting DOE away both from its originally stronger focus on 

energy issues and from any significantly increased post-TMI focus on safety issues in DOE’s 

nuclear operations.138 A Board employee later remarked upon the weapons buildup and its 

deleterious effect on DOE’s performance in health and safety matters, stating, 

The nuclear business is like other industries. They have busy times. They have 

slack times and I guess it is fair to say that the 1980s, early and mid-1980s, was a 

very busy time in the weapons production complex. 

During busy times, plants concentrated on making their product⎯in this case 

weapons components⎯and deferred other things: maintenance and upgrades and 

scrap processing.139

Although the Reagan administration’s weapons buildup contributed to DOE’s deferral of 

remedial action on the kinds of safety issues that various TMI accident analyses highlighted, 

DOE did not altogether escape external pressures reflecting heightened post-TMI public 

concerns about nuclear-related matters. In particular, DOE felt the impact of intensified public 

136 Interview, Goodman. 137 On the Reagan administration’s buildup and its impact on safe operations in the DOE nuclear complex, see 

Schwartz, 496–502. 

138 Fehner and Holl, 38–41. The Carter administration’s fiscal year 1982 Department of Energy budget ($12.6 

billion) and the Reagan administration’s FY 1985 budget ($12.8 billion) were similar in amount but differed in 

priorities. Reagan’s budget doubled expenditures for the nuclear-weapons program, while halving spending for 

energy areas such as conservation and renewable energy research. 139 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1995, Public Meetings and Hearings, 1995, Before the Defense Nuclear 

Facilities Safety Board, vol. I (Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1995), 18. 
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concerns about nuclear waste disposal and environmental contamination by radioactive wastes. 

As a result of such concerns, DOE came under increased pressure to subject its own activities at 

defense nuclear sites to outside scrutiny and external regulation under various state and federal 

laws. DOE had successfully resisted inroads of external regulation in the past, refusing to 

acknowledge, for example, its obligations to comply with environmental laws and regulations. 

However, in 1984 DOE had a setback in litigation in a federal court that challenged its handling 

of wastes at DOE nuclear facilities. 

Environmental activists brought suit against DOE in the Eastern District Court of 

Tennessee, charging DOE with violating environmental laws in its operation of the Y-12 nuclear 

weapons component manufacturing plant at the 37,000 acre Oak Ridge Reservation in 

Tennessee.140 According to documents made public in 1983, 2.4 million pounds of mercury had 

been discharged from the plant.141 In Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation, Inc, et al v. 

Hodel, the plaintiffs charged that DOE, in its handling of mercury and other hazardous materials, 

had violated the provisions of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) that applied 

to the treatment, transportation, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste, as well as sections of 

the Clean Water Act.142 In its defense, DOE asserted that Y-12 operations were not covered by 

the RCRA, because the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) exempted DOE from state regulation. DOE 

claimed further that the AEA placed authority for waste disposal with DOE and, moreover, 

restricted the dissemination of data on nuclear materials and weapons.143

On April 13, 1984, in a landmark ruling, Judge Robert L. Taylor rejected DOE’s 

arguments, finding in favor of the plaintiffs. The court agreed that the RCRA’s hazardous waste 

disposal regulation applied to DOE at Y-12. The judge waived damages in view of the national 

defense mission of the Y-12 plant, and of DOE’s expressed commitment to remediate the 

environmental damage at the site.144 Nonetheless, the court ruling marked a significant change, 

with its finding that DOE indeed was subject to external regulation in aspects of its operations in 

140 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Energy 

Research and Production and Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, The Impact of Mercury Releases at the 

Oak Ridge Complex, 98th Cong., 1st sess., July 11, 1983, 18. 141 Gerber, 8. 142 Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation Inc. v. Hodel, 586 F.Supp. 1163, (E.D. Tenn.) (1984). 143 Chapman, 348–49. 144 See also Mark Holt, Nuclear Weapons Production Complex: Environmental Compliance and Waste 

Management, CRS Issue Brief 90074, updated (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of 

Congress, 1990, 1997), 2, 8–11, http://www.cnie.org/nle/waste-3.html. 
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nuclear facilities. The ruling determined that DOE had to comply with environmental statutes 

and regulations administered by EPA and, in effect, granted EPA the authority to regulate 

DOE.145 The ruling, while not eliminating DOE’s “self-regulating” status, narrowed the scope in 

which it could operate with purely internal oversight.146

In so doing, the ruling paved the way for further impositions of federal and state statutes 

and regulations on DOE nuclear facilities. Congress, for example, reinforced the trend toward 

limiting DOE’s “self-regulating” status, with the passage of the Superfund Amendments and 

Reauthorization Act of 1986.147 The act made clear that sites owned by the government could be 

considered for inclusion on the National Priorities List, part of the Superfund law listing the 

nation’s most contaminated sites.148 Such a listing would entail remedial environmental action 

under the jurisdiction of the states and/or EPA.149 In addition, DOE, in May 1987, came to an 

understanding with EPA regarding mixed wastes⎯low-level radioactive wastes mixed with nonradioactive hazardous chemical constituents⎯conceding that the RCRA applied to their 

hazardous components and that mixed-waste disposal would be subject to regulatory oversight 

by EPA. 

Notwithstanding such congressionally and litigation-driven expansion of the reach of 

external regulations in DOE, the department remained a “self-regulating” entity in many 

important areas, most crucially, in matters of nuclear safety at DOE facilities. 

CHERNOBYL BRINGS HOME THE NEED FOR SAFETY REFORMS AND STEPPEDUP OVERSIGHT IN DOE’S NUCLEAR OPERATIONS 

The limited imposition by courts and Congress of external regulation on DOE nuclear 

operations up to the mid-1980s might have assuaged public and congressional safety and 

environmental concerns about them for some time, keeping such concerns on a low burner. 

However, the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, shattered that 

possibility. That accident, more than the TMI accident, aroused public and media alarm about the 

145 On the shared responsibilities of DOE and EPA, see House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and 

Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 208. 146 U.S. General Accounting Office, Department of Energy: Clear Strategy on Externa1 Regulation Needed for 

Worker and Nuclear Facility Safety, GAO/T–RCED–98–163 (Washington, DC, May 1998), 3, http://www.gao.gov/

archive/1998/rc98163.pdf. 

147 Pub.L.No. 99–499, 100 Stat 1613, October 17, 1986. 148 Ackland, 201. 149 DiNunno, Ideas for Improving Department of Energy's Safety Management of Nuclear Facilities, 2/7. 
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defense nuclear complex and brought home to Congress and DOE the need for serious safety 

reforms and greatly stepped-up oversight in that side of the nuclear enterprise, as well as the 

commercial side. 

The Chernobyl nuclear power station accident provided a dramatic demonstration of the 

havoc that a major accident in a nuclear facility could cause. The accident, later characterized by 

a Belarussian ambassador as “the worst technogenic catastrophe that has ever occurred on this 

planet,” began with a power excursion, followed by an explosion that destroyed the unit 4 reactor 

and blew off its top.150 The explosion and resulting fire in the reactor’s graphite core released 

massive amounts of radioactivity. A radioactive plume spread as fallout to European countries as 

distant as Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, and Finland.151 The consequences for 

nearby areas, especially Belarus, which received 70 percent of the fallout, were dire in the near 

term and expected to be severe in the long term.152 As analyzed later, in Belarus, in the first postChernobyl decade, the incidence of thyroid cancer in children rose by 285 times, and Chernobylrelated issues absorbed 25 percent of the government’s budget. In Ukraine 270 square miles were 

contaminated with plutonium-239, and another 9 million hectares contaminated with radioactive 

residues.153 Analyses of the accident listed various causes, including operator errors ultimately 

attributable to poor training and poor management, and to faulty reactor design. Another, more 

general contributing factor usually cited was the pervasive secrecy in nuclear matters during the 

Soviet era. 

Whatever the exact thrust of the analyses of the disaster’s causes, ongoing revelations 

about the causes and consequences were profoundly unsettling to those with responsibility for 

safety in the U.S nuclear enterprise, including DOE’s defense nuclear operations. The revelations 

had the effect both of spurring accelerated internal change within DOE in the weapons area and 

of finally stirring Congress into action on legislative initiatives designed to improve defense 

nuclear safety. By 1987, numerous proposals for the establishment of an external arrangement 

for oversight of DOE’s nuclear operations were under consideration by Congress. 

150 U.S. Congress, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Legacy of Chornobyl, 1986 to 1996 and 

Beyond, 104th Cong., 2d sess., April 23, 1996, 3, http://csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=UserGroups.Home&

ContentRecord_id=156&ContentType=H&ContentRecordType=H&UserGroup_id=117&Subaction=ByDate& 

CFTOKEN=53. See also Walker, A Short History, 49–51. 151 See House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power, Nuclear Reactor Safety, 3; 

66–67. 

152 Chapman, 349. 153 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Legacy of Chornobyl, 32–34, 44–45, 47. 
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DOE’s Internal Reforms Prior to Chernobyl 

With regard to changes within DOE, the fifth secretary of energy, John S. Herrington, 

both pushed for more rapid implementation of reforms underway before Chernobyl and 

undertook new ones. Herrington, who had taken office in January 1985 at the start of President 

Reagan’s second term and about a year before the Chernobyl accident, had already taken 

significant steps toward improving DOE’s internal nuclear safety management.154 For example, 

in September 1985, responding to a special report that he had ordered, which characterized 

DOE’s ES&H activities as “a disgrace,” he consolidated into one headquarters division 

previously scattered environmental, safety, and health functions.155 Cognizant of the report’s 

finding that such functions were “widely perceived as having no clout and of being ignored by 

senior management unless a crisis develops,” he ensured their elevation in status and authority 

by placing the consolidated division, the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health (EH), under 

the direction of a newly created assistant secretary for environment, safety, and health.156 In 

establishing the ES&H office and the new assistant secretary position, Herrington aimed to 

bolster DOE’s mechanisms of internal safety oversight by clearly separating and upgrading the 

organization responsible for oversight from the line office responsible for actually achieving

safety in the course of nuclear weapons production, the assistant secretary for defense programs 

(DP).157 In effect, he sought a safety oversight body that, while internal to DOE, was not as 

conflicted as other internal units with carrying out the dual mission of production and safety. The 

safety responsibilities of the new assistant secretary’s office, as later described by John W. 

Crawford Jr., an inaugural member of the Board, were to: 

(1) independently confirm that safety [was] achieved by the line management 

organizations, 

154 For a description of Herrington’s actions both before and after Chernobyl, see the testimony of Joseph F. 

Salgado, Under Secretary, DOE, in House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of 

DOE Nuclear Facilities, 125–28. 155 See Fehner and Holl, 41 156 See Fehner and Holl, 41. 157 According to later testimony by Senator John Glenn, Herrington, in reorganizing the DOE’s ES&H activities, in 

effect, adopted the advice of several GAO reports in the early 1980s. See the 1983 GAO report, U.S. General 

Accounting Office, DOE’s Safety and Health Oversight Program at Nuclear Facilities Could Be Strengthened, 

RCED–84–50 (Washington, DC, November 1983), for its recommendation of the reorganization of DOE’s safety 

and health program to provide it with more authority and independence. See also the 1981 GAO report, GAO, Better 

Oversight Needed for Safety and Health Activities at DOE’s Nuclear Facilities, EMD–81–108 (Washington, DC, 

August, 4, 1981). 
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(2) develop safety standards, 

(3) and provide “technical assistance” to line organizations concerning governmental, 

safety, and health matters.158

Other pre-Chernobyl actions Herrington undertook in the name of improved safety 

included ordering detailed technical appraisals of nuclear safety at all of DOE’s high-hazard 

facilities, a major environmental survey of conditions at DOE nuclear facilities, and the revision 

of DOE orders on safety-related topics, such as the preparation of safety analysis reviews 

(SAR).159 In addition, just a month prior to the Chernobyl accident, Herrington began to 

implement a new government policy of greater transparency concerning the environmental, 

safety, and health effects resulting from five decades of nuclear weapons production and testing 

in the nation’s defense nuclear reservations.160 In February 1986, DOE took early steps in what 

would eventually be a large-scale release of previously unavailable or declassified records 

documenting “how decades of making and testing nuclear weapons had affected those who 

worked and lived in the vicinity” of the facilities.161

DOE’s Internal Reforms after Chernobyl 

In addition to boosting initiatives already underway in DOE to increase transparency, and 

accelerating intradepartmental safety management reforms, Chernobyl also served as the 

stimulus for undertaking new internal DOE initiatives to improve nuclear safety. The major postChernobyl actions on Herrington’s part included immediately commissioning a study by the 

National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and 

the National Academy of Engineering, to make an independent assessment of the safety of 

158 See John W. Crawford Jr., An Assessment Concerning Safety at Defense Nuclear Facilities: The DOE Technical 

Personnel Problem, DNFSB/TECH–10 (Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, March 1996), 

26, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_199603.html. As Crawford pointed out, with the establishment of the 

new EH office, there were two large organizations in DOE Headquarters with key responsibilities for the safety of 

defense nuclear facilities, including the line organizations headed by the assistant secretary for defense programs 

(DP). In 1989, a second line organization with safety responsibilities was established, an office headed by the 

assistant secretary for environmental management (EM). 159 The technical safety appraisal process was developed from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and 

NRC evaluation methods. See Safety Oversight for Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities. See also U.S. General 

Accounting Office, Environment, Safety, and Health: Status of Department of Energy’s Implementation of 1985 

Initiatives, RCED–86–68FS (Washington, DC, March 1986), and U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Safety: 

Safety Analysis Reviews for DOE’s Defense Facilities Can Be Improved, GAO/RCED–86–175 (Washington, DC, 

June 1986), 22, http://archive.gao.gov/d4t4/130648.pdf. 160 Gerber, 1. 161 Gerber, 4. 
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DOE’s largest reactors, with particular attention to the lessons learned from the Chernobyl 

accident. The focus of the NAS study, conducted by a 16-member expert panel, was DOE’s 

defense production reactors⎯reactors operated to supply the plutonium and tritium needed for 

nuclear weapons⎯the N-reactor at Hanford and the K-, L-, and P- reactors at Savannah River.162

Begun around May 1986, the study’s report, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors: A 

Report to the U.S. Department of Energy, was published on October 29, 1987, with interim 

findings available earlier.163 The study was highly critical of safety conditions at the reactors, 

identifying both managerial shortcomings and technical problems.164

On the question of the likelihood of a Chernobyl-like accident in U.S. reactors, the NAS 

study found that the reactors, notwithstanding “acute aging,” were not inherently unstable in the 

same way that the Chernobyl plant was. However, major gaps existed in the understanding of 

how the reactors would perform in certain kinds of severe accidents that U.S. civilian plants were 

designed to withstand, for example, a loss-of-coolant accident. The study also found “significant 

uncertainties” about the ability of the defense reactors⎯with their filters rather than containment 

structures⎯to limit the release of radioactive materials in a major accident. Serious technical 

deficiencies identified in the study included suspected stress-corrosion cracks in reactors at the 

Savannah River Site.165 On management issues, the study found many problems associated with 

DOE’s reliance on its consortium of contractors, in the words of the report, “a loose-knit system 

of largely self-regulated contractors operating within budgetary constraints imposed by and on 

162 The National Academy of Science’s National Research Council later also produced reports on defense nuclear 

facilities other than the reactors. These reports appeared in 1988 and 1989 on the eve of the Board’s startup. The 

reports raised both safety and environmental concerns. On the environment, the 1989 report stated, “Virtually every 

facility in the complex has contamination on site, some of it extensive, and many of them have contamination off 

site as well.” On safety, the reports listed the following specific problems, as well as general problems, such as the 

facilities’ age: 

• “[T]here are troublesome elements in the fire protection program.” 

• “[A] pattern of routine use of respirators [to prevent the inhalation of radioactive materials] is an indication 

of the failure of production, maintenance, and housekeeping procedures.” 

• “Plutonium exists in the exhaust ducts downstream of the high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters at 

the plutonium finishing facility at Hanford . . . [and] in an exhaust duct of Building 771 at Rocky Flats.” 

• “Medical departments are . . .relegated to a reactive role. . . . Medical monitoring and surveillance 

programs in the complex should be improved substantially.” 163 National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors, 

vii. 

164 Matthew L. Wald, “Weapon Reactors Faulted on Safety,” New York Times, October 29, 1987. 165 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 104. See also Gerber, 5. 
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the Department.”166 The study pointed out that DOE depended excessively on contractors to 

identify remedies for safety issues, and provided insufficient central direction concerning safety 

expectations and standards, as well as too little monitoring.167 Broaching a theme later 

emphasized by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the study attributed such problems 

to an imbalance in the technical expertise of DOE and contractor personnel. As the report stated, 

[DOE] both at headquarters and in its field organizations, has relied almost 

entirely on its contractors to identify safety concerns and to recommend 

appropriate actions, in part because [of] the imbalance in technical capabilities 

and experience between the contractors and DOE staff.168

The study summarized its assessment of DOE’s management of its aging facilities by saying, 

DOE “falls short of reasonable expectation in attempting to cope with the mix of production and 

safety responsibilities.”169

In addition to commissioning the special National Academy of Sciences study of 1987, a 

second significant post-Chernobyl action taken by Herrington was to call for the formation of 

several advisory committees. One was the six-member Roddis panel, specifically formed to 

ascertain the state of the N-reactor, DOE’s largest nuclear materials plant and the only U.S. 

reactor even superficially similar to the Chernobyl flammable graphite-moderated reactor.170 The 

N–reactor, built in 1963 and designed for 20 years of service, was in stand-down status in 

January 1987 for safety improvements and had to be assessed prior to restart. Another advisory 

committee, the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Facility Safety (ACNFS), was DOE’s answer to 

one of the recommendations in the National Academy of Sciences study, the recommendation for 

an independent safety oversight committee⎯a committee of non-DOE experts⎯serving as 

advisors to the secretary of energy on the safety of operations of DOE’s nuclear facilities. 

Chartered by Secretary Herrington in 1987, the ACNFS was a DOE-appointed group of 15 

nuclear safety experts largely from outside DOE.171 This committee, whose members were 

chosen by the secretary and served part-time, was known as the Ahearne Committee, after its 

166 National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors, 80. 167 National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors, 

vii, 76, 78, 80–82. 

168 National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors, 75. 169 National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Safety Issues at the Defense Production Reactors, xx. 170 Fehner and Holl, 43. 171 The committee was terminated in November 1991. See U.S. Department of Energy, “Terminated Federal 

Advisory Committees,” 3, n.d., http://management.energy.gov/documents/TerminatedAdvisoryCommittees.pdf. 
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chairman, Dr. John F. Ahearne, a former chairman of the NRC.172 The ACNFS, whose goal was 

to provide a degree of independent safety oversight within DOE, initiated reviews of a number of 

the most pressing issues in the complex, for example, the storage of high-level waste at Hanford, 

unsafe plutonium residues at Rocky Flats, and staff training and qualification, particularly in 

radiological protection practices.173 As recommended in the National Academy of 

Sciences/National Research Council study, most of the committee’s work was to be unclassified 

and publicly available. The study had regarded such transparency as essential to repair the 

public’s confidence in the safety of DOE’s nuclear operations. 

172 Interview, A.J. Eggenberger, Board chairman (since 2005; vice chairman, 1989–2005), Washington, DC, July 9, 

2008. Secretary of Energy Watkins phased ACNFS out after the Board was fully in operation. See also Fehner and 

Holl, 50. 

173 Interview, Kenneth M. Pusateri, Board General Manager (1989–2006), Washington, DC, January 3, 2008. 

Eventually, the Board subsumed the records of the Ahearne Committee. 
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CHAPTER 2: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BOARD, 1987 TO 1989 

CONGRESSIONAL PUSH FOR EXTERNAL SAFETY OVERSIGHT IN DOE’S 

NUCLEAR OPERATIONS 

As the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Facility Safety was getting underway and the 

National Academy of Sciences study was in progress, Congress was also mobilizing under the 

stimulus of Chernobyl to examine safety issues in nuclear facilities and to consider legislating 

new mechanisms of safety oversight. Although the Chernobyl power station, like Three Mile 

Island, was a power plant rather than a defense-production reactor, the Chernobyl accident 

focused congressional attention on the perceived safety problems of both sides of the nuclear 

enterprise⎯DOE’s nuclear facilities and the nuclear power industry. 

In regard to the commercial industry, several committees in the House of Representatives 

held hearings in 1986 on the future of nuclear power in the light of the Chernobyl accident, 

noting with dismay “a return to the pre-Three Mile Island business-as-usual mentality” that had 

taken place by then.174 The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy 

Conservation and Power found that NRC and DOE officials had told their nuclear safety experts 

to refrain from discussing the Chernobyl accident with the media and from comparing Chernobyl 

with U.S. reactors.175 The NRC also requested the subcommittee to keep secret the details of 151 

accidents at nuclear facilities in 14 countries other than the United States and the Soviet Union 

between 1971 and 1984. Deploring such “policies of public exclusion and conspiratorial silence” 

about safety problems, several House panels floated proposals for the reform of NRC licensing, 

the standardization of power plant design, and other safety initiatives.176 The overall aim of such 

congressional activity was twofold: “maintaining public confidence through citizen participation, 

and developing a safer product.”177

In regard to DOE’s nuclear facilities, Congress also came to insist that both public 

confidence and safety required a definitive break with the legacy of secrecy and congressional 

174 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy 

Conservation and Power, Nuclear Reactor Safety, 99th Cong., 2d sess., May 22 and July 16, 1986, 3. See also U.S. 

Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Energy and the 

Environment, Nuclear Licensing and Regulatory Reform Legislation, 99th Cong., 2d sess., June 26, July 22, 1986. 175 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power, Nuclear Reactor Safety, 3. See 

also Bert Chapman, “The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Decade,” Journal of Government 

Information 27 (2000): 349, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib research/70. 176 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power, Nuclear Reactor Safety, 3. 177 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power, Nuclear Reactor Safety, 4. 
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inattention. A number of committees became involved in hearings on the state of safety in the 

weapons complex and on DOE’s record of safety management.178 By the 100th Congress, which 

was in session from January 1987 through October 1988, Congress began in earnest “to examine 

the question of whether the responsibility for ensuring the safety of DOE’s reactors ought to be 

removed from the Department and assigned to an independent agency.”179 During this period, 

both houses of Congress examined a number of legislative proposals to create a mechanism for 

continuous independent external oversight of safety in the weapons program. The proposals 

reflected the belief that the adequate protection of public health and safety required the end of 

continuing reliance on DOE self-regulation⎯the “fox guarding the henhouse” and “Dracula 

guarding the blood bank”180 Among these legislative proposals was S. 1085, the Nuclear 

Protections and Safety Act of 1987, a bill sponsored by Senator John Glenn (D–Ohio) that 

ultimately proved precursory to the 1988 enabling legislation for the Defense Nuclear Facilities 

Safety Board (DNFSB or the Board).181

A number of factors besides Chernobyl were significant in precipitating the flurry of 

legislative activity on nuclear safety oversight during the 100th Congress. One factor was the 

winding down of the Cold War, which was signaled, beginning in the year after Chernobyl, by 

political changes in the Soviet Union and nuclear arms control agreements.182 The period from 

the summer 1986 meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary 

178 On the congressional committees that took up issues involving the defense nuclear complex, see Stephen I. 

Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight of the Bomb,” in Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and 

Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 513. 

After 1977, when nuclear matters ceased to be the province of a single committee, i.e., the Joint Committee on 

Atomic Energy (JCAE), several dozen committees had occasional say on matters in the weapons complex. 

However, the JCAE’s responsibilities devolved for the most part on two sets of committees in both houses of 

Congress, the House and Senate Armed Services committees, and the House and Senate Appropriations committees, 

more specifically their subcommittees with responsibilities related to energy. The appropriations subcommittees 

handled funding for DOE. During the period of intensified congressional action on nuclear weapons safety in the 

mid- to late 1980s, other committees and subcommittees played a significant role, most notably, the Senate 

Governmental Affairs Committee. 

179 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and 

Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities: Hearings on H.R. 783, H.R. 2047, and H.R. 3123, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 

November 5 and 19, 1987, 2. 

180 See House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 34, 

for Representative Ron Wyden (D–OR) quoting a constituent. 

181 Senator John Glenn, “The Nuclear Protections and Safety Act of 1987,” 133 Cong. Rec. 9431–9436 (1987). 

Glenn’s bill contained four separately titled portions. When reported to the Senate (S. Rep. No. 100–173), they were 

S.1085 Title I, Defense Nuclear Safety Board Oversight Act of 1987; Title II, Application of OSHA and NIOSH to 

DOE Nuclear Facilities; Title III, Mixed Hazardous Waste Amendment Act of 1987; Title IV, Radiation Study 

Advisory Board Act of 1987. 
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Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, to the September 1987 signing of the Intermediate 

Nuclear Forces treaty, which banned a category of weapons, has been called “the beginning of 

the end of the U.S.–Soviet nuclear arms race.”183 This waning of the arms race undermined the 

national security rationale for the secrecy and self-policing that still prevailed in the nuclear 

weapons complex.184

Another reason for stepped-up activity and the emergence of legislative proposals for 

independent safety oversight in the 100th Congress was that the Senate majority passed from 

Republican to Democratic hands, giving the chairmanship of a key committee, the Senate 

Governmental Affairs Committee, to Senator John Glenn, previously the committee’s ranking 

minority member.185 Glenn, a former test pilot and astronaut, was a Senate leader in nuclear 

nonproliferation and long conversant with questions about the safety and environmental impact 

of DOE’s nuclear facilities.186 In attaining the chairmanship of the Governmental Affairs 

Committee, a standing body with jurisdiction over regulation or regulatory bodies such as the 

NRC, he was now in a leadership position to move legislation on nuclear safety.187 

The second committee that shaped the Board’s enabling legislation was the Senate 

Armed Services Committee, which, in its own words, had “exclusive jurisdiction” over DOE’s 

defense nuclear complex.188 The Senate Committee on Armed Services and, more specifically, 

its Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, were responsible for legislation 

relating to nuclear weapons, national defense, and nuclear deterrence. With the shift to a 

Democratic Senate majority in the 100th Congress, the new chairman of the Armed Services 

Committee was Sam Nunn (D–Georgia), who was amenable to working with Glenn, also an 

Armed Services Committee member, on legislation related to nuclear safety. 

Glenn’s actions in the 100th Congress⎯his initiation of hearings and his introduction of 

S.1085 on April 23, 1987⎯were not his earliest actions in connection with safety issues in the 

182 Len Ackland, Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (Albuquerque: University of New 

Mexico Press, 2002), 216. 

183 Ackland, 208. 184 Ackland, 216. 185 Glenn was chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee from the 100th through the 103d Congresses, i.e., 

January 1987 through December 1994, after which Senate Republicans regained the majority. 186 F.G. Gosling, and Terrence R. Fehner, Closing the Circle: The Department of Energy and Environmental 

Management, 1942–1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, 1994), 81. 187 Interview, Sherri Wasserman Goodman, Alexandria, VA, September 10, 2008. Goodman was a senior staffer on 

the Senate Armed Services Committee in the late 1980s and active in the deliberative sessions that ultimately led to 

the establishment of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. 
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weapons complex. Glenn had become actively concerned about the safety of DOE facilities 

several years before he unveiled legislation.189 As early as July 1980, he began commissioning 

reports from the General Accounting Office on various aspects of safety, health, and 

environment issues in the weapons program.190 One consistent message from the reports that he 

and others requested⎯21 reports between 1979 and 1987⎯was the need for greater 

independence in DOE’s safety oversight programs in the weapons complex. The GAO explicitly 

distinguished the type of oversight it advocated from oversight that remained an internal function 

within DOE, noting that the latter produced inevitable trade-offs between DOE’s programmatic 

objectives and safety considerations during the budget process⎯to the detriment of safety. The 

GAO, noncommittal as to the specific mechanism of outside oversight, advocated “an outside 

organization, independent of funding by DOE . . . [whether] another federal agency, such as 

NRC, or an independent review panel not associated with DOE.” 191

In addition to sponsoring GAO investigations of problems in the weapons complex, 

Glenn pioneered congressional hearings on the subject. He did so at the prompting of 

nonproliferation experts on his staff, including Leonard S. Spector and Leonard Weiss, an 

electrical engineer, who was instrumental in formulating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 

1978, and related legislation sponsored by Glenn.192 Glenn also heeded the concerns of 

environmental activists such as Robert Alvarez, who joined his staff during the 100th

188 S. Rep. 100–232, at 2 (1987). 189 On Glenn’s description of his involvement in defense nuclear matters, see U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on 

Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for Department of 

Energy Nuclear Facilities, 100th Cong., 1st sess., October 22, 26, 27, 30, November 3, 1987, 57–58, 67–68. When 

Glenn campaigned unsuccessfully to become the Democratic candidate for president in 1984, he highlighted his 

nuclear arms control advocacy. He supported, first, a mutual, verifiable freeze on the production and deployment of 

nuclear weapons; second, reductions in U.S./Soviet nuclear arsenals; third, an end to the spread of nuclear weapons 

technology by strict enforcement of the nuclear nonproliferation legislation he authored in the Senate; fourth, 

involvement of all other countries possessing nuclear weapons in the arms control process; and fifth, negotiations on 

reductions of conventional weapons. See John Glenn for President 1984 Campaign Brochure:‘Believe in the future 

again’, 4president.org, http://www.4president.org/brochures/johnglenn1984brochure.htm. 190 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 210. 191 U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Safety: Safety Analysis Reviews for DOE’s Defense Facilities Can Be 

Improved, GAO/RCED–86–175 (Washington, DC, June 1986), 22, http://archive.gao.gov/d4t4/130260.pdf. 192 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978, Pub. L. No. 95–242. Weiss was staff director of the Senate Governmental 

Affairs Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation, and Federal Services from 1977 to 1981 and minority staff 

director of the same subcommittee from 1981 to 1987. He remained a chief policy adviser to Glenn until 1999. 

Spector was chief counsel of the subcommittee until the mid-1980s, when he went on to the Carnegie Endowment 

for International Peace and eventually to DOE. 
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Congress.193 Alvarez and others underscored the urgency of the matter of legacy nuclear wastes, 

as well as the health impact of defense nuclear production, including operations in Glenn’s own 

state of Ohio, at the Feed Materials Production Center in Fernald, Ohio. The Fernald site, a 

1,050-acre uranium-processing complex, was shut down in December 1984 “after DOE 

disclosed that excessive quantities of uranium dust and oxides had been released through the 

ventilating system in a recent three-month period.”194 During the 99th Congress, which ran from 

January 1985 through October 1986, Glenn used his position as chair of the Governmental 

Affairs Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation, and Government Processes to bring to 

national prominence through hearings the issue of nuclear wastes and cleanup at the nation’s 

nuclear materials production plants. Beginning in 1985, Glenn and his staffer Weiss led the first 

comprehensive examinations of DOE’s nuclear weapons complex, initially launching an 

investigation of health and safety problems at Fernald.195 As the hearings revealed, 

[O]ver 230 tons of radioactive material from Fernald had leaked into the Greater 

Miami River valley during the preceding three decades. The whereabouts of 

another 337 tons of uranium hexaflouride . . . could not be documented. 

Thousands of kilograms (kg) of uranium dust had been discharged to the 

atmosphere and to surface water. Five million kg of radioactive and hazardous 

(mixed) substances had been released to pits and swamps, permitting percolation 

into groundwater. Concrete silos containing solid radioactive wastes had vented 

radon gas. Additionally, about two hundred thousand canisters and barrels at 

Fernald held mixed and hazardous wastes that had not been identified 

precisely.196

After the first hearings on Fernald, Glenn made a further request of GAO to review health and 

safety issues at a number of DOE facilities around the country. The resulting 1986 GAO report 

documented serious safety issues at nearly all of the sites examined. 

The actions of Glenn and his staffers proved to be important groundwork for the 

intensified focus on defense nuclear safety in the 100th Congress in both the House and the 

Senate. Glenn’s bill, S. 1085, and its House counterpart, H.R. 3123, were not the only pieces of 

DOE nuclear oversight legislation to emerge in 1987, nor the only ones to generate extensive 

193 Interview, John E. Mansfield, Board vice chairman (since 2007; Board member, 1997–present), Washington, DC, 

August 25, 2008. 

194 Michele Stenehjem Gerber, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (Lincoln: 

University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 6. 

195 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 57–58, 67–68. 196 Gerber, 6–7. See also U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Environmental Issues at 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 100th Cong., 1st sess., March 17, 1987, 1–15. 
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hearings. The other bills and the hearings in which they were debated presented a range of 

options both in the definition of the type of entity that would provide external oversight and in 

the level of authority it would have. 

In defining the entity, one bill, H.R. 783, proposed putting the defense nuclear complex 

under NRC jurisdiction and oversight, rather than creating a new body or agency.197 Other 

proposals, like S. 1085, envisioned a new oversight entity, but deviated to varying degrees from 

the approach of Glenn’s bill. S. 1085 took the NRC as a model for such features of the oversight 

body as its composition, its mode of appointment, and its political balance. S. 1085 envisioned a 

board of multiple members⎯respected experts in nuclear safety (three members in S. 1085 

rather than the NRC’s five commissioners), appointment by the president with Senate approval, 

and party balance (with no more than two board members from one party). By contrast, one 

piece of legislation that elicited serious debate, H.R. 2047, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Agency Act, introduced in the House by Representative Norman Dicks (D–WA), proposed an 

oversight entity headed by a single administrator, appointed by the president with Senate 

approval. 

More contentious than the type of entity⎯a board or an administrator-headed 

agency⎯that should perform oversight was the question of its level of authority. In the 

shorthand that developed throughout numerous congressional hearings, the question was whether 

the oversight entity should be advisory or regulatory in character. For the most part, the 

proposals that received serious consideration fell short of recommending full regulatory 

oversight.198 While a number of environmental activists, including Alvarez and Dan Reicher of 

the National Resources Defense Council, favored NRC regulation of DOE nuclear facilities, 

most participants in the hearings, including representatives speaking for the NRC did not.199 The 

NRC and others offered a number of objections to using the NRC as the oversight body, 

including resource constraints and the fact that commercial power reactors differed technically 

from DOE reactors and other production facilities. The NRC also begged off on the grounds that 

it had not previously had anything to do with weapons production, and thus lacked the capacity 

197 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 61–82. 198 Interview, Richard. A. Azarro, Board general counsel, Washington, DC, August 20, 2008. On various regulatory 

possibilities, see Glenn Russell George, “Negotiated Safety: Intragovernmental Risk Regulation in the U.S. Nuclear 

Weapons Complex” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, May 1995) (accessed via Proquest). 199 For the debate about the possibility of the NRC as the oversight body for DOE’s nuclear facilities, see House, 

Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 166–219. 
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to address some of the issues of security that such oversight entailed.200 The commission, 

according to an NRC spokesman, valued “the clear distinction between military and civilian uses 

of atomic energy . . . [and] would not want to see that distinction compromised.”201

Although most proposals for oversight did not advocate a full-blown regulatory regime, 

the thrust of the bills on the table during the 1987 congressional hearings did favor powers that 

went well beyond the merely advisory. The sponsors of external oversight bills, including Dicks, 

Representative Ron Wyden (D–Oregon), and Glenn, as well as their other proponents, were 

generally adamant that they wanted oversight with “real teeth,” rather than just another advisory 

body⎯another “toothless tiger”⎯whose advice could be ignored with impunity by the secretary 

of energy.202 The powers of the oversight entities proposed by their bills were, in the words of 

one hearing witness, “regulatory-like,” and of another, “advisory-plus.”203 In Dicks’s bill, H.R. 

2047, which was referred jointly to the House Armed Services and the Energy and Commerce 

Committees on April 9, 1987, one feature that represented “real teeth” was the authorization for 

the administrator to suspend operations or construction at new or existing defense nuclear 

facilities if he determined “that the health and safety of the public is not reasonably 

protected.”204 The bill also empowered the administrator to set safety standards on radioactive 

emissions, rather than merely to provide advice about standards, and required him to report to 

Congress every three months about DOE’s compliance with the standards.205

Bolstering the Case for an Oversight Board with Strong Powers 

In advancing such strong oversight provisions, the sponsors of bills such as H.R. 2047, 

H.R. 783, and H.R. 3123 bolstered their case by documenting DOE’s failures to protect the 

environment and the health and safety of workers in, and residents near, DOE nuclear facilities. 

Proponents of strong oversight powers provided extensive testimony in hearings in various 

House and Senate committees throughout the 100th Congress, drawing upon a growing 

200 Although the NRC had responsibility for some government-owned facilities, specifically reactors belonging to 

the armed services, these facilities were used for purposes other than weapons production, e.g., for research and 

medicine. 

201 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 175. 202 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 33, 56. 

See also Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 56. 203 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 135, 310. 204 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 90. 
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accumulation of damaging evidence about safety, much of it newly unclassified and made 

available to the public. Examples included recently released official records from DOE archives, 

personal records of former government officials, interviews with eyewitnesses, the series of 

GAO investigations, and studies by ad hoc panels, including the NAS review committee and the 

Roddis panel.206 The testimony covered various types of safety, health, and environmental issues 

and deficiencies, such as plant conditions judged to pose catastrophic risks, elevated levels of 

cancers and other ailments among nuclear workers as shown by epidemiological studies, and 

disposal practices for nuclear and hazardous waste that had led to widespread contamination both 

onsite and beyond the boundaries of nuclear weapons production sites.207

Citing the Chernobyl accident, many witnesses focused on the possibility of a similar 

reactor disaster⎯an explosion or meltdown⎯and the structural problems and operating 

conditions that might contribute to it. Problems mentioned included the radioactivity-induced 

embrittlement of structures in the aging facilities that had led to cracking and radiation leaks. All 

of the reactors in the weapons complex, as many pointed out, were old⎯the last defense 

production reactor, the N-reactor, was completed in 1963⎯and only the reactors at the Savannah 

River site had containment vessels.208 As one expert observed, “none of the military production 

reactors . . . had the pressurized steel and reinforced concrete containment building required by 

law for all civilian power reactors.”209 Some witnesses claimed that despite these defects of age 

and design, the reactors had long been run at potentially unsafe operating power levels and 

without strict adherence to nuclear material safety procedures or careful monitoring in the 

interest of production. For example, between 1979 and 1986, four reactors at Savannah River 

operated at power levels “substantially higher than what the emergency core cooling system 

205 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 92. 206 On the increased information sources available by the late 1990s, see Gerber, v–viii. 207 Evidence of serious safety, health, and environmental problems in the DOE nuclear complex continued to come 

to light in hearings throughout the 101st Congress, which was in session from January 1989 through October 1990, 

during the first two years of the administration of President George H. W. Bush. See, for example, a 1989 

congressional summary of safety violations, mishaps, and near misses in the weapons complex, U.S. Congress, 

House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, 

Health and Safety at the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Weapons Facilities, 101st Cong., 1st session, June 1989, 

Committee Print 101–H. 

208 Ben A. Franklin, “Key U.S. Reactor to Shut 6 Months for Safety Moves,” New York Times, December 13, 1986, 

1. 

209 Kevin O’Neill, “Building the Bomb,” in Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of 

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 73. 
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could handle in an accident.”210 As witnesses questioning DOE’s ability to manage risk pointed 

out, DOE only began reducing the reactors’ power levels in late 1986, responding belatedly to 

the combined pressures of a National Academy of Sciences reactor study recommendation and 

the scrutiny of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.211 In explaining DOE’s delayed 

action, witnesses concurred, “production has been the overriding measure of performance”212

Besides reactors, other facilities flagged for questionable structural integrity and the 

potential for catastrophic radioactive releases were nuclear waste storage tanks throughout the 

defense complex. One witness, Alvarez, an aide to Senator Glenn, was particularly concerned 

about the potential for severe explosions in high-level nuclear waste storage tanks at Hanford, 

where a large proportion of the complex’s millions of gallons of high-level radioactive liquid 

waste were stored. He feared the buildup of hydrogen gas in the tanks in the event of a failure of 

the tank ventilation system.213 Such gas was generated by chemical reactions in the tanks’ 

inadequately analyzed contents.214 Alvarez noted that the potential for the explosive dispersal of 

radioactive materials in tanks was by no means hypothetical, mentioning just such a massive 

storage tank accident in Russia in 1957. The Mayak explosion dispersed enormous quantities of 

liquid radioactive waste, and contaminated several hundred square miles⎯an area later 

characterized as equal to the size of New Jersey.215 This nuclear accident at Mayak, which killed 

many and forced the evacuation of 11,000 people, may have released twice the curies of the 

Chernobyl reactor accident.216

In addition to pointing out the potential risk of an explosive dispersal of radioactivity, 

hearing witnesses presented a record of non-catastrophic but significant radioactive releases and 

leaks, and cited conditions that had or could lead to the release of radioactivity, such as plant 

fires and faulty ducts or piping. A “raging,” “nearly catastrophic” fire in 1969 in the plutonium210 S. Rep. No. 100–173, at 9 (1987). 211 S. Rep. No. 100–173, at 11 (1987). 212 S. Rep. No. 100–173, at 10 (1987). 213 Interview, Mansfield. 214 Interview, Mansfield. The potential for a buildup of gas to an explosive level in the waste tanks at Hanford had 

been known for nearly a decade. Glenn became concerned when he heard that things were out of control at Hanford, 

specifically that lightly acidic nitric acid (used to control reactions) created ferrocyanide and generated hydrogen 

that had the potential to create an explosion. 

215 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, FY 2008 Budget Request to the Congress (Washington, DC, February 5, 

2007), 4, http://www.dnfsb.gov/budget/budget_fy2008.pdf. 216Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009 (Washington, DC, November 17, 2003), 

3, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/rcsp_2003.pdf. 
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manufacturing building at DOE’s Rocky Flats facility, for example, caused major accidental 

releases, leading to increased exposures to workers and nearby populations.217 

Direct epidemiological evidence of health risks posed by the complex was as yet 

available only in limited amounts during the 100th Congress, and some witnesses viewed what 

was available with skepticism. They noted that DOE, with its near-monopoly on radiation health 

impacts research, was usually the source of data, and had a conflict-of-interest between its dual 

mission of developing radiation technologies and assessing their health impacts. Nonetheless, 

some cited DOE-sponsored epidemiological studies and worker health studies in support of their 

call for strong external oversight. DOE studies showed elevated risks of dying from cancer and 

other diseases in 12 groups of DOE radiation workers, e.g., excess death rates from leukemia 

among Rocky Flats workers exposed to plutonium.218 Non-DOE studies had similar results, e.g., 

findings of the Du Pont Company, the contractor that had operated the Savannah River Site since 

it opened in 1952. Du Pont findings showed excess cases of leukemia among Savannah River 

Site workers⎯findings of which a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel 

learned in 1983 and made DOE aware.219 Witnesses testified also to widespread flouting of 

radiation protection policies in DOE facilities and to recommendations against informing 

workers if they exceeded official radiation exposure limits. 

In addition to the focus on direct human health risks, a major topic in the hearings was 

DOE’s record on environmental protection. Advocates of strong oversight powers acknowledged 

that environmental damage and health and safety issues were not exactly the same thing from a 

regulatory standpoint. However, witnesses saw them as “intrinsically related,” and considered 

DOE’s environmental carelessness to be indicative of a broader attitude of heedlessness to the 

negative consequences of nuclear weapons production. A widespread practice in the weapons 

complex, dating back to World War II, had been to use air, soil, ground, and surface waters as 

disposal media for massive amounts of radioactive and toxic pollutants. Ohio’s Attorney General 

Anthony J. Celebrezze, Jr., for example, testifying about DOE activities and disposal practices at 

a uranium-enrichment complex, stated, 

During a ten-year period beginning in 1974, DOE pursued a policy of disposing 

some of its radioactive and solvent-contaminated waste oil by spreading it on the 

217 Ackland, 3, 86, 143–63. 218 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 184. 219 S. Rep. No. 100–173, at 5 (1987). 
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ground and then roto-tilling it into the soil. About 50,000 gallons were disposed in 

this fashion. 220

Such practices at that site and elsewhere had left a legacy of severe contamination problems in 

rivers, streambeds, soils, and underground aquifers. One witness summarized the evidence of 

contamination by saying, “DOE’s record of policing itself is very, very sorry.”221 Many pointed 

out that such contamination would endure for millennia, and that cleanup, insofar as it was 

possible, would cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars.222

Much of the environmental damage and flouting of nuclear safety principles that was 

highlighted in the hearings had occurred despite the existence and efforts over the years of 

numerous advisory boards and panels to assist DOE and its predecessors. Thus, many witnesses 

advocating strong oversight bolstered their case not only by highlighting the magnitude and 

pervasiveness of DOE’s safety problems, but also by documenting DOE’s lack of responsiveness 

to mechanisms of safety oversight that were “merely” advisory. They cited numerous instances 

in which the advice of such advisory boards had simply been ignored, for example, the urgent 

recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety in the late 1950s, which called 

containment domes at the N-reactor “essential” to contain fission products in case of a severe 

reactor accident. Another example of long-ignored advice was the 1966 Trumble report, which 

called for major safety reforms and was kept under wraps for 21 years, until after the Chernobyl 

accident. Witnesses marshaled such examples to demonstrate that “foot-dragging on safety” 

would continue to be a problem as long as safety oversight was “toothless.”223

Debating Glenn’s Bill and How a Safety Board’s Statutory Mandate Should Read 

In the course of 1987, a consensus emerged that some kind of safety board should be 

established⎯a board that was continuous or permanent, rather than “ad hoc in nature,” as the 

NAS, Roddis, and other panels had been. By May 1987, even DOE had conceded “the need to 

institutionalize independent oversight of DOE nuclear facilities.”224 As Under Secretary of DOE 

Joseph F. Salgado said, “Secretary Herrington took an historical step for the Department of 

220 S. Rep. No. 100–173, at 4–5 (1987). 221 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 58. 222 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 187. 223 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 47. 224 S. Rep. No. 100–173, at 11 (1987). 
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Energy. He endorsed the need for an independent advisory body to advise him.”225 The Senate 

Armed Services Committee, the committee of jurisdiction, was in agreement with DOE’s 

endorsement when it took up debate about the particulars of a safety board in the fall of 1987. As 

Salgado said, 

The Governmental Affairs Committee, the GAO, and the NAS have all asserted 

that a safety board is needed to ensure that meeting production requirements does 

not overshadow the need for safe production. The Armed Services Committee 

agrees completely with that rationale.226

Of the legislative proposals put on the table in 1987, Glenn’s version of oversight 

legislation⎯specifically Title I establishing a safety board⎯was the bill that continued to 

receive examination up to and through 1987 in both the House and Senate. The Senate 

Governmental Affairs Committee held four days of hearings on Glenn’s entire bill between 

March and June 1987, reporting favorably on it in August and referring it on September 24, 

1987, to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which had a five-member overlap with the 

Governmental Affairs Committee⎯Senators Glenn, Nunn, Carl Levin (D–Michigan), Jeff 

Bingaman (R–New Mexico), and William S. Cohen (R–Maine).227 The Armed Services 

Committee assigned the safety board title of Glenn’s bill to the Subcommittee on Strategic 

Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, the subcommittee of jurisdiction. Chaired by J. James Exon (D–

Nebraska), the subcommittee held five days of hearings in October and November to debate the 

details of the safety board proposal and what an enabling statute for a safety board ideally should 

contain. At the conclusion of the hearings on S. 1085 in November 1987, the Armed Services 

Committee produced an amended version. Along with the Senate amendment, the committee 

authored the report of the Senate Armed Services on S. 1085, which proved to be the principal 

Senate committee report on the Board’s enabling legislation. 

The legislation under discussion in the numerous Senate hearings of 1987, S. 1085, Title 

I, Independent Nuclear Safety Board Oversight Over Department of Energy Facilities, would 

amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to establish a Defense Nuclear Safety Board as an 

225 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 180. 226 S. Rep. No. 100–232 (to accompany S. 1085), at 9 (1987). 227 The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee reported out S. 1085 on September 24, 1987 as Senate Report No. 

100–173, Nuclear Protections and Safety Act of 1987. 
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independent entity in the executive branch. The Board would have six main functions, as stated 

by Glenn, 

First, it will ensure that DOE’s current health and safety standards are being 

implemented. Second, it will recommend changes in the content and application 

of DOE’s standards. These recommendations are advisory, not mandatory. Third, 

it will investigate those events at DOE facilities which the Board determines to be 

important because of their actual or potential adverse effect on the public’s health 

or safety . . . . Fourth, the board will recommend specific measures designed to 

reduce the likelihood of such events occurring. 

These recommendations must be administratively responded to in specific ways. 

Fifth, the board will issue periodic unclassified reports with its recommendations, 

as well as the decision to implement corrective steps at DOE facilities. Finally, 

the board shall be consulted and make recommendations to ensure that the design, 

construction, and health and safety standards of all new DOE facilities are 

appropriate, and that these standards are commensurate with standards that are 

imposed on comparable private sector facilities.228

S. 1085’s articulation of the functions of the Board emphasized the tasks of investigation, 

recommendation, communication with the public, and review of the adequacy of safety 

standards. In calling for such review, the bill reflected approval of DOE’s stated commitment to 

the goal of “comparability,” that is, the goal of holding DOE facilities to the same level of safety 

as commercial nuclear facilities. Glenn underscored in testimony that the Board would fulfill an 

advisory, non-regulatory role and that its recommendations would be “advisory” rather than 

“mandatory” or “binding.”229 The proposed bill did not accord the Board some of the more 

intrusive or coercive powers proposed in other congressional bills, such as the power to set

standards and the power to shut down operations or construction in the weapons complex. Glenn 

explicitly denied that his legislative proposal gave the Board the power to shut down operations, 

even if it determined some practice or procedure to be potentially injurious.230 However, Glenn’s 

proposal featured elements that advocates of a strong safety body considered crucial, as GAO 

Assistant Comptroller General J. Dexter Peach, stated, 

We believe that any oversight approach, to be effective, should have five key 

elements: independence, technical expertise, ability to perform reviews of DOE 

228 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 69. 229 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 55, 61. 230 The assurance that the Board could not stop production was crucial to the Senate Armed Services Committee and 

others with a national security mandate, as the Board’s current general counsel, Richard. A. Azzaro, emphasized in 

an interview, Washington, DC, August 20, 2008. 
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facilities as needed, clear authority to require DOE to address the organization’s 

findings and recommendations, and a system to provide public access to the 

organization’s findings and recommendations. The legislation you [Senator 

Glenn] have submitted creating a Nuclear Safety Board does address each of these 

elements.231

Of the “five key elements” that Peach listed, S. 1085 embodied three in a manner that did not 

elicit a great deal of debate in the fall 1987 Senate Armed Services Committee hearings from 

either proponents or critics of the bill as written. The three relatively uncontroversial elements 

were the requirements for technical expertise, public openness, and onsite review powers. Like 

the other legislation proposing a safety body, including the legislation ultimately adopted, S. 

1085 called for an oversight board that consisted of technical experts. Its members were to 

be⎯in the wording of both Glenn’s bill and the Board’s ultimate enabling 

legislation⎯“respected experts in the field of nuclear safety.” S.1085 also mandated that the 

oversight board make its findings and recommendations public, and endowed it with 

investigative powers and tools, including such tools as the power “to issue subpoenas 

commanding the testimony of witnesses and the production of evidence.”232

More controversial than S. 1085’s handling of three of the five elements mentioned by 

Peach was its handling of the remaining two, “independence” and the “authority to require DOE 

to address the organization’s findings and recommendations.” Some of the characteristics that 

could be construed as guaranteeing the Board’s independence were unproblematic to hearing 

participants, for example, the idea that the members of the Board would be appointed by the 

president rather than by the secretary of energy. Although Secretary of Energy Herrington 

backed the idea of secretarial appointment, most hearing participants, including critics of S. 

1085, accepted its proposed mode of appointment⎯by the president with Senate approval.233

They also accepted the premise of S. 1085 that independence meant security of tenure for the 

Board members for fixed (staggered) terms of office. The members were not to be subject to 

removal at will by either the secretary of energy or the president. 

A worrisome dimension of “independence” that DOE representatives and other critics 

saw in S. 1085, however, was the leeway that the Board members apparently would have to set 

231 S. Rep. No. 100–173, at 11 (1987). 232 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 39. 233 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 53. 
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the safety agenda, i.e., unilaterally to define the safety issues that they would pursue and to 

define the standard or level of safety they could demand of DOE for a given activity or facility. 

Some witnesses envisioned that the Board would pursue safety improvements that might be 

heedless of the secretary of energy’s need for production and unconstrained by considerations 

such as technical feasibility or cost. A related worry for some critics focused on the authority the 

Board would have, in Peach’s words, to “require DOE to address” the Board’s findings and 

recommendations. Some critics envisioned an undue degree of coercive power by which the 

Board could force the secretary of energy to act in accordance with the Board’s will, regardless 

of his own judgment about the proper balance of safety and national security–driven production. 

Such concerns about the Board’s independence and authority were the main themes of 

the fall 1987 hearings in the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and 

Nuclear Deterrence. Advocates of Glenn’s bill, including Glenn, confronted representatives of 

DOE and the Reagan administration defense establishment, who, while conceding the need for a 

safety board, were anxious to confine its powers within tighter bounds than S. 1085 seemed to 

mandate. At the same time, they recognized that DOE and the weapons complex faced an 

increasingly negative public mood, which only a safety body with a convincing measure of 

independence and authority was likely to assuage. Restoring public confidence that DOE could 

operate the weapons complex safely was a sine qua non for the ambitions that DOE and the 

defense establishment still harbored for the complex in late 1987. DOE aimed to restore its 

greatly diminished production capacity and to modernize it, in order to continue the production 

of nuclear materials and weapons. At that time, production was in a state of near-collapse. The 

N-reactor was shut down and the prospect for reopening it was dim, as was the prospect for 

restoring the production reactors at Savannah River to full power. The Savannah River reactors 

were the nation’s sole source of tritium, an indispensable, but perishable initiator material in 

nuclear weapons.234 Short of being able to replenish the stores of tritium, which has a half-life of 

only 12 years (in contrast to plutonium’s half-life of 24,000 years), the nation, it was argued, 

234 House, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, 53. See 

also Gerber, 4. The Savannah River Site was the nation’s sole producer of tritium, the hydrogen isotope that 

increases the explosive yield of thermonuclear weapons. Decaying about 5 percent a year, it must be periodically 

replenished in nuclear weapons. The end of the Cold War and the arms control agreements to reduce nuclear 

arsenals eliminated any immediate need to produce new tritium. To support the nation’s enduring stockpile, existing 

tritium was recovered and recycled, mostly from decommissioned weapons. 
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would be “unilaterally disarming.”235 Exon, as chair of the subcommittee hearings, summarized 

the aims and challenges of DOE and its supporters, 

The Department of Energy has a difficult mandate to fulfill in the nuclear area. It 

must maintain our Nation’s ability to produce critical nuclear materials with the 

schedule set forth annually in the President’s stockpile memorandum, yet it 

operates under the mounting constraint of aging facilities, limited budget and 

some political hostility to its primary mission.236

Those on the Armed Services Committee who argued on national security grounds for 

refurbishing and modernizing the nuclear weapons complex were cognizant that what Exon 

termed “political hostility” could jeopardize their aims, making it more difficult, among other 

things, to argue successfully for the congressionally approved budgetary increases that 

modernization projects would require.237 “Political hostility” and public concern had by no 

means reached their highest point at the time of the hearings in late 1987. A year later, in the last 

three months of the Reagan presidency, in-depth national media coverage brought home to the 

public the full magnitude of the safety problems and environmental contamination associated 

with DOE’s nuclear complex. DOE’s problems were the topic of numerous stories in major 

newspapers and television news, including 85 articles in the New York Times, 39 on the front 

page.238 In 1987 public and media concern about the DOE nuclear complex was growing as the 

salience of national security arguments for further nuclear arms production was receding. 

Nuclear arms reduction talks and nuclear arsenal downsizing, underway by the fall of 1987, 

rendered the need for further production of nuclear materials more questionable. Former 

Secretary of Energy Herrington was famously quoted as saying “We are awash in plutonium.”239

In the transitional historical and policy context of 1987, in which modernization of the 

nuclear complex was still a plausible but not a certain prospect, modernization’s advocates were 

thrown into a somewhat defensive position in addressing how the law should empower the safety 

235 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 4. 236 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 54. 237 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 82–83. 238 George, 67. See also William Lanouette, Tritium and the Times: How the Nuclear Weapons-Production Scandal 

Became a National Story, Research Paper R–1 (Cambridge, MA: Joan Shorenstein Barone Center for the Press, 

Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, May 1990), 7–9. 
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board. They needed a board sufficiently empowered to improve the public’s confidence in 

DOE’s ability to manage the complex safely, but not so empowered as to be able to dictate to the 

secretary of energy or to veto actions he deemed necessary for the accomplishment of DOE’s 

defense mission. In making their case, they argued that there was no need to go overboard in 

granting oversight powers, because DOE under Herrington had over several years already 

demonstrated significant improvement in its responsiveness to safety panels with “mere” 

advisory powers.240 In addition, they countered with the argument that the past and present 

deficiencies in safety management were less dire than DOE’s critics made them seem. Such 

criticism, they said, produced an exaggerated picture of such deficiencies by conflating the 

environmental and safety records of the DOE complex. 

The advocates of the complex’s refurbishment readily conceded that the environmental 

legacy of the complex was egregious and the physical conditions of the plants seriously rundown. Speaking of “the environmental waste problem that has been building up since the 

Manhattan Project,” they said, 

There is no question that the defense nuclear complex’s managers made serious 

mistakes, beginning years ago, in ignoring the long-term implications of disposal 

practices for radioactive and toxic waste. The magnitude of the problem, although 

not yet fully documented, is enormous.241

In conceding this, modernization advocates anticipated that they would need in the upcoming 

year to cite the poor condition of DOE facilities to argue for enormous budgetary increases for 

renovation and cleanup of the nuclear complex. However, they insisted that the admittedly 

deplorable environmental record of the obsolescent complex should be distinguished from the 

actual safety record. They cited performance measures, such as rates of incidents, accidents, 

injuries, lost work days, and radiation exposure regulatory violations to argue that DOE’s safety 

record, as opposed to its environmental record, was not bad, or was even “excellent.”242 DOE 

had not put the public at excessive risk, and it could claim an improved record in occupational 

safety, as demonstrated by, for example, a reduction of radiation exposures to workers since 

239 Interview, Sherri Wasserman Goodman. See also Keith Schneider, “Nuclear Arms and New Jobs Clash in 

Idaho,” New York Times, March 27, 1988, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res= 

940DEEDC1530F934A15750C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print. 

240 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 179. 241 S. Rep. No.100–232, at 9 (1987). 242 S. Rep. No.100–232, at 8 (1987). 
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1974.243 Thus, the safety board, whose mission was to induce reductions in radiological risk, not 

environmental cleanup, did not need the degree of coercive power that some critics of DOE 

wanted. The environmental issues of the complex were already well covered by strong regulatory 

mechanisms wielded by EPA and sanctioned by the RCRA and other environmental laws. As the 

report of the Senate Armed Services Committee on S. 1085 stated, 

Environmental matters in DOE⎯the management of waste operations and the 

cleanup of existing waste sites⎯are already heavily regulated by EPA and the 

states under the Superfund and RCRA legislation.244

Such environmental issues did not justify magnifying the powers of the Board beyond the 

advisory and non-regulatory. 

The assurance that these advisory powers would not be “toothless” or a mere 

“jawboning” exercise lay, according to DOE representatives, in several of the requirements for 

which the Board’s enabling statue would provide. One requirement was that the Board’s 

interactions with DOE be transparent and open to the public. According to Undersecretary of 

DOE Salgado, public scrutiny was a sufficient constraining power to compel the secretary of 

energy to take the Board’s advice seriously. The public airing of issues and of DOE–Board 

deliberations would remedy the old problem with advisory committees, namely, that DOE could 

ignore their recommendations with impunity. Moreover, in addition to the requirement for 

openness, DOE would be required to respond to the receipt of a Board recommendation in a 

specified period of time and through a specified series of actions as specified in the statute. The 

prescribed administrative procedures for a formal response by DOE to the Board, combined with 

the requirement of openness to the public, obviated the need for the Board to have statutory 

powers by which it could, for example, mandate that DOE follow its recommendations. The 

secretary of energy could remain the final decision-maker, retaining the ultimate responsibility to 

accept or decline advice. 

In constantly reiterating that the Board’s powers should be advisory only, the intent of 

DOE and Department of Defense spokesmen before the Armed Services Committee was to stand 

against the arbitrary and excessively stringent authority that S. 1085, in their reading, allowed the 

243 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 169. 244 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 19 (1987). 
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Board. In November 1987, as the committee was drafting its amended version of S. 1085, Title I, 

it listed as particular areas of concern, 

Investigative priorities of the Board, the risk standards to be applied by the Board, 

and the mechanisms for consideration and disposition of the oversight Board’s 

recommendations to the Secretary of Energy. Other areas of concern include the 

facilities under the Board’s purview and the extension of the Board’s 

responsibility to environmental matters.245

With respect to the problems of defining priorities and acceptable standards of risk, the 

critics of S. 1085 charged that the bill was vague in a way that left the Board free to be unduly 

strict in identifying the safety issues and risks that required attention. The fear was that the Board 

could focus on relatively minor safety deficiencies or remote dangers, rather than on matters that 

posed an imminent danger or “undue risk.” Referring to how S. 1085 could be construed, the 

report of the Senate Armed Services Committee stated, 

The risk of an incident with minor adverse effects, such as an accidental release of 

small amounts of toxic or radioactive substances, potentially has the same 

standing as the risk of catastrophic adverse effects, such as an accident on the 

scale of the Chernobyl reactor disaster.246

The concern about the potential for such a broad interpretation of risk was aggravated by the 

uncertain state of the weapons complex in 1987. The weapons complex was in a deteriorated 

condition and had innumerable deficiencies upon which a safety oversight body could focus. 

DOE saw in this situation the potential for Board interference in a key task DOE would face as 

long as it still had the dual mission of ensuring production and safety. The task was to weigh the 

tradeoffs between backfits that would improve the safety of old production facilities and building 

new facilities. DOE needed continually to determine if it was “better to husband limited 

resources to replace existing facilities rather than continue to make marginal improvements to 

obsolete plants.”247 The Armed Services Committee did not want a safety body that would 

effectively preempt the secretary of energy’s decision-making responsibility and force a choice 

of safety upgrades of old plants or their shutdown. Even if the Board itself, made up of serious 

technical experts, could be counted on to avoid focusing on minor safety issues, the critics of S. 

1085 suggested that the bill’s vague language could create “a potential field day for outside 

intervenors,” inviting lawsuits from citizen groups that were hostile to the mission of the 

245 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 3 (1987). 246 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 12 (1987). 247 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 18 (1987). 
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weapons complex.248 Such outside parties, welcoming the continuing closure of DOE’s nuclear 

facilities, “might seek to compel the Board to exercise its full legal mandate and powers.”249 As 

the committee’s report stated, 

Even if the Board does not choose to interpret its mission in these terms . . . third 

parties might seek to enforce their interpretation of the Board’s mandate and duty 

through litigation.250

The committee report stressed the committee’s desire for statutory language that would 

leave no doubt as to the Board’s obligation to focus on major safety deficiencies and imminent 

dangers. It stated, 

It is important that the Board be supplied with a sense of priority, and be focused 

on significant risks and consequences to public health . . . . The Committee 

categorically rejects any concept of “zero risk’ or minimizing all risk of harm.251

As a model for defining acceptable standards of risk, the critics of S. 1085 pointed to the NRC’s 

application to commercial facilities of the concept of “adequate protection of public health and 

safety,” a concept equivalent to DOE’s “avoidance of undue risk.” As set forth in the Atomic 

Energy Act and Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations, the broad adequate protection 

standard fell short of requiring absolute protection. The committee report stated, 

As applied to commercial facilities, the standard of adequate protection means 

“reasonable assurance that the health and safety of the public will not be 

endangered by the operation of the facility.” (10 C.F.R. 50.35(c)). Absolute 

certainty or perfect safety is not required.252

The committee endorsed the “adequate protection” standard as the standard to be written into the 

Board’s enabling statute, while acknowledging that the translation of the broad standard into 

concrete requirements would differ for defense and commercially licensed nuclear facilities to 

the extent that the facilities themselves differed. The committee stated, 

It is appropriate to require the same general level of safety from DOE nuclear 

facilities as is required of commercial facilities. The Committee recognizes that 

specific quantitative and qualitative standards for achieving adequate protection 

may not necessarily be the same as those applied to commercial facilities, to the 

extent DOE and commercial facilities are significantly different.253

248 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 318. 249 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 18 (1987). 250 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 13 (1987). 251 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 20 (1987). 252 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 24 (1987). 253 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 23 (1987). 
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In endorsing this adequate protection standard, the committee aimed to ensure that the 

Board’s pursuit of safety or risk reduction could be tempered by considerations of cost and 

technical feasibility. S. 1085 could be interpreted to disallow such considerations in the Board’s 

formulation of its advice about safety. For the committee, once the “adequate protection” 

standard was satisfied, such considerations could and should come into play. If higher than 

“adequate” levels of protection were sought, they needed to be justified by a technical or 

economic feasibility test. Concerned about an insufficient differentiation between serious and 

minor or remote safety issues, the committee called, for “cost-benefit analyses that might filter 

out recommendations that are expensive but confer little benefit in terms of reduced risk to the 

public.”254 Supporting this view of the adequate protection standard, the final Board enabling 

legislation of 1988 read, “In making its recommendations, the Board shall consider technical and 

economic feasibility of implementing the recommended measures.” 

In addition to the concerns about S. 1085’s treatment of risk standards and priorities, 

another major concern of the bill’s critics on the Armed Services Committee was its methods for 

the handling of Board recommendations⎯the Board’s primary regulatory tool⎯upon their 

receipt by the secretary of energy. For the critics, the proposed legislation rendered a class of 

Board recommendations⎯those dealing with the prevention of “events”⎯effectively mandatory 

or binding on the secretary, rather than advisory. In the critics’ reading, the secretary could not 

reject such recommendations without making a case to the president and receiving presidential 

concurrence in their rejection. This provision for presidential review of secretarial dissents 

threatened to “permit minor safety issues to be elevated to the President.”255

As the committee report summarized their view of S.1085’s shortcomings taken together, 

The Board is permitted to recommend any measure that the Secretary is unable to 

prove is not infeasible, regardless of cost, so long as it reduces the chances of 

even remote events, which could have only negligible adverse consequences for 

the public health and safety from occurring.256

254 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 16 (1987). 255 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 18 (1987). 256 S. Rep. No.100–232, at 13 (1987). In a similar vein, Senator John W. Warner (R–VA), during confirmation 

hearings for the inaugural Board members in late 1989, caricatured as heavy-handed regulation what had been 

averted with the modification of Glenn’s original proposal. Warner said, 

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board was born in some controversy in 1987. The original 

proposal would have given the Board the responsibility to apply the absolute highest achievable 

standards of safety, no matter how small the incremental improvement nor how high the cost to all 

defense nuclear facilities, including those whose safety was already regulated. 
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Senator Glenn took exception to this reading of S. 1085. In testimony about its provision for 

presidential adjudication in case of an unsatisfactory secretarial response, he denied that the 

provision’s intent was to involve the president in minor matters, bypassing the secretary. Rather, 

he proposed presidential review⎯“bucking [a disputed matter] up to the President”⎯as a 

safeguard against a situation, expected to be rare, in which the secretary and the Board disagreed 

about a safety matter that the Board deemed important or urgent.257 The provision for 

presidential review would give the Board legal recourse, supplementing the other provisions in 

the Board’s enabling legislation that were designed to ensure the secretary take Board advice 

seriously. Glenn was unwilling to put as much weight as did DOE representatives on the efficacy 

of the public airing of issues, on the grounds that much of what DOE and the Board needed to 

discuss remained classified and thus out of the public eye. He held out for presidential review in 

order to guarantee that a rejection of a Board recommendation by the secretary would not simply 

end the matter. He saw such review as a means to give the Board “authority to require action on 

its recommendations or findings.”258 Others saw his provisions for presidential review as 

needlessly constraining, likely to foster an adversarial spirit in Board–DOE interactions, and 

possibly counterproductive to the kind of cooperative interaction needed to address highly 

technical problems in the nuclear weapons complex. 

In the end, the Board’s enabling legislation softened Glenn’s original proposal for 

presidential review, explicitly limiting the requirement for presidential involvement to 

circumstances in which a Board recommendation pertained to an “imminent or severe” situation 

or matter. The committee report spelled out an example of a situation in which the “imminent or 

severe” provisions of the Board’s enabling legislation might be invoked, the case of the 

Savannah River reactors, which had been discovered to be operating at excessive power levels. 

In such an urgent case, the Board was charged with notifying the secretary and the president. The 

president could also become involved if implementing a Board recommendation would be 

precluded by budgetary constraints or by the necessity “to meet the annual nuclear weapons 

stockpile requirements.”259 In cases in which implementation was “impracticable” for these 

reasons, the president could be given a report and the “opportunity to review the determination of 

257 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence, Safety Oversight for 

Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 315. 258 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 21 (1987). 
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the Secretary of Energy, as appropriate, to ensure that budgetary constraints and materials 

requirements are properly balanced with safety concerns.”260 In ordinary circumstances, a 

secretarial rejection of a Board recommendation would not trigger presidential involvement. As 

articulated in the Board’s enabling statute, which echoed the Senate amendment, a Board 

recommendation would normally be routed to the secretary and then to committees of Congress, 

specifically, the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Appropriations, and the Speaker of 

the House of Representatives. If the secretary were to reject a Board recommendation, it would 

go back to the Board for reaffirmation or revision, and then to Congress. 

Beyond the concerns of S. 1085’s critics about its proposed mechanisms for the 

disposition of recommendations and its handling of risk standards, a further concern was the 

scope of Board jurisdiction that S. 1085 seemed to sanction, in particular, the extension of the 

Board’s jurisdiction to environmental remediation or cleanup. As the committee report noted, 

“Title I of S. 1085 could be construed as opening the door to the proposed safety board to inject 

itself in the waste regulator process.”261 The committee argued for confining the Board’s mission 

to the oversight of public health and safety per se, while recognizing that the line between safety 

and health issues and environmental issues was fuzzy and, possibly, liable to ongoing 

adjustment. The committee report stated, 

The Committee believes that it is both unnecessary and inappropriate to extend a 

safety board’s mandate to include environmental restoration matters. This belief 

stems not from a view that the Department’s environmental problems are 

unimportant or insignificant in scope; nor does the Committee deny that the 

distinction between safety issues and environmental issues can in some instances 

be blurred. The Committee emphasizes, however, that a distinction exists, and 

that other legislative remedies and oversight of environmental problems are 

already in existence . . . 

Given the existence of a comprehensive regulatory regime, it is not necessary to 

assign an environmental oversight role to a safety board. For one thing, the 

technical issues are quite different, requiring different⎯and additional⎯expertise 

within the Board. Second, it would needlessly dilute the focus and mission of the 

Board. Third, insofar as the Board’s basic mission is to ensure that, in satisfying 

production requirements, the commitment to safety is not compromised, it is hard 

to discern a rationale for including environmental restoration in the Board’s 

259 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 26 (1987). 260 H.R. Rep. No. 100–989, at 491 (1988) (Conf. Rep.). 261 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 9 (1987). 
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charter or for citing environmental problems in the justification for creating the 

Board in the first place.262

The Board’s 1988 enabling statute did not expressly include “environment” with the term 

“public health and safety” in the Board’s statutory grant of jurisdiction. The committee allowed, 

however, that the Board could consider environmental issues related to “on-going production 

operations” when the Board saw connections with public health and safety issues. Elaborating on 

this point, the committee report identified “unintended releases” of radioactivity as an 

appropriate issue for Board oversight, while most environmental restoration and cleanup would 

be conducted under the jurisdiction of other segments of the government and pursuant to other 

laws. The report stated, 

The distinction between safety and environmental issues, in the Committee’s 

view, should be that safety includes unintended releases from on-going 

production operations, which is a concept that would exclude normal waste 

management operations and remedial actions associated with existing waste 

storage sites. The Committee stresses that a safety board should not be prohibited 

outright from crossing that potentially elusive line; the Committee seeks only to 

clarify its intention that safety of production operations must be the Board’s 

primary concern.263

By the time that the Board’s enabling legislation was finalized, it further clarified how far the 

Board jurisdiction reached on issues of storage and waste cleanup of nuclear waste. The Board’s 

jurisdiction was explicitly said to encompass certain DOE “nuclear waste storage facilities,” such 

as high-level nuclear waste tanks at Hanford and Savannah River, but not NRC-licensed 

facilities, such as the Yucca Mountain repository. The waste tanks were and remained a major 

focus of concern about “unintended releases,” which qualified as a Board issue because of the 

inextricability of danger to public health and safety and to the environment. 

THE BOARD’S ENABLING STATUTE AND LAUNCH 

The Senate amendment of S. 1085 addressed to the satisfaction of the bill’s critics the 

main issues that they found problematic in Senator Glenn’s original formulation. The 

amendment was completed with the expectation that substantially similar legislation would be 

enacted, and the Board set up, in early 1988. However, the amendment languished for some 

262 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 19–20 (1987). 
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months, until it was reincarnated without major change as provisions of H.R. 4481. H.R. 4481’s 

provisions establishing the Board, in turn, were incorporated, after discussion and minor changes 

in conference, into the Department of Defense authorization bill for fiscal year 1989.264 Public 

Law No. 100-456, National Defense Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 1989, received final 

congressional approval from the House and Senate on September 28, 1988, and President 

Reagan signed into law the authorization act on the next day.265 Pub. L. No. 100-456, Section 

1441, amended the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 by adding a new chapter: “Chapter 21. Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board,” which created the Board. Capping almost two years of 

movement through Congress, “the new provisions inserted into the Atomic Energy Act 

represented the most extensive modification of that statute since the Energy Reorganization Act 

of 1974.”266

The enabling statute of the Board that emerged from Congress in late 1988 embodied 

modifications that S. 1085’s critics saw as more conducive than S. 1085 to the development of a 

consultative, non-adversarial relationship between the Board and DOE.267 The idea that the 

Board’s primary mission was to assist DOE appeared repeatedly throughout the Senate report on 

S. 1085, the report that elaborated most fully on the intent of Congress in creating the Board. The 

report spoke of “establishing this institutional mechanism to assist DOE on safety matters.”268

This shift of emphasis in the thrust of the statute to assisting DOE reflected a key preference of 

the Armed Services Committee and its chair, Senator Sam Nunn.269 Once the shift of emphasis 

was achieved, much of the remainder of the statute was not far out of line with what Glenn had 

originally proposed. The Board’s enabling statute followed in broad outlines, for example, S. 

1085’s definition of the Board’s makeup and functions. The enabling statute retained S. 1085’s 

specification of technical expertise as a requirement for appointment to the Board. It stipulated a 

Board made up of five civilians appointed to staggered renewable five-year terms by the 

president from among U.S. citizens who were “respected experts in the field of nuclear safety 

263 S. Rep. No. 100–232, at 9, 19–20 (1987). 264 H.R. Rep. No. 100–989 (1988) (Conf. Rep.). 265 For the full text of this law, see National Defense Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 1989, Pub. L. No. 100–456, 

Title XIV, Part D, 102 Stat 1918, September 29, 1988. 266 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board Regarding Regulation of DOE’s Defense Nuclear Facilities (Washington, DC, November 1998), 2, 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/rc_199811.pdf. 

267 Interview, Mansfield. 268 S. Rep. No.100–232, at 10 (1987). 269 George, 115. 
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with a demonstrated competence and knowledge relevant to the independent investigative and 

oversight functions of the Board.”270 The statute preserved the elements of independence for the 

Board, empowering it to set its own agenda, rather than to have its topics of inquiry assigned by 

the secretary of energy. In defining primary Board functions, the statute identified five, ordering 

them slightly differently from S. 1085’s six. The Board’s specific duties and responsibilities 

were delineated in Chapter 21, Section 312, of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, “Functions of the 

Board,” which stated, “The Board shall perform the following functions”: 

 (1) Review and evaluation of standards.⎯The Board shall review and 

evaluate the content and implementation of the standards relating to the design, 

construction, operation, and decommissioning of defense nuclear facilities of the 

Department of Energy (including all applicable Department of Energy orders, 

regulations, and requirements) at each Department of Energy defense nuclear 

facility. The Board shall recommend to the Secretary of Energy those specific 

measures that should be adopted to ensure that public health and safety are 

adequately protected. The Board shall include in its recommendations necessary 

changes in the content and implementation of such standards, as well as matters 

on which additional data or additional research is needed. 

 (2) Investigations. 

 (A) The Board shall investigate any event or practice at a Department of 

Energy defense nuclear facility which the Board determines has adversely 

affected, or may adversely affect, public health and safety. 

 (B) The purpose of any Board investigation under subparagraph (A) shall be⎯

 (i) to determine whether the Secretary of Energy is adequately 

implementing the standards described in paragraph (1) of the Department of 

Energy (including all applicable 

Department of Energy orders, regulations, and requirements) at the facility; 

 (ii) to ascertain information concerning the circumstances of such event 

or practice and its implications for such standards; 

 (iii) to determine whether such event or practice is related to other 

events or practices at other Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities; 

and 

 (iv) to provide to the Secretary of Energy such recommendations for 

changes in such standards or the implementation of such standards 

(including Department of Energy orders, regulations, and requirements) and 

such recommendations relating to data or research needs as may be prudent 

or necessary. 

 (3) Analysis of design and operational data.⎯The Board shall have access 

to and may systematically analyze design and operational data, including safety 

analysis reports, from any Department of Energy defense nuclear facility. 

270 Pub. L. No. 100–456, Section 1441(a), 102 Stat 1918, 2076; this new language became chapter 21, Section 

311(b) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 USC 2011 et seq.). 
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 (4) Review of facility design and construction.⎯The Board shall review the 

design of a new Department of Energy defense nuclear facility before 

construction of such facility begins and shall recommend to the Secretary, within 

a reasonable time, such modifications of the design as the Board considers 

necessary to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety. During the 

construction of any such facility, the Board shall periodically review and monitor 

the construction and shall submit to the Secretary, within a reasonable time, such 

recommendations relating to the construction of that facility as the Board 

considers necessary to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety. An 

action of the Board, or a failure to act, under this paragraph may not delay or 

prevent the Secretary of Energy from carrying out the construction of such a 

facility. 

 (5) Recommendations.⎯The Board shall make such recommendations to the 

Secretary of Energy with respect to Department of Energy defense nuclear 

facilities, including operations of such facilities, standards, and research needs, as 

the Board determines are necessary to ensure adequate protection of public health 

and safety. In making its recommendations, the Board shall consider the technical 

and economic feasibility of implementing the recommended measures.271

The statute provided a plethora of means to facilitate the Board’s performance of its 

oversight functions. The Board was authorized to hire up to 100 staff and to contract for 

additional expertise. To pursue investigations and gather facts, the Board was given broad 

latitude to conduct inspections and special studies, to hold hearings, and to subpoena evidence 

and witnesses. It was empowered to establish reporting requirements for DOE. The statute 

enjoined DOE, along with its contractors, to “fully cooperate with the Board and provide the 

Board with ready access to such facilities, personnel, and information as the Board considers 

necessary to carry out its responsibilities.”272 The Board could also secure assistance from other 

government agencies, from the scientific community and industry, and from public interest 

groups. At the same time that the Board was given unhindered access to the information it 

needed to assist DOE, the Board was obliged to establish systems to provide public access to its 

findings and recommendations, as well as many of its deliberations. The statute emphasized the 

Board’s accountability to Congress, and made provision for the Board to report to it at least 

annually. In case the statute’s provisions proved to be framed too cautiously, and gave the Board 

insufficient authority, the statute provided for a future review and the possibility of its own 

271 Pub. L. No. 100–456, Section 1441(a), 102 Stat 1918, 2077–78; this new language became chapter 21, Section 

312 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. See also Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [First] Annual Report to 

Congress (Washington, DC, February 1991), 3, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/ar_1991. 

html. 
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revision.273 The legislation said that the very question of the Board’s value would be revisited in 

five years, at which time the Board was required to provide an assessment of whether its 

authority was sufficient, whether stronger regulatory powers, such as enforcement powers, were 

necessary, and whether the Board had enhanced the safety of operations in the nuclear weapons 

complex. 

Challenges Grow in the Year Preceding the Board’s Start-up 

With the enactment of the Board’s’ enabling statute, the stage was set for the first steps in 

the Board’s launch⎯the selection, nomination, and confirmation of its inaugural members. 

These activities occupied nearly a year, with the nominations by the new president, George H.W. 

Bush, in August 1989, Senate hearings and confirmation in October, and the start of operations 

on October 18, 1989. In the meantime, during the year that transpired for these activities, 

uncertainties and turmoil related to the nuclear weapons complex escalated on a number of 

fronts⎯in Congress, in the media, and at DOE⎯magnifying the challenges the inaugural Board 

members would face in their initial operating environment. 

In Congress, hearings and investigations by various oversight committees continued in 

the final several months of the Reagan administration and throughout the 101st Congress.274

Among the results of these congressional activities was an early proposal to amend the enabling 

statute of the Board to give it enforcement powers and broaden its jurisdiction. Drafted by 

Representative David E. Skaggs (D–Colorado) in 1989 and favored by other early House 

supporters of strong Board authority, such as Representative Ron Wyden, the amendment was 

debated in a House Armed Services subcommittee.275 At the confirmation hearings for the Board 

members, Glenn, who referred to the Board’s enabling statute as “a scaled-down version of my 

272 Pub. L. No. 100–456, Section 1441(a), 102 Stat 1918, 2080; this new language became chapter 21, Section 314 

of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. 

273 Interview, Mansfield. This provision to revisit the legislation after five years served to assuage Glenn and others, 

still uneasy about the whether the Board’s statutory powers were sufficiently strong. 274 Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight of the Bomb,”501. The House Armed Services Committee was especially 

active in investigating safety issues in the DOE weapons complex, with various panels and subcommittees holding 

15 hearings in 1989, and an additional large number between 1990 and 1992. Thereafter, congressional interest in 

the issues slackened greatly. 

275 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Procurement and 

Military Nuclear Systems and Department of Energy Defense Nuclear Facilities Panel, Hearings on National 

Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 1990⎯H.R. 2461 and Oversight of Previously Authorized Programs: 
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proposal,” mentioned his own intention “to continue my legislative efforts to strengthen and 

expand the role of the safety Board.”276 Besides contemplating amendments, Congress also 

documented in ever-greater detail the safety and environmental hazards to which DOE’s nuclear 

facilities had exposed the country. For example, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee 

produced an historical report, Early Health Problems of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Industry and 

Their Implications For Today, showing that senior officials responsible for the DOE nuclear 

complex had been aware of serious public health problems arising from worker exposure to high 

radioactivity levels. According to the authors of this report, between 1947 and 1954, the AEC 

knew of such problems at several facilities, most notably, Hanford. The report also claimed that a 

CDC panel had learned of Du Pont Company findings on excess cancers among 

workers⎯excess leukemia rates at the Savannah River Site, increased risk of cancer death due to 

radiation exposures at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and cancer deaths at Rocky Flats that 

rose with increasing plutonium exposures. The findings included the observation that DOE’s 

long-standing concern over legal liability had significantly inhibited its safety and health 

research.277

The continuing focus of Congress on hazards in the DOE nuclear complex contributed, in 

turn, to unprecedented media attention, fueling the media alarm that reached the level of a 

“crusade,” as one observer put it, in late 1988 and in the first year of the Bush administration.278

The trigger for the crusade was a joint House-Senate hearing held a day after the Board’s 

enabling legislation became law.279 Co-chaired by Senator Glenn and Representative Mike Synar 

(D–Oklahoma), the hearing released a 1985 Du Pont memo that “offered the first public details 

Department of Energy Modernization Study and Department of Energy Defense Programs, 101st Cong., 1st sess., 

February 21, 24, March 13, 20, 21, April 3, 6, 13, 26, May 9, 16, 23, 24, June 6, July 18, 1989, 1955–63. 

276 For the confirmation hearings on Board members, see U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, 

Nominations Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, First Session, 101st Congress, March 14, 16, April 5, 

18–19, May 3, 4, 16, 18, June 22, July 31, August 3, September 7, 8, 20, October 6, 17, November 7, 9, 20, 1989, 

722. 

277 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Early Health Problems of the U.S. Nuclear 

Weapons Industry and Their Implications for Today, 101st Cong., 1st sess. (Comm. Print, 1989). 278 On heightened media coverage, see Terrence R. Fehner and Jack M. Holl. Department of Energy, 1977–1994: A 

Summary History (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, November 1994), 50, http://www.osti.gov/bridge/

servlets/purl/10106088-mgIkuD/webviewable/10106088.PDF. 

279 See U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on 

Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources, and Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Nuclear Reactor 

Safety at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Plant, 100th Cong., 2d sess., September 30, 1988, 1–51, 193–

222. 
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of 30 serious accidents” at the Savannah River Site’s nuclear reactors.280 The environmentalist 

Alvarez, Glenn’s “media-savvy aide,” was given the memo in mid-September while preparing a 

DOE witness for the hearing.281 After the New York Times broke the Du Pont memo story on the 

front-page in October, the weapons complex and its problems became a major national story, 

with sustained coverage in major newspapers, and “a drumbeat of coverage” in national news 

magazines and the network’s evening news programs.282 The predominant angles of the 

coverage in this media barrage included not only the safety and environmental legacy of the arms 

race, but also the potential for that legacy to threaten national security by prompting a permanent 

tritium cutoff that could make maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile impossible. 

Three months into the period of maximum media attention to the nuclear weapons 

complex, DOE received new nuclear safety–focused leadership with the appointment in January 

1989 of Admiral James D. Watkins, U.S. Navy [Retired], as secretary of energy. Watkins, a 

leader of the nuclear submarine program, brought to the post the Nuclear Navy’s stringent and 

widely respected approach to the safety of operations.283 He repeatedly declared safety the top 

priority of DOE’s nuclear program and charged that DOE’s old “way of doing business” 

amounted to “trust the contractors.” As he characterized the “old way,” it was: 

Trust the contractors to carry out all nuclear operations on their own and avoid 

both direct D.O.E. line management responsibility and accountability and D.O.E. 

independent internal oversight for safety violations and accidents.284

To remedy this “old way,” he undertook a major restructuring of DOE’s approach to safety 

management. He established site resident Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) inspectors at 

key DOE facilities, and formed “Tiger Teams” to inspect nuclear facilities. He reorganized DOE, 

creating in September 1989 a new internal oversight unit, the Office of Nuclear Safety, which 

was independent of the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health and reported directly to the 

secretarial level.285 As Watkins described the office of nuclear safety, it had “independent status, 

280 Lanouette, Tritium and the Times, 6. 281 Lanouette, Tritium and the Times, 15. 282 Lanouette, Tritium and the Times, 16. 283 Ackland, 213–14. 284 Matthew L. Wald, “Energy Dept. Shift in Safety Faulted,” New York Times, May 2, 1993, http://query.nytimes. 

com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE0DE1E38F931A35756C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. 

285 Fehner and Holl, 53–56. 
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reporting directly and freely to me, to insure that nuclear safety matters could be brought to me 

and other senior managers in a timely and unfiltered manner.”286

Under Watkins, DOE also demonstrated commitment to environmental cleanup by 

establishing the Office of Environmental Management (EM), commonly referred to as the 

Environmental Management program.287 The office consolidated responsibility for 

environmental management activities, including nuclear- and non-nuclear-related cleanup and 

environmental restoration, waste management, technology development, and facility 

transition.288 The creation of the EM office signaled a continuing change in DOE priorities, with 

greater emphasis on cleanup, as expectations of a sharp reduction in stockpile requirements 

increased. Watkins underscored the new priority of cleanup when addressing DOE’s budgetary 

needs. He provided startling cost estimates of between $100 billion and $200 billion over several 

decades for radioactive contamination cleanup, repair, and construction.289 At the same time, 

although national policy remained undecided about further nuclear materials production and 

about plant refurbishment versus new construction, Watkins indicated that safety would not take 

a backseat to production, when he supported further shutdowns in the chain of weapons 

production. For example, after a restart temperature spike in August 1989 at the Savannah River 

Plant’s tritium-producing P-reactor, he announced the postponement of any restart until at least 

September 1990, despite defense establishment concerns about a possible tritium shortage.290

Formation of the Board 

The greater emphasis on safety of the DOE nuclear complex under Watkins, the 

continuing media and congressional agitation about its safety deficiencies, and ongoing questions 

about production and construction needs in view of likely imminent stockpile reductions all 

shaped the context in which the Board’s inaugural members were questioned in their 

confirmation hearing, sworn in, and undertook their first activities. As the Board’s enabling 

286 Wald, “Energy Dept. Shift in Safety Faulted,” 1993. 287 U.S. Congress, Congressional Budget Office, Cleaning Up the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Weapons 

Complex (Washington, DC, May 1994), http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/49xx/doc4914/doc26.pdf. See also Gosling and 

Fehner, 5. 

288 Fehner and Holl, 53–56. 289 Arjun Makhijani, Stephen I. Schwartz, and William J. Weida, “Nuclear Waste Management and Environmental 

Remediation,” in Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons 

Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), esp., 384–86. See also Wald, “Energy Dept. Shift 

in Safety Faulted,” 1993. 
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statute required, all of the five initial Board members were “respected experts in the field of 

nuclear safety,” appointed “from civilian life.” They had decades of scientific, technical, and 

legal experience in the fields of nuclear operations and safety. Together they brought, in the 

words of Senator Exon, chair at their October 17, 1989, confirmation hearing, “the talent and 

experience of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Atomic Energy Commission, the former 

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and our National 

Laboratories.”291 As a group, they met the statutory requirement that not more than three “be of 

the same party.” Only two stated a party preference, John T. Conway, Democrat, and Andrew J. 

(A.J.) Eggenberger, Republican. 

Conway, named as chairman by the president, in accordance with the Board’s authorizing 

statute, was an engineer and an attorney.292 He worked from 1956 to 1968 on the staff of the 

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, six years as assistant staff director and six years as 

executive director, and later served as executive vice president with Consolidated Edison 

Company of New York. He was also involved during the 97th Congress in legislative efforts to 

establish a permanent repository for nuclear waste. Eggenberger, designated as vice chairman by 

the president, was a Ph.D. engineer with expertise in nuclear safety and earthquake engineering. 

He had worked as a private-sector consultant, with clients including the International Atomic 

Energy Agency. He had served as a seismic specialist and program director at the National 

Science Foundation. John W. Crawford Jr., a retired navy captain, had served as deputy manager 

of the Naval Reactors Program under Admiral Rickover and as DOE’s principal deputy assistant 

secretary of energy for nuclear energy. He had expertise in the engineering and construction of 

nuclear reactors acquired during four decades of government service.293 In the aftermath of the 

Three Mile Island accident, he chaired the DOE committee charged with assessing DOE reactor 

safety, producing a comprehensive safety survey known as the Crawford Report.294 Herbert J.C. 

Kouts, a Ph.D. physicist and internationally known nuclear safety expert, had been a director of 

290 Gerber, 5. 291 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Nominations, 723. 292 Biographical sketches indebted to official biographies published by the Board and DOE; Senate, Committee on 

Armed Services, Nominations, 717–89; and George, 114. 293 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Eighth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1998), 

1/11, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 294 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Nominations, 725. For the report, see U.S. Department of Energy, A 

Report on a Safety Assessment of Department of Energy Nuclear Reactor: Report of the Crawford Committee, 

DOE/US–0005 (Washington, DC, March 1981). 
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the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and had served as chair of the International Safety 

Advisory Group at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Edson G. Case had served under 

Admiral Rickover in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, followed by 30 years at the AEC 

and NRC, where he became director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.295 As Conway 

recently summarized the nature of the inaugural Board members’ backgrounds, all had been 

involved in either the AEC or the Rickover program.296

After receiving Senate confirmation without difficulty, the new Board members were 

sworn in at the White House on October 25, 1990, officially by the chief clerk in the basement, 

and unofficially by John Sununu, White House Chief of Staff and a supporter of the Board, along 

with his assistant, Andrew Card.297 Senators John Glenn, Strom Thurmond, and J. James Exon 

were among those present to witness the oath-taking. Conway later wryly observed to Glenn that 

the swearing in was undoubtedly memorable to him not only because he had been instrumental 

in creating the Board, but also because Glenn had been mugged that day.298

295 Case died on September 16, 1991. See Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [Second] Annual Report to 

Congress (Washington, DC, February 1992), n.p., http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 

His successor, nominated in May 1992, was Joseph J. DiNunno. DiNunno had worked 17 years for the Navy 

Department, including under Rickover in the Naval Reactors program. He then spent 13 years with the AEC, 

eventually heading the agency’s first Office of Environmental Affairs. Finally, he worked for two decades in private 

industry in a variety of nuclear safety and environmental roles. See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, 

Safety, and Security, “Biography: Mr. Joseph John DiNunno,” http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/

jjdinn.htm. 

296 Interview, John T. Conway, Board chairman (October 1989–April 2005), Arlington, VA, March 26, 2008. See 

also U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Dismantling the Bomb and Managing the Nuclear Materials, 

OTA–O–572 (Washington, DC, September 1993), 42, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_1/DATA/1993/9320. 

PDF. 

297 Interview, A.J. Eggenberger, Board chairman (since 2005; vice chairman, 1989–2005), Washington, DC, July 9, 

2008. 

298 Interview, Conway. See also U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense 

Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1997 and the Future Years Defense Program, 104th Cong., 2d 

sess., March 6, 13, 20, 25, 29, 1996, 71. 
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CHAPTER 3: THE BOARD’S OPERATIONS IN THE EARLY YEARS 

When the inaugural Board members were confirmed and the Board officially began 

operations in late October 1989, more than one year had passed since the Board’s enabling 

statute had become law. The Board was under intense scrutiny by those who believed that the 

creation of the Board was insufficient to achieve their goal of independent oversight of DOE 

defense nuclear operations and facilities. This delay in nominating and confirming the Board 

members heightened suspicions about the potential effectiveness of the Board. Recognizing this 

suspicion, the Board members were in agreement that the Board must begin to conduct its health 

and safety oversight mission in the DOE defense nuclear complex immediately. Moreover, all 

actions taken by the Board would support the Board’s independence from DOE and avoid any 

appearance of a conflict of interest wherever possible. 

Simultaneously, the Board also needed to address the plethora of managerial issues 

associated with the start-up of an independent federal agency. In its first year of operations, the 

Board divided its time between reviews of nuclear safety issues at priority sites and building a 

federal agency from the ground up, giving special attention to hiring staff, acquiring suitable 

office space, establishing financial operations, and determining an efficient organizational 

structure for its mission. 

THE START-UP OF BOARD OPERATIONS 

From the start of operations, the Board members worked together as a team of experts in 

a collegial manner to insure that the Board presented a united front in pursuing its independent 

oversight mission. A prime example of their bipartisan and collegial spirit of cooperation was 

their decision not to have their own personal staff. The Board members relied on the Board’s 

technical, legal, and administrative staff for their information and support needs, saving valuable 

resources. The Board members were recognized experts in nuclear safety and as such, the need 

for personal staff was viewed as an unnecessary expense. 

Chairman Conway was quick to recognize not only the challenges facing the Board in 

executing its safety oversight mission, but also the opportunities. As a new agency, the Board did 

not inherit any staff, organizational structure, or internal regulations governing the conduct of 

business. Therefore, the Board was free to create a streamlined organization, specifically tailored 
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to meet its specialized scientific and technical mission, without the encumbrances often 

associated with traditional government operations, such as vertical layering and duplication of 

functions. Conway set the standard for having a “no frills” approach to conducting Board 

business, and in his words, getting the job done by promoting efficiency throughout the 

organization and maximizing the utility of each employee.

299 The limited resources of the Board 

were to be focused solely on its mission respecting the adequate protection of public and worker 

health and safety. Administrative expenses were carefully reviewed for absolute necessity 

before expenditures were allowed. For example, the Board did not employ government drivers or 

own/lease executive motor vehicles, and carefully enforced the Federal Travel Regulations, 

including the restrictions on the use of first class travel. 

Adopting the principle of economies of scale for obtaining needed administrative support 

services, the Board negotiated Interagency Agreements with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission, the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration, and the 

Public Health Service to obtain immediate support for accounting, procurement, personnel, and 

payroll services. Resources that normally are diverted to fully support these vital administrative 

functions remained dedicated to supporting the Board’s health and safety mission. 

Staff recruitment efforts were underway immediately, yielding a skeletal staff at first, 

with Kenneth M. Pusateri, the first non-Board member, appointed in mid-November as general 

manager of operations.300 Pusateri had a proven record of accomplishments in managing the 

start-up and operation of executive branch agencies, having served in line and staff positions in 

the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Department 

of Energy. He undertook the numerous administrative tasks of a fledgling agency, including the 

expenditure of funds, personnel matters, and congressional staff interface.301 In addition to 

administrative staff, the Board sought quickly to build up its technical staff. The need for 

competent technical employees was “acute,” in view of the urgency of addressing the safety 

concerns that prompted the Board’s creation in the first place. The Board was statutorily 

299 Letter to The Honorable Leon Panetta, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, from Chairman 

Conway, December 1, 1993, 3. 

300 Interview, Kenneth M. Pusateri, Board general manager (1989–2006), Washington, DC, January 3, 2008. 301 Pusateri served as general manager from November 1989 until his retirement from the Board on June 2, 2006. He 

was succeeded as general manager by Brian Grosner. 
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authorized to hire up to 100 permanent staff members, as well as to contract for assistance from 

organizations and consultants. 

To help in the recruitment and leadership of its scientific/technical staff and outside 

consultants, the Board recruited Dr. George W. Cunningham to serve as the Board’s technical 

director. Dr. Cunningham had previously served as the assistant secretary for nuclear energy in 

DOE, and also held senior leadership positions in the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s and the 

Energy Research and Development Administration’s nuclear energy programs. Robert Andersen 

was recruited from the National Science Foundation to serve as the Board’s General Counsel. 

Andersen had a wealth of experience in environmental law and understood the legal issues 

associated with scientific research. Richard Azzaro was selected as the Board’s Deputy General 

Counsel. Recruited from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Azzaro was an 

accomplished trial attorney based on his work in the federal courts and in his mastery of the legal 

practices associated with the operation of federal regulatory agencies. Joseph Neubeiser was 

recruited from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to serve as Deputy General Manager. 

His knowledge of logistics and information technology proved to be invaluable to the Board in 

its quest to rapidly start up operations. 

Despite the urgent need for technical staff, the Board encountered serious hiring 

problems in its first year. The problems were of sufficient magnitude that the Board for a time 

consisted, as Board Chairman John T. Conway quipped in a 2008 interview, of “all chiefs, and 

no Indians.”302 The aptness of his remark was reflected in the presence of only 10 permanent 

technical staffers as of December 10, 1990.303 During the first year, the Board relied heavily on 

consultants and contracts for technical expertise.304

The Board attributed its “difficulty in obtaining permanent staff” to its lack of the 

requisite hiring authority to attract first-rate technical and scientific employees. The Board was 

advised shortly after its startup that, unlike the NRC, it could not hire such personnel outside the 

rules and procedures that ordinarily apply in federal hiring. That is, the Board was not statutorily 

exempt from the requirements of Title 5 of the U.S. Code governing appointment of employees 

302 Interview, John T. Conway, Board chairman, October 1989–April 2005, Arlington, VA, March 26, 2008. 303 U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year of 

Operation, GAO/RCED-91-54 (Washington, DC, February 5, 1991), 3–4, http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat7/143684. 

pdf. 

304 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [First] Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1991), 

32, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 
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and classification of employee positions in the competitive service.305 The Board, as Conway 

pointed out on a number of occasions, had originally been under the opposite impression, 

expecting that it would have the same hiring authority as the NRC.306 The NRC had the excepted 

service authority that Congress grants to federal programs that require scarce skills or special 

expertise. In cases of such special need, Congress exempts agency employees from standard 

classification procedures and salary limitations (subject to an overall pay cap). Such excepted 

service authority decouples the otherwise obligatory link between an employee’s grade level and 

responsibility to supervise a given number of employees.307 The AEC enjoyed such excepted 

service authority, pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act, section 161(d), which recognized the 

scarcity of technical expertise in the nuclear field and the competition with the private sector for 

this expertise. The NRC inherited this authority from the AEC, but DOE retained it only in 

limited form (i.e., for 200 positions)⎯a development much to the disadvantage of DOE, 

according to Board member John W. Crawford Jr. and other Board members.308

The Board, on finding that its own lack of excepted service authority would hamper its 

hiring efforts, requested it from Congress. Conway brought up the Board’s hiring problems in 

each of the early congressional hearings in which the Board’s activities were scrutinized. Senator 

Glenn, who stood ready to revisit questions about the Board’s legal authority, took up the issue 

in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, directly questioning Board members about 

whether the Board’s enabling legislation needed revision.309 On the issue of hiring, he asked, 

“What did we goof on in that enabling legislation?”310 Both House and Senate Armed Services 

305 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear 

Deterrence, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 101st Cong., 2d 

sess., March 28, 1990, 5. 

306 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 5. 307 Glenn Russell George, “Negotiated Safety: Intragovernmental Risk Regulation in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons 

Complex” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, May 1995), 123–24 (accessed via Proquest). 308 John W. Crawford Jr., An Assessment Concerning Safety at Defense Nuclear Facilities: The DOE Technical 

Personnel Problem, DNFSB/TECH-10 (Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, March 1996), 

26, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_199603.html. On the scope of DOE’s excepted appointment authority, 

see especially Appendix H, “Statement by Robert M. Andersen, General Counsel, Defense Nuclear facilities Safety 

Board,” H/7–H/10. See also, Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and 

Experience to Date, 5 and 35. 309 See U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Nominations Before the Senate Armed Services 

Committee, First Session, 101st Congress, March 14, 16, April 5, 18–19, and May 3, 4, 16, 18, 1989, 722. During 

the nomination hearing, Glenn said, “I will certainly be paying very careful attention to the establishment of the 

Safety Board and its performance over the next year. I also intend to continue my legislative efforts to strengthen 

and expand the role of the Safety Board.” 

310 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans. Progress, and Experience to Date, 48. 
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Committees saw to the needed amendment. In November 1990, Congress granted the Board 

excepted service authority with the passage of Pub. L. No. 101-510, National Defense 

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1991, the first of a number of amendments over the years to 

the Board’s enabling statute. Pub. L. No. 101-510 amended the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to 

authorize the Board to establish the rates of compensation for the Board’s scientific and technical 

personnel.311 Under this new authority, as Conway later said, thanking the Senate Armed 

Services Committee, “We are able to hire without going through a lot of red tape and 

difficulties.”312 The Board, allowed greater flexibility in hiring, could bypass the previously 

applicable salary restraints of the General Schedule. The Board established instead a five-band, 

performance-based pay system. The system permitted the Board to offer salaries sufficient to 

attract permanent staff with special technical expertise⎯salaries at a GS-16, -17, -18 

level⎯even absent managerial responsibility, through compensation packages that were, by 

public-sector standards, generous.313 The development pleased Conway, who said, “We do not 

want the normal ‘manager’ type that has to justify his or her salary on the basis that he or she has 

X number of people reporting to them.”314 The Board also established a performance-based 

bonus system and a technical intern program, setting itself apart from agencies without excepted 

service authority.315

Another challenge affecting hiring, besides the Board’s initial lack of the requisite hiring 

authority, was the Board’s need to avoid potential conflict of interest situations in 

hiring⎯conflicts that could compromise the impartiality of advice offered to the Board. The 

Board’s enabling statute called for hiring and contractual arrangements that avoided such 

situations, for example, those in which the Board’s outside technical experts had connections 

with DOE or DOE contractors in the weapons complex. However, avoiding conflict of interest 

situations was difficult, insofar as the Board was obliged, especially early on, to make heavy use 

of contracts for technical expertise, as well as interagency support. This reliance on outside help 

manifested itself in the allocation of the Board’s expenditures in its startup period. The Board’s 

fiscal year 1990 funding availability was $8,865,000, with expenditures totaling $6,956,000. Out 

311 GAO, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year of Operation, 3–4. 312 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993, 102d Cong., 1st sess., April 23, May 9, 17, 22, 23, June 5, 12, 13, 19, 20, 1991, 593. 313 George, 123–24. 314 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans. Progress, and Experience to Date, 49. 315 George, 124. 
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of these expenditures, contracts amounted to $3.9 million or almost 56 percent.316 This heavy 

reliance on contracts was a hurdle to engaging expert help while maintaining the requisite “arm’s 

length” relationship with DOE, because the nuclear experts the Board wanted to use typically 

had an employment history or connections with DOE or its contractors. As the GAO report 

assessing the Board’s performance in its first year observed, 

[The] nuclear industry is to some extent a closed community; few available 

nuclear experts are not in some way connected to DOE or its operating 

contractors.317

Conway illustrated the challenge that the Board faced by citing the case of a Board consultant on 

the Hanford waste tanks whose services the Board had to forgo on finding that a DOE contractor 

would use his assistance.318 The challenge of avoiding potential conflicts of interest persisted for 

the Board at a significant level until it was able, thanks to its new hiring authority, to step up its 

hiring of permanent staff. Given the sensitivity on this issue, the Board developed and 

subsequently issued its organizational and consultant conflicts of interest regulations on 

September 29, 1992.319

Apart from staffing difficulties, the second early administrative challenge was locating 

office space.320 Even though the Board and DOE agreed at the outset that the Board, as an 

independent organization, should not share quarters with DOE, the Board was obliged to operate 

for three months out of two rooms in the basement of DOE’s Forrestal Building in Washington, 

DC. In September 1990, after almost a year of operations and a period in another temporary 

location, the Board began to carry out its activities from its new headquarters and permanent 

office space at 625 Indiana Avenue NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC.321 The space was designed 

to accommodate the Board’s technical, legal, and administrative staff and to provide space for 

meetings and hearings, as well as the technical library and the public reading room that the 

Board established in 1991. 

During these early start-up years, the Board received the full support of the White House 

staff in locating suitable office space to conduct Board operations, and in pushing for and 

316 DNFSB, [First] Annual Report to Congress, 31–32. 317 GAO, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year, 26. 318 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Accident and Explosion Risks at Department of 

Energy High-Level Radioactive Waste Facilities, 101st Cong., 2d sess., July 31, 1990, 41. 319 Personal communication, Kenneth M. Pusateri, Washington, DC, May 30, 2009. 320 Interview, Conway. 
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ultimately receiving excepted service hiring authority. Andrew Card, the assistant to the 

President and deputy to the chief of staff, played a leading role in ensuring that key support 

agencies within the executive branch, such as the Office of Personnel Management and the 

General Services Administration, were sensitized to the importance of the Board’s mission and 

worked with the Board in a cooperative manner. 

ESTABLISHING THE BOARD’S OVERSIGHT PROGRAM 

Site Visits and Other Fact-Gathering Activities 

Upon taking their oaths of office, the Board immediately undertook an intensive program 

of oversight activities. As Conway said, speaking of the very early period when the Board still 

consisted of only the five Board members, “We . . . did not want to wait until we were staffed up 

to begin our safety-related work.”322 In taking up its oversight tasks, the Board simultaneously 

tackled urgent safety shortcomings in the weapons complex and began to define its tasks and its 

own manner of proceeding in the accomplishment of its mandate⎯the mandate to identify safety 

problems by reviewing facilities, operations, practices, and occurrences, and to evaluate the 

content and implementation of health and safety standards. 

The first practice that the Board inaugurated in pursuit of its oversight responsibilities 

was that of site visits throughout the weapons complex. Within less than two weeks of its 

swearing in, the Board used its broad statutory latitude for fact- and information-gathering, and 

launched an ambitious program of visits to priority DOE sites. These site visits, which became a 

regular and major part of the Board’s safety review efforts, began with an exploratory visit to the 

Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, South Carolina, from November 7–9, 1989. As Conway 

reported in the first congressional hearing on the Board’s activities, held in March 1990, 

One of the first acts we undertook prior to obtaining staff was for the five 

members to personally visit and tour the Savannah River site to learn first-hand 

what health and safety problems existed there.323

321 Interview, A.J. Eggenberger, Board chairman (since 2005; vice chairman, 1989–2005), Washington, DC, July 9, 

2008. 

322 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Energy and 

Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities Licensing and Regulation Act, 103d Cong., 2d sess., March 1 and 8, 

1994, 229. 

323 House, Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities 

Licensing and Regulation Act, 229. 
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He observed that the goal of the initial visits “at each of these locations was basically to orient 

ourselves to the work being done there.” Crawford added, with reference to the Board’s pursuit 

of “knowledge at first hand,” “We, the Board, are actually the people that go out and do the 

spade work and sometimes do so together.”324 In their early tours of site facilities, the Board 

members familiarized themselves with their physical features and conditions, and observed the 

manner in which operations were being carried out, all with a view to identifying areas on which 

the Board would concentrate its reviews and evaluations. The site visits were a means by which 

the Board furthered its early task of setting oversight priorities⎯exercising its “best judgment to 

determine precisely which facilities it [would] oversee,” and sharpening its “focus on the 

important issues with which it [would] be dealing.” 325 The Board proceeded to select facilities 

for visits, and to set priorities in its oversight agenda, on the basis of the urgency and scale of 

risks and hazards, with cognizance also to the concerns of the relevant congressional committees 

and of the priorities of DOE in its undertakings in the weapons complex. Mentioning the initial 

coordination of Board activities with DOE priorities, Conway said in a Senate hearing, 

One of the things we tried to do, Senator, is to set our agenda, set our priorities in 

concert with the Secretary of Energy.326

In the case of the Savannah River Site, the Board’s firsthand information gathering was 

predicated on the expectation that DOE would soon restart the facility’s production reactors, the 

K-, L-, and P- reactors. Although the Board had been created in a period of a nearly complete 

cessation of production in the weapons complex, the prevailing expectation for the Board’s first 

two years of operations was that the shutdown was still temporary.327 DOE was giving priority to 

restarting several critical facilities, most notably, Savannah River’s three reactors, as well as 

certain production buildings at Rocky Flats, and the PUREX facility at Hanford.328 Thus, the 

focus of the Board at Savannah River was the activities of DOE and the contractor in preparing 

324 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 38. For a 

non-Board account of the early site visits, see Bert Chapman, “The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First 

Decade,” Journal of Government Information 27 (2000): 353–54, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib research/70. 325 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [First Three Months] Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, 

February 1990), 5, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 326 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 47. 327 At the time, in addition, it was expected that new production reactors would be built. DOE was working on them, 

and the Board’s duties included reviewing their design. See Terrence R. Fehner and Jack M. Holl, Department of 

Energy, 1977–1994: A Summary History (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, November 1994), 48–49, 

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/10106088-mgIkuD/webviewable/10106088.PDF. 328 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 2, 17–18. 
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for the planned restart of that facility’s reactors. Of particular concern was the progress toward 

restart of the K-reactor⎯in Board Vice Chairman Eggenberger’s words, “a 1952 vintage plant,” 

shut down in 1989 “for major changes in culture and in hardware.”329 The Board began 

examining safety-related aspects of DOE’s upgrades at that facility, paying attention to safety 

issues that might hold up its restart. Prominent targets of Board scrutiny included DOE’s efforts 

to improve the capabilities and qualifications of the reactor operators. The Board also began to 

review DOE’s evaluations of engineering issues, such as the capability of the reactor to 

withstand earthquakes, and thermal hydraulic performance in the event of a loss of coolant 

accident.330

Other early site visits took Board members to Rocky Flats, Hanford, and the Waste 

Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. At Rocky Flats, as at Savannah River, 

the Board approached the plant with an eye to assessing DOE’s resumption activities, 

specifically, its efforts to ready the plant’s plutonium-processing foundry to restart operations. 

The Rocky Flats visit, postponed from December to allow DOE to complete its own review of 

resumption activities, took place in mid-January 1990. During the visit, the Board’s attention 

turned particularly to the accumulation of radioactive material in ventilation ducts. In the 

preceding month, from December 11–12, 1989, three Board members visited the Hanford site, 

where the Board first began to address the safety question that had been repeatedly brought up by 

Glenn, including at the Board’s confirmation hearing⎯the question of the susceptibility of 

certain high-level waste storage tanks to explode. In January 1990, Board members and staff 

visited WIPP⎯slated to be the national disposal site for transuranic defense waste and the 

world’s largest deep geologic repository. They examined the waste handling building and 

repository rooms excavated in a huge salt formation 2,000 feet underground.331

During each of the early site visits, the visiting Board members were accompanied by 

outside expert consultants, who could supplement the Board’s own capabilities in its reviews of 

particular managerial and engineering issues pertinent to safety. The Savannah River contingent, 

329 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, vol. II of II 

(Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1991), 535 and 545. 

330 DNFSB, [First] Annual Report to Congress, 19. See also Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic 

Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 17–18. 331 See U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Energy and the 

Environment, Proposals Relating to the Operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, 102d 

Cong., 1st sess., April 16, 1991, 1–5, 182–84. 
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for example, included experts in the requirements of training and in seismic engineering. After 

the initial visits to sites by the full Board or a majority of its members, there were numerous 

“follow-up visits . . . by specialist teams selected and led by Board members.”332 In monitoring 

the restart activities at Savannah River, the Board, its staff, and outside technical experts in 

various combinations made more than 100 site visits during the two-year period, 1990 to 

1991.333 By June 1992, as Eggenberger noted in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, 

“if one only considers the Savannah River site, the Rocky Flats site, and the Hanford site, our 

staff have made 247 visits to these facilities. The Safety Board itself has made 65 site visits.”334

After each of the visits by the specialist teams, the Board’s staff summarized their findings in trip 

reports, which were incorporated into the data files that the Board’s staff accumulated on safety 

issues at the various DOE nuclear facilities. The Board used the trip reports mostly as internal 

working papers, which served as the basis for briefings by the staff that the Board members 

periodically requested to inform their deliberations on specific safety issues. 

Describing how site visits typically proceeded, Conway said, “Each time we have visited 

a specific site, we have given advance notice to the Department of Energy and specified the 

particular items we wished to discuss and review.”335 DOE and contractor personnel at the sites 

made presentations on the current status and planned activities of facilities. During the first visit 

to Hanford, for example, DOE officials at the Richland Operations Office and Westinghouse 

contractors provided briefings on the issue of the high-level waste tanks, as well as on 

preparations for restarting operations at the PUREX plant, on activities involved with the Nreactor’s dry standby status, on work on the Plutonium Finishing Plant, and on ongoing site 

cleanup activities.336 At WIPP, DOE and Westinghouse personnel made presentations on the 

project’s history and current management issues. 

332 DNFSB, [First Three Months] Annual Report to Congress, 5. 333 Site visits remained a major element of Board oversight. The Ninth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, 

DC, February 2000, 5/2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php) stated that between 

“October 1989 through the end of 1998 . . . the board, its staff, and its contractor experts have collectively made 

1,398 site visits to DOE’s defense nuclear facilities.” 334 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Year 1993 and the Future Years Defense Program, 102d Cong., 2d sess., March 18, 24, 27, April 9, 28, 

May 20, June 3, 11, 1992, 235. 

335 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 38. 336 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 19–20. See 

also Chapman, 354. 
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The Board expressed general satisfaction with the working relationship with DOE when 

it came to its provision of the means for effective safety oversight, including unhindered Board 

access to DOE facilities and data. Conway, noting DOE’s initial opposition to the creation of the 

Board, acknowledged that DOE, as charged by the Board’s statutory mandate, provided the wide 

and ready access needed to review safety issues, 

I think the Department of Energy has come around now, and I think we have a 

good cooperative arrangement with them and we’re finding ourselves in a 

position where any and all information we’re requesting, we’re getting 

promptly.337

Besides the interactions with DOE officials, workers, and contractor personnel at the 

sites, the site visits also often involved meetings with concerned members of the public. Actively 

reaching out to the public, the Board identified, solicited, and met with elected public officials, 

labor unions, public interest groups, state, federal, and regional officials, Native American 

representatives, and other interested parties, as well as members of the media. The Board 

actively sought the participation and input of such parties, as Conway noted, 

We have notified the legislative representative at the Federal and State level at 

each of those facilities. We have notified in the case of Colorado the Governor 

because he has shown a particular interest that we were coming. We have 

informed organizations . . . and the legislative representatives . . . that we would 

be available to meet with any groups or individuals that wanted to see us while we 

were at these locations . . . . 

We have also notified the press, both the written media and the T.V. media. We 

have made ourselves available to answer their questions.338

Such outreach efforts produced results, as, for example, during the Board’s first visit to 

Rocky Flats. Board members met with Colorado Governor Roy Roemer, Representative David 

Skaggs (D–CO), labor union officials representing Rocky Flats workers, and representatives 

from various citizen organizations with environmental and nuclear proliferation concerns.339

The Board also solicited input⎯“comments, technical information, and data”⎯from 

interested individual citizens, whether they wanted to speak in announced public meetings held 

at the Board’s discretion in conjunction with the site visits or in more private circumstances. As 

Conway said, 

337 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 22. 338 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 46. 
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Now, obviously when we visit the site . . . [t]hey are classified sites . . . [w]e do 

not take with us members of the public . . . But back at the hotels where we stay 

we let it be known who we are, what we are looking for, and anyone that has any 

information we encourage them to come to us.340

The Board’s practice of soliciting information from the citizenry included the explicit invitation 

to meet to confer with the Board in private, as he added, 

We also let it be known that if anyone wants to come and see us and for whatever 

reason does not want to do it in public, then we will meet with them in private . . . 

We have encouraged the labor leaders to come to us with any of the problems that 

they may have and they have done that.341

The Board’s constant and personal availability to the public came to be popularly characterized 

with an expression used by Conway, “We are as close to you as your phone.” All meetings, as 

the Board’s General Counsel Richard A. Azzaro stated, were “without preconditions except 

those that would facilitate open and complete communication of the concerns about DOE 

operations to the Board.” The Board made reporting health and safety issues easy and risk-free 

from reprisal, and the Board quickly gained and kept a reputation for protecting communications 

and concerned sources. As Azzaro added, “Protecting sources had a singular importance. The 

Board worked tirelessly and creatively to ensure and enforce confidentiality: through its General 

Counsel’s Office who created special practices and procedures.”342

In addition to spontaneous outreach in the course of site visits, the Board also convened 

officially announced public meetings and hearings⎯the meetings that involved a number of the 

Board members. The meetings were held at times and locations selected by the Board after 

careful surveys, to ensure maximum opportunity for attendance and presentation of information 

to the Board. Conway described one such meeting, 

I will give you Rocky Flats as an example⎯we rent . . . .a meeting room in the 

hotel where we are staying. We announce ahead of time that on such and such a 

date we will be there for anyone who wants to come to that meeting and it is open 

to the public. We had such a meeting at the Rocky Flats area where it was 

standing room only and each and every person that came there we gave an 

opportunity to meet with us and discuss with us their concerns.343

339 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 19. See 

also Chapman, 353. 

340 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 46. 341 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 46. 342 Personal communication, Richard A. Azzaro, June 15, 2009. 343 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 46. 
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Such meetings served as a two-way communication tool, both conveying information to the 

public and furthering the Board’s investigative process at a site. During calendar years 1990 and 

1991, the Board held a total of 15 such public meetings, seven of which were held at or near 

DOE sites and eight at the Board’s Washington, DC, offices. 

Interaction with DOE and the Recommendation Process 

The site visits that the Board conducted by way of information gathering were central to 

the Board’s performance of its mission to identify safety problems and formulate 

recommendations and other advisories to DOE on corrective actions. Other bases for the 

formulation of the Board’s advice, according to one Board list, included, 

(1) review of documentation concerning particular problems at a site; 

(2) review of staff or Board contractor reports; 

(3) briefings by DOE officials and DOE contractors; and 

(4) deliberation and technical review by the Board.344

In furtherance of its mission, the Board could also conduct studies and establish reporting 

requirements for DOE. In addition, the Board had at its disposal certain more coercive statutory 

powers that it did not exercise. Such latent investigative capabilities included subpoena power 

and the authority to hold adjudicatory hearings.345

Deploying the various elements of the investigative toolkit that Congress included in the 

Board’s enabling legislation, the Board translated its broad mandate to provide advice on nuclear 

safety to DOE into two forms of advice⎯informal communications and the issuance of formal 

recommendations to the secretary of energy. 

The informally proffered advice was a “natural consequence” of the extensive interaction 

and frequent conversation on specific safety-related technical matters that the Board, its technical 

staff, and DOE personnel had both at DOE headquarters and at DOE defense nuclear sites. As 

the Board pursued its reviews and investigations, the members and staff met regularly with DOE 

officials and field staff, as well as contractor personnel, and engaged in extensive informal 

information exchange not necessarily related to the development of formal safety 

recommendations. Such direct, in-depth dialogue and continual mutual feedback, as the Board 

344 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Year 1996 and the Future Years Defense Program, 104th Cong., 1st sess., March 28, April 25, May 2, 16, 

18, 1995, 100. 
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saw it, were indispensable to addressing the technical complexity of the safety-related issues the 

nuclear complex posed. As a matter of course, such dialogue often yielded informal agreements 

with DOE. Safety findings and concerns conveyed orally by the Board, based on information 

provided orally by DOE, were understood as informal recommendations, “often producing . . . 

self-initiated corrective action.” by DOE. As the Board’s 1991 annual report put it, 

Board technical analysis and review of safety problems, site visits, observations, 

and discussions with DOE and its contractors may trigger their initiating further 

review or corrective action without a formal recommendation even having been 

contemplated.346

The Board welcomed such commitments to corrective action outside of the formal 

recommendation process, viewing self-initiated corrective action as “a very productive and 

efficient means of effectuating change” at defense nuclear facilities.347 One significant aspect of 

such informality that troubled some observers, however, was that advice transmitted and 

corrective action undertaken informally could occur without disclosure to the public. Identifying 

safety problems and effecting changes without the issuance of a formal recommendation to the 

secretary of energy did not trigger the legislative provision requiring the public disclosure and 

public comments procedures that applied to the Board’s recommendations and the secretary’s 

responses.348

Although the Board welcomed corrective measures taken by DOE that preempted formal 

actions by the Board, the Board also made frequent use, especially in its early years, of its 

primary tool for gaining the attention of DOE, the formal recommendation. Judging situations on 

a case-by-case basis, the Board members found that some issues warranted the formulation of 

345 George, 133, 163. 346 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [Second] Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1992) 

46, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 347 DNFSB, [Second] Annual Report to Congress, 46. 348 After 1994, the Board issued fewer formal recommendations, placing more reliance on gaining DOE’s attention 

through the issuance of letters that required DOE to report to the Board on matters of concern. For a discussion of 

the use of these reporting requirement letters, see Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Thirteenth Annual Report 

to Congress (Washington, DC, February 2003, 1/3, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php): 

The Board’s recommendation authority has been used most fruitfully for gaining DOE response to 

broad, cross-cutting matters that affect much of the defense nuclear complex . . . . In contrast, a 

mandatory reporting requirement has been an effective tool in compelling DOE to respond in a 

more expeditious manner to important safety issues. Comparison of the Board’s use of these two 

methods shows a marked shift beginning in 1994 toward much greater reliance on reporting 

requirements. Prior to 1995, the Board had issued 31 recommendations and 17 reporting 

requirement letters. For the 7-year period from 1995 through 2002, the Board issued 14 

recommendations and 72 reporting requirement letters. 
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Board advice as a recommendation, in actuality, usually a set of related individual 

recommendations under one overall title. The Board wielded this tool when a majority of the 

voting members, exercising their expertise and judgment, determined the facts to support a 

finding that a recommendation was “necessary” to protect health and safety. 

Such recommendations encompassed a wide range of activities and issues in DOE’s 

nuclear complex, and varied widely in scope.349 Many Board recommendations were sitespecific, dealing with relatively narrow technical or operational issues at individual facilities, 

while many applied more broadly, even complex-wide. Among the Board’s early site-specific 

recommendations were, for example, recommendations 90-7, Safety at Single-Shell Hanford 

Waste Tanks, and 91-2, Closure of Safety Issues Prior to Restart of the K-Reactor at the 

Savannah River Site. Such site-specific recommendations were sometimes occasioned by the 

identification of a threat or risk or by hitherto unrecognized or underestimated safety problems, 

e.g., problems in Hanford’s double-walled waste tanks. When not confronted with specific 

immediate risks, the Board “made a special effort to evaluate safety issues that appeared to be 

generic in nature.” It pursued its investigations with an eye to determining whether a practice or 

event reflected systemic problems affecting other DOE facilities. Examples of generic issues 

were “lack of training, lack of written procedures, or a lack of formalized disciplined approach to 

the operation of facilities and the safety of workers.”350 The Board expected that the guidance it 

offered on such issues for a particular facility would set the stage for corrective actions 

elsewhere, sometimes without and sometimes with the issuance of further, more broadly framed 

formal recommendations. Among such early recommendations by the Board that applied broadly 

were 91-1, Strengthening the Nuclear Safety Standards; 91-6, Radiation Protection for Workers 

and the General Public at DOE Defense Nuclear Facilities; and 92-6, Operational Readiness 

Reviews. 

In addressing such generic issues, the Board often first issued a recommendation on the 

topic as it pertained to a specific site, following up later with a more general version.351 For 

example, the Board’s very first recommendation preliminarily formulated advice on the training 

349 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb and Managing the Nuclear Materials. 

OTA-O-572 (Washington, DC, September 1993), 40, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_1/DATA/1993/9320. 

PDF. 

350 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Years 

1992 and 1993, 609. 
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and qualification of technical personnel as these pertained to reactor operators at the Savannah 

River Site K-reactor. The training and qualification issue was later formulated in more general 

terms in Recommendation 92-7, Training and Qualification, which in turn was embraced by an 

even broader-based Board recommendation, Recommendation 93-3, Improving DOE Technical 

Capability in Defense Nuclear Facilities Programs, on the education, training, recruitment and 

retention of personnel. The Board’s second recommendation, 90-2, on standards at a number of 

sites, was followed by Recommendation 91-1, Strengthening the Nuclear Safety Standards 

Program for DOE’s Defense Nuclear Facilities. 

Such subsequent, related recommendations pertinent to multiple sites or the entire 

complex frequently drew upon the experience gained in implementation efforts prompted by 

earlier site-specific recommendations. Recommendation 92-6, for instance, which urged 

improvement of DOE’s operational readiness review (ORR) process throughout the DOE 

complex, drew upon lessons learned from the Board’s site-specific monitoring of, and 

recommendations on, the readiness review process for the restart of Rocky Flats facilities, for the 

resumption of plutonium-238 processing in the HB-Line at the Savannah River site, and for the 

start of testing for waste disposal procedures at WIPP.352 On finding common weaknesses in 

ORRs at these sites, the Board formulated 92-6 urging DOE to develop effective standards to 

govern the safety aspects of ORRs complex-wide. The recommendation called upon DOE both 

to identify the required features of a satisfactory ORR⎯with guidelines for the selection of ORR 

teams, the scope of ORRs, and documentation of ORR results⎯and to specify criteria for 

determining when an ORR should be performed.353

By generalizing and disseminating particular safety advice and gains, the Board sought to 

promote stepped-up DOE adherence to formal processes and standards. The thrust of many 

recommendations, as pointed out by Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), was 

351 On this dynamic, see Crawford, esp. H/3, where the Board’s first general counsel, Robert M. Andersen, describes 

the emergence of increasingly broad recommendations on a topic. 352 On the HB-Line at the Savannah River Site, see Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 92-3,

Operational Readiness Reviews for the HB-Line at the Savannah River Site, SC, 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/

recommendations/srs/rec_1992_03.txt. On WIPP, see Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 

91-3, DOE’s Comprehensive Readiness Review Prior to Initiation of the Test Phase at the Waste Isolation Pilot 

Plant (WIPP), 1–2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/recommendations/srs/rec_1991_03.txt. 353 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 92-6, Operational Readiness Reviews, 2–3, 

http://www.dnfsb.govlrecommendations/all/rec_1992_06.txt. The Board closed this recommendation when DOE 

eventually revised its Order on Operational Readiness Reviews. 
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to urge upon DOE greater formality in its practices and processes, whether operator training 

programs, the conduct of its operations, standards development, or other. As the OTA stated, 

Many DNFSB recommendations and site visits focus on increasing the formality 

of written procedures and directions in DOE operations and in its training of 

workers. This emphasis may be a reflection of the background of many DNFSB 

staff in commercial and naval nuclear reactors.354

Whatever the nature of a formal recommendation, when the Board decided that its 

oversight should take that form, the decision augmented the weight of the Board’s advice. In 

offering advice either formally or informally, the Board exercised authority that effectively went 

beyond mere advice, while not carrying the full weight of regulatory authority. The U.S. Court of 

Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, interpreting the Board’s statutory authority, held 

that the Board was not “strictly advisory” . . . but rather “decision-forcing” on public health and 

safety issues.”355 The court described the Board as an agency with decision forcing or action 

forcing powers, stating, 

The Board does considerably more than merely offer advice . . . It has at its 

disposal the full panoply of investigative powers . . . and forces public decisions 

about health and safety.356

With the issuance of a formal recommendation, this “action forcing” power was further 

strengthened by the statutory requirements that such an issuance triggered. Upon issuance to the 

secretary of energy, the recommendation had to be made public through publication in the 

Federal Register.

357 The recommendation then demanded a response or a report from the 

secretary according to procedures outlined in the Board’s enabling legislation. The secretary was 

required to respond with acceptance or rejection within 45 days. In the case of “any Board 

recommendation not accepted by DOE,” the secretary had to “to justify rejection . . . in formal 

reports to cognizant Congressional Committees.”358 In the case of accepted recommendations, 

s/he had to submit within 90 days an implementation plan, in which s/he committed to corrective 

354 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 42. 355 House, Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities 

Licensing and Regulation Act, 240. 356 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and Power, 

Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the Department of Energy, 106th Congress, 2d sess., March 22, 2000, 

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_house_hearings&docid=f:64031.pdf. 357 George, 132. 358 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Sixth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, March 1996), 25, 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 
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actions. The implementation plan for an accepted recommendation, like the recommendation 

itself, had to be made public through publication in the Federal Register. 

In the exchanges that occurred between DOE and the Board in the recommendation 

process, the problem never arose that some framers of the Board’s enabling law, notably, Glenn, 

had feared, namely, that the secretary of energy would resist or reject Board recommendations 

outright. Over the course of the Board’s history, the secretary rejected none of its 

recommendations, accepting all of them in full. While not mounting the kind of resistance that 

some had feared, however, DOE had some problems in the early period of the Board’s 

operations in obtaining the Board’s approval for its implementation plans. In a number of cases 

early on, the Board was not fully satisfied with the plans, considering them “not adequately 

responsive,” or insufficiently specific. In those cases, the Board called upon DOE to improve 

upon its proposed implementation plans, sometimes requiring successive drafts. Recognizing the 

need for a better understanding of its wishes, the Board worked with DOE during the first years 

of Board operations to develop an understanding of what the Board judged to be adequate 

responses and implementation plans. For example, with respect to Recommendation 91-6 on 

upgrading compliance with DOE’s orders, the Board’s general counsel, Robert Andersen, took a 

lead role in the Board’s efforts to review DOE’s standards. As Crawford said, 

Now, we regarded that [recommendation as] so important that we put our general 

counsel in charge of the task force of the Board’s in eliciting from DOE a really 

responsive implementation plan.359

Drawing upon the experience of such DOE–Board interaction, the Board developed a 

Board Policy Statement, “Criteria for Judging the Adequacy of DOE Responses and 

Implementation Plans for Board Recommendations.”360 These efforts helped DOE to develop 

implementation plans that obtained Board approval with fewer major problems, with the notable 

exception of the implementation plan for Recommendation 90-2, concerning DOE’s standards 

program. For that key recommendation, Conway remarked in March 1994, “Obtaining a 

359 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1994, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (Washington, DC: 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1994), 31.

360 DNFSB, [First] Annual Report to Congress, 11. 
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satisfactory implementation plan from DOE has proved to be a nearly insuperable task.”361 DOE 

submitted five versions of implementation plans over 51 months before receiving approval.362

Whatever the difficulties DOE had initially with its implementation plans, the 

recommendation process as a whole⎯recommendation and plan in response⎯lived up to its 

characterization as more than “strictly advisory.” The process proved a mechanism that was 

“action forcing,” not because recommendations were binding, but because ignoring them would 

mean ignoring highly competent technical advice, and doing so in the public eye. 

Interfacing with the Public 

In the course of carrying out its mission to provide oversight to DOE on safety issues, the 

Board simultaneously addressed another aspect of its mandate, which was to improve the 

openness to public scrutiny of DOE nuclear activities and, as a by-product, of the Board’s own 

processes. A major rationale for creating the Board was to restore public confidence in DOE’s 

stewardship of defense nuclear facilities by improving the transparency of DOE’s operations. In 

response to its mandate to restore trust, the Board was committed from the outset to developing a 

system to provide as much public access as possible to the Board’s findings and 

recommendations about safety issues.363 As Board General Counsel Azzaro characterized the 

effort, 

The Board developed a multi-pronged outreach strategy that combined the formal 

services required by law and informal initiatives and matched them with highly 

experienced service-oriented personnel. Ever present in all of these efforts was the 

Board’s commitment to meaningful Board availability to concerned members of 

the public or workers on their safety and health concerns.364

As the Board undertook to make good on its obligation to enhance openness in the 

weapons complex and improve public trust, the issue of transparency was still highly charged for 

public interest and citizens groups and other interested parties, such as the GAO and relevant 

congressional committees. Such groups had spearheaded criticism of the abuse of secrecy in the 

weapons complex. They remained wary of the potential for further abuse of national security 

361 House, Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities 

Licensing and Regulation Act, 237. 362 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Fifth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1995), 

79–80, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc/php. See also George, 155. 363 On the Board’s effort to contribute to transparency, see George, 129–33. 364 Personal communication, Azzaro. 
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claims to frustrate public access to information about environmental, safety, and health problems 

in the complex. Glenn gave voice to this wariness at the Board’s confirmation hearings, where he 

expressed determination 

[T]o make sure that we never again drift into the secrecy, and the abuse of 

secrecy, that occurred in the nuclear weapons complex in the past. We all hid 

behind this problem, “the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming,” “we 

need more production, we need more production.”365

He added that the aim of avoiding further cover-up of problems accounted for the inclusion in 

the Board’s enabling legislation of the requirement to adhere to “different aspects of public 

access law,” stating, 

[The inclusion] was not done just to be nasty, It was done because ... [e]verything 

with regard to the nuclear weapons complex had been secret, We got into all this 

waste problem because it was easier to put it in that pit out behind the plant and 

not say anything about it for a while. Now is after a while, and we have to deal 

with it ... 

[T]hings were covered up that have gotten us into problems that are now going to 

cost maybe a couple of hundred billion dollars to get ironed out over a 20-year 

period, something like that, all because of secrecy.366

The atmosphere of public distrust that Glenn’s words reflected made the Board subject to 

close scrutiny concerning certain aspects of the way it conducted business, and whether they 

accorded with the Board’s statutory obligations to provide public access. It was against this 

backdrop of public distrust that the Board undertook to demonstrate its commitment to public 

information access by developing policies, arrangements for public outreach, and a system to 

augment the transparency of the health and safety aspects of the DOE nuclear complex. To the 

degree that the Board members thought was allowed under the Board’s enabling legislation, they 

emphasized communicating with the public through a variety of avenues. 

One aspect of the Board’s ongoing effort to inform the public was the Board’s careful 

adherence to its statutory requirements for the public disclosure of its recommendations and of 

the secretary’s responses, including commitments to corrective actions. In its annual reports to 

Congress, the Board regularly highlighted its actions to inform members of the public after the 

issuance of recommendations, and to receive their comments and incorporate their views in the 

process of health and safety oversight. As required by law, the Board published the full text of its 

365 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Nominations, 721–22. 366 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 36 and 38. 
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recommendations in the Federal Register and distributed all recommendations to DOE regional 

public reading rooms and to its own, once this was established in 1991. Each Federal Register

notice solicited public comments, and the Board considered all comments received. The Board 

also announced its issuance of recommendations by mail to numerous individuals and 

organizations, e.g., congressional committees and representatives, federal and state officials and 

committees, public interest groups, and interested individuals. 

In addition to the required public outreach attendant upon the publication of a formal 

recommendation, the Board made available voluminous written materials and papers on Board 

activities, providing extensive technical files for public perusal at the Board’s offices in 

Washington, DC. Indicating the eventual scale of this endeavor, a 1997 estimate put the volume 

of records available for viewing at 1.75 million pages.367 Materials included the Board’s annual 

reports and other statutorily mandated reports, the Board’s formal recommendations, letters, 

technical reports, staff reports on visits to DOE sites, bound transcripts of public meetings, 

transcripts of hearing testimony, and statements of Board policies.368 Most of this material was 

made available in electronic form on the agency’s Web site (http://www.dnfsb.gov/), including 

all correspondence from the Chairman, all technical reports, all staff issue reports, and all weekly 

reports from the Board’s site representatives. 

In furtherance of the transparency of Board activities, the Board responded to numerous 

public requests for information and documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 

committing substantial resources and assigned highly experienced personnel to the effort.369 The 

Board issued regulations governing the availability of information on Board activities through 

367 See Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Strategic Plan: FY 1997–2002, (Washington, DC, 1997),

3, http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/1997/bm97s30b.htm. See also Chapman, 375. 368 On the public availability of the transcripts of meetings, see Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 

490, which stated, 

Publicly releasable portions of the record will be made available for public inspection after an 

appropriate review by DOE for classified or controlled nuclear information, and review by the 

Board for other disclosure exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act. All documents will 

be handled in accordance with the Board’s regulations implementing the Freedom of Information 

Act. 

Although not required by the Government in the Sunshine Act, transcripts were prepared of the open public 

meetings. These transcripts, along with documents developed for the meetings by the Board and its staff were 

publicly available. 

369 Pub. L. No. 89-487. See Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 119. The Freedom of 

Information Act (FOIA) allows requests for access to government information not made generally available and 

permits challenges to the denial of such requests. FOIA has an exemption for “properly classified’ information, but 

places the burden on the “owner” agency to justify the withholding of access. FOIA requests are sometimes 

answered with an unclassified version of the restricted material with blacked-out sections. 
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the reading room or pursuant to a FOIA request, promulgating the final regulations on May 8, 

1991.370 In its FOIA program, the Board “not only met the letter but the spirit of the law.”371

None of the Board’s responses to FOIA requests or a request for public documents was judicially 

challenged. As Azzaro stated, speaking of the FOIA initiative, its “singular success [was] 

documented in letters from citizens, public interest groups, members of Congress and testimony 

before the board and Congress.”372

Another avenue by which the Board disseminated information to the public was through 

the written reports and oral testimony that it provided to Congress pursuant to reporting 

requirements imposed by Congress in the performance of its own oversight over Board activities. 

Reporting requirements included, for example, the Board’s statutorily required annual report 

provided directly to Congress for each calendar year. These reports were prepared by the Board 

without any contribution from contractors and were among the materials made available in 

public reading rooms.373 Over the years, Congress imposed additional reporting requirements, 

some as one-time requests and some more enduring. A further means of keeping Congress 

informed was through testimony by Board members before a number of congressional 

committees to which the Board was required to report. Depending on the topic under 

examination, Board members were called upon to testify before the appropriations, armed 

services, and energy committees of both the House and Senate, as well as an occasional 

additional committee.374 The Board members’ first congressional appearance subsequent to their 

confirmation hearing took place five months after the Board’s startup, before the Senate Armed 

Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence.375

Public Meetings and Hearings 

The Board further demonstrated its commitment to keeping the public informed through 

its practice of convening meetings open to the public, with advance notice given in the Federal 

370 See Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, “Rules Implementing the Freedom of Information Act,” 56 Fed. 

Reg. 21259–21266 (May 8, 1991). 371 Personal communication, Azzaro. 372 For additional perspectives on the Board and the FOIA program, see Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II 

of II, 204; and Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 120. 373 Another, similar yearly report provided directly to Congress, the Government Performance and Results Act 

(GPRA) Report, covered the fiscal year (FY), rather than the calendar year. 374 Interview, Pusateri. See also Chapman, 375. 375 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date. 
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Register, in accordance with Pub. L. No. 94-409, the Government in the Sunshine Act.376 The 

Board inaugurated public meetings and open hearings in early 1990, beginning with public 

discussions in January and February in the vicinity of the Rocky Flats plant near Boulder, 

Colorado. Such meetings, besides being posted in the Federal Register, were advertised in 

various media venues. Speaking of the meetings, Eggenberger said in a 1992 hearing before the 

Senate Armed Services Committee, 

An important part of our business is interfacing with the public in the form of 

public meetings and hearings. To date, we have conducted public meetings and 

hearings for the WIPP site, the Savannah River site, the Rocky Flats plant, 

Hanford, and generic issues throughout the complex.377

Totaling up the public meetings held by the Board by 1997, a Board strategic plan authored that 

year reported 29 public meetings in communities near DOE facilities and an additional 29 in 

Washington, DC.378 By the end of 2007, the Board had convened 96 public hearings/meetings.379

These meetings provided opportunities for interested groups or persons, public and 

private, to learn and express their views about DOE facilities in informal, open discussions. 

Many of the meetings were held in communities near the facilities, allowing the Board and other 

presenters to focus on the safety issues and Board activities of concern to the local communities. 

The meetings varied in specific purpose and format. The Board experimented with different 

hearing formats ranging from on the record legislative hearings to the less formal “town 

meeting.” 

In some meetings, the Board members and the Board’s technical experts heard detailed 

presentations from and put questions to representatives of DOE, the contractor at the site, and 

other knowledgeable presenters. Often the aim was to question DOE witnesses on DOE’s 

implementation plan commitments and the progress that DOE and its contractors had made in 

accomplishing them. For example, in an August 1990 evening hearing in Westminster, Colorado, 

with 200 people in attendance, DOE and its contractor made presentations on the status of Board 

recommendations, 90-2, 90-4, 90-5, and 90-6, pertinent to the Rocky Flats plant, and on the 

secretary of energy’s actions following their receipt. The recommendations under discussion at 

the meeting addressed such issues as the standards applicable to specific buildings, operational 

376 DNFSB, [First] Annual Report to Congress, 34. 377 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1993, 235. 378 Chapman, 375. 
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readiness reviews for the buildings, criticality safety in the ducts, and the systematic evaluation 

program. Experts brought in by DOE on the operational readiness review each presented on their 

area of expertise. To ensure that responsible government officials were kept informed, such 

briefing events often included, by special invitation of the Board, representatives of elected 

officials and government agencies. Briefings in 1990 on the potential dangers to the public of the 

Hanford waste tanks, for example, included representatives of the governors of Oregon and 

Washington, as well as of EPA, GAO, and state environmental agencies. 

Such informational meetings served not just to apprise the public of progress in 

implementing Board recommendations, but also as a vehicle to exert pressure on DOE “to 

increase DOE’s responsiveness to Board safety initiatives and to explore roadblocks to 

expeditious and competent implementation for accepted recommendations.”380 As the Board 

stated, “Questioning in public forums creates an atmosphere of accountability⎯that the Board 

intends to use every available vehicle to achieve safety progress.”381

At another kind of public meeting, the Board members themselves made statements to the 

public in their areas of particular interest, communicating with interested parties about how the 

Board saw its oversight activities and findings. Typically, as the chairman called each of a series 

of technical matters for discussion, he identified the lead Board member tracking the review and 

analysis of that particular matter. For example, Crawford often spoke on operator qualification or 

on the discipline of operations, Eggenberger addressed the ability of systems to withstand 

seismic events, and Kouts focused on thermal hydraulic performance, the piping and the 

emergency cooling capability of the plant, which were relevant to maximum reactor power. In 

still another public meeting format, the Board’s technical staff briefed the Board on particular 

technical issues, for example, plutonium vulnerabilities throughout the complex. 

At most informational meetings, the Board provided the opportunity for spokespersons of 

organizations and interested citizens to voice their concerns about DOE facilities or Board 

oversight, and to add to the record. Some meetings, generally evening meetings held in the locale 

where DOE nuclear facilities were located, were almost solely devoted to the receipt of citizen 

and community group input. 

379 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, “DNFSB Public Meetings, 1990–2007” (Board document). 380 George, 205. 381 DNFSB, Fifth Annual Report to Congress, 76. 
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The feedback that the Board received on its efforts to communicate with the public 

through meetings and hearings was strongly appreciative, with some qualifications. 

Representative David Skaggs (D–CO), for example, praised the Board’s outreach in public 

meetings for enabling the citizenry to judge safety questions based on information they could 

count on⎯information they saw as from an independent and technically expert source. Long 

caught up in the contentious issues involving Rocky Flats, he laid out his understanding of what 

the Board’s outreach accomplished, observing, 

This openness is terribly important. It reassures the public that there is really 

someone independent of the Department of Energy who is overseeing plant 

operations.382

Speaking specifically of activities to prepare for restarts at Rocky Flats, he emphasized the 

degree to which the Board’s presence improved public confidence, stating, 

When the Department of Energy says they are ready to restart Rocky Flats, the 

public in this state is going to turn to you and to the Ahearne Committee and ask 

is it really safe. And we will be counting on you to tell us yes or no.383

Unless the public is shown clearly that independent observers have checked 

things out, it will have no reason to believe yet another Department assurance that 

“things have changed at Rocky Flats.”384

In addition, Skaggs praised the Board for its prompt disposition of reported concerns, 

stating, “I am extremely impressed with your speed of getting on top of the issues.” Others also 

noted the efficiency and promptness of the responses to and disposition of the concerns on health 

and safety issues raised by the public. Azzaro, noting this rapid response to the reported concerns 

of the public, credited it to the high-level expertise of Board personnel and to the Board’s 

organization, 

Building upon its unique capability in investigations, litigation, integrity in 

government, administrative law, environmental law, and substantial expertise and 

technical depth in the sciences, engineering, and nuclear operations, the General 

Counsel’s Office was hard linked to the Technical Director and the General 

Manager, which facilitated almost immediate disposition of reported concerns.385

382 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (Washington, DC: 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1990), 589. 

383 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, 590. 384 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, 594. 385 Personal communication, Azzaro. 
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With reference to the Board’s outreach practices, the main qualm that Skaggs expressed 

was that the Board was excessively low key in its approach to advertising meetings and arousing 

public interest. He urged the Board to step up prior media notification efforts, indicating that 

greater public interest and pressure would strengthen his hand in seeking government resources 

for improvements and site cleanup.386 The urging by Skaggs and others that the Board make its 

advertising efforts “more prominent and repetitive” met with some resistance by the Board 

members. In response to the urging to seek more media exposure, Conway stated in a revealing 

comment, “Unfortunately, it has been my limited experience that the media will show an interest 

if you are willing to frighten the people.”387 Taking an analytical/technical approach to safety 

questions, the Board expressed reluctance to play upon people’s fears, whatever the benefits.388

Although appreciation, such as that expressed by Skaggs, predominated in feedback the 

Board received on its conduct of public meetings, Board meetings met with some criticism, 

mostly regarding the scope of discussions and, specifically, their limitation to technical safety 

matters. Criticism generally focused not on what the Board did in the meetings but on its 

exclusion of issues as beyond the scope of its jurisdiction. Such issues included broad questions 

of national security policy or U.S. nuclear policy, such as what nuclear materials or weapons 

were needed and what nuclear facilities should be built, or environmental questions that clearly 

fell under the jurisdiction of the EPA. In holding its public meetings, the Board members 

anticipated criticism for not including such questions on the agenda, and undertook to spell out 

the limits of the Board’s responsibilities. The Board chairman made a practice of beginning 

meetings with a statement about the Board’s jurisdiction and statutory charge. In particular, the 

Board underscored that its purview was technical questions as to the safety of DOE nuclear 

operations and not questions of national security policy.389 For example, speaking about the 

restart of the K-reactor at Savannah River, Conway said, 

[T]his Board has no legal responsibility of determining what the tritium 

requirements are or whether or not it’s in the Government’s . . . security interest to 

proceed with the opening of the Plant. By law, that is the responsibility of the 

Department of Energy, the Secretary of Energy, specifically, and the President of 

386 On the activities of Representatives Skaggs in connection with Rocky Flats, see Len Ackland, Making a Real 

Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), esp., 205–6. 387 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, 599. 388 Interview, Joseph J. DiNunno, Board member, Annapolis, MD, Septmber 16, 2008. 389 Interview, A.J. Eggenberger, Board chairman (since 2005; vice chairman, 1989–2005), Washington, DC, July 9, 

2008. 
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the United States. Our responsibility, as members of this Board, and our staff, our 

responsibilities are to assure that if and when the Plant is operated that it would 

not constitute an unreasonable risk to the public.390

He added, as he regularly did, that by “public” he meant workers, as well as people beyond site 

boundaries, 

And when we use the term “public,” we included the workers at the Plant. That 

term, “public,” is all-inclusive, off site, on site, workers and non-workers.391

The explicit definition of workers as a population of concern for the Board was a jurisdictional 

decision that Conway had made at the very outset of the Board’s operations.392 As Conway later 

observed, 

From the time this Board was established, right from the very beginning . . . this 

Board pointed out that as far as it was concerned, the health and safety of the 

public, by definition, we included worker within the public and we looked upon 

the law as requiring that.393

Despite the Board’s efforts to explain the scope of the Board’s jurisdiction as not 

extending to national security and nuclear deterrence policy, some participants in public 

meetings were unwilling to lay aside policy questions. Although they commonly acknowledged 

the technical expertise of the Board members and the thoroughness of their safety review efforts, 

such participants either did not heed, or did not accept the validity of, the separation of technical 

and policy questions. A spokesperson for the Energy Research Foundation at a Savannah River 

meeting, for example, prefaced her challenge of the Board with the statement, “I personally do 

not enjoy standing up and questioning the assurances of a group of men whose combined 

experience in the nuclear energy amounts to millions of years.”394 She then went on to explain 

why she insisted on questioning the need for any tritium-producing reactor, in view of the 

ongoing U.S. and Soviet arms reductions, rather than confining herself to technical questions on 

the readiness for restart of the Savannah River production reactor, 

Now we recognize that you don’t consider that it’s within your purview to 

consider the national security needs, but it is certainly obvious tonight . . . that 

many of us consider this to be the most pressing issue; the waste of resources, 

390 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 201. 391 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 201. 392 Interview, John E. Mansfield, Board vice chairman (since 2007; Board member, 1997–present), Washington, DC, 

August 25, 2008. 

393 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1995, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, vol. I of II 

(Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1995), 184. 394 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 216. 
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prioritization, . . .the absence of any meaningful cost benefit analysis here. There 

is no forum for us to express that, unfortunately. Therefore, . . .we can [only] 

bring it up in hearings where it is expressly inappropriate, supposedly, like this 

one. Many of us have to overcome a great reluctancy.395

Others at the meeting similarly criticized or strayed beyond the topical boundaries defined by the 

Board. A private citizen broached the policy issue of the need for the construction of a new 

reactor, stating a preference for that alternative, if need be, over the restart of “those old decrepit 

reactors.”396 A spokesperson from an environmental group voiced objection to the readiness 

review’s neglect of the issue of continuing environmental releases of hazardous materials. Such 

indications of discontent about the limits of the Board’s agenda in its public meetings remained a 

feature of the meetings, notwithstanding the general appreciation of the Board’s augmentation of 

transparency regarding the safety of operations in the weapons complex.397

Early Criticisms for Insufficient Transparency in the Board’s Operations 

More direct challenges to the Board came from parties still not fully satisfied with the 

openness to public scrutiny that the Board’s manner of conducting business provided. Although 

the Board was assiduous in providing for the public openness of formal recommendations and 

the actions that followed their issuance, some critics found wanting the transparency of two 

aspects of Board activity. These were the internal deliberations among Board members and staff 

as they contemplated the issuance of a formal recommendation, and informal Board interactions 

with DOE yielding advice that did not culminate in the issuance of anything formal⎯that is, 

anything that needed to be made public. 

The GAO articulated the latter concern⎯the concern about the Board’s interaction with 

DOE⎯in a report requested by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on the first year of 

the Board’s operations.398 In this report, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Facilities Nuclear Safety 

Board’s First Year of Operation, the GAO was on the whole very positive in its assessment of 

395 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 218. The Savannah River Site was the nation’s sole producer 

of tritium, the hydrogen isotope that increases the explosive yield of thermonuclear weapons. Decaying about 5 

percent a year, it must be periodically replenished in nuclear weapons. The end of the Cold War and the arms 

control agreements to reduce nuclear arsenals eliminated any immediate need to produce new tritium. To support the 

nation’s enduring stockpile, existing tritium was recovered and recycled, mostly from decommissioned weapons. 396 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 211. 397 George, 132. 398 GAO, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year of Operation, 2–3ff. 
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the Board and its early accomplishments. However, the GAO took the Board to task for the 

degree to which its interaction with DOE and its operating contractors took place outside the 

public eye⎯in oral communications with DOE, undocumented briefings, and informal meetings. 

The GAO granted that such informal communications could prompt DOE to take needed 

corrective action. The report cited as an example DOE’s change in its approach, based on its 

discussions with the Board, to reviewing and ensuring the seismic capability of the Savannah 

River reactors. The GAO was uneasy, however, that the needed change resulted from behindclosed-doors interaction between DOE and the Board. Such informal interaction limited the 

public’s awareness of the Board members’ health and safety concerns and of DOE’s actions. 

According to the report, limiting the public’s awareness could also jeopardize the Board’s 

mission of restoring public confidence, 

[T]he public would have little more basis for confidence in the safety of DOE’s

defense nuclear facilities than it did when overseeing safety and health was an 

internal DOE function.399

Leaving the public without the assurance that the Board was independent in its decision-making, 

the lack of openness “could convey the impression that the Board is not operating ‘at arm’s 

length’ from DOE.”400

The GAO proposed several remedies to ensure the public’s awareness of safety issues 

and its perception of the Board’s independence, mainly, that the Board more intensively 

document all of its safety review activities in ways that would better capture them for the public 

record and congressional oversight. The GAO urged that the Board keep fuller records of 

conversations with DOE and information provided orally by DOE, and document all meetings, 

analyses and informal “commitments and agreements.”401 It also suggested that the Board 

establish written criteria to specify when findings about safety problems would result in the 

issuance of a formal recommendation. 

In responding to the GAO report, the Board acknowledged the need to develop fuller 

publicly accessible records of its informal transactions⎯of its concerns and DOE’s position on 

correcting safety and health problems. However, the Board was less amenable to the GAO 

report’s suggestion that it pursue a more “arms length” relationship with DOE or that it 

399 GAO, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year of Operation, 25. 400 GAO, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year of Operation, 23. 401 GAO, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year of Operation, 23–32. 
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formulate formal criteria for the issuance of recommendations. In defending its methods of 

operating in relation to DOE, the Board held that curtailment of its informal interaction would be 

self-defeating. Such curtailment would be at odds with the very kind of cooperative and intensive 

interaction that the Board considered a most appropriate and productive manner of dealing with 

highly complex technical issues⎯as well as a manner of operating fully compatible with 

independence.402 As the Board stated in its first annual report to Congress, 

The GAO Report’s admonishment to stay “at arms length” with DOE . . . 

obscures the fact that oversight organizations, including the GAO, IG Offices, and 

Committees of the Congress, are able to accomplish much of their mission when 

they work in cooperation with the officials of the agency being scrutinized. The 

fact that DOE has given the Board open access to its defense nuclear facilities, 

has frequently briefed the Board extensively on safety problems at sites, and has 

not resorted to an adversarial relationship with the Board does not mean the Board 

has failed to maintain its independence or desire to exercise judgment at “arms 

length.” The Board’s activities in closely reviewing the programs and practices of 

DOE and its contractor do not violate the principles of independence of 

judgment⎯in fact, our enabling statute demands a level of attention that could not 

be achieved if Board activities were limited to those that result only in formal 

recommendations. 403

The Board’s defense of its methods of operating in relation to DOE struck themes that 

also figured in its defense of its manner of conducting its own internal deliberations. Just as the 

Board valued its non-confrontational relationship with DOE, it affirmed the value of its 

internally collegial mode of interacting⎯interaction amongst the Board and its staff and other 

experts unencumbered by excessive formality and record-keeping.404 In affirming its way of 

working, the Board answered an early challenge to its internal manner of operating, specifically, 

criticism that its internal workings were beyond public scrutiny. This challenge was more 

involved than the GAO’s mild and never repeated rebuke, in that the challenge took the form of 

litigation whose final resolution spanned several years. The litigation centered on how open the 

Board needed to make its own deliberative processes prior to the issuance of a formal 

recommendation.405 As Conway stated in the first appearance before the Senate Armed Services 

Committee five months into the life of the Board, “We have been sued by two organizations that 

402 Interview, Richard A. Azzaro, Board general counsel, Washington, DC, August 20, 2008. See also George, 141–

42. 

403 DNFSB, [First] Annual Report to Congress, February 1991, 45–47. 404 George, 115. 405 George, 133. 
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have demanded that we have all of our meetings open to the public as we prepare our 

recommendations.”406

In early 1990, the environmental groups, the Energy Research Foundation and the 

National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), challenged the Board’s position that it was not an 

“agency” for purposes of the Sunshine Act and the Freedom of Information Act. These parties 

initially sought an injunction against Board activities, including site visits, until the Board 

promulgated regulations implementing these information statutes. The United States District 

Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the Board on all issues, finding that the 

Board was not an agency.407 On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia 

reversed, ruling that “the Board . . . must be considered an ‘agency’ within the meaning of both 

statutes.”408

Following the Court of Appeals decision, the Board wrote and published a proposed 

Sunshine Act rule. After receipt of public comments on the proposed rule, the Board 

promulgated a final rule, which was promptly challenged by the same parties. The challenge 

focused on a single provision of the Board’s rule, which allowed closure of Board meetings 

involving formal recommendations to the secretary of energy or the president. Oral argument 

was conducted by the Court of Appeals on November 14, 1991. On July 24, 1992, the court held 

that the Board’s enabling statute permitted closed Board meetings on formal 

recommendations.409 The court relied on the express language of the Board’s enabling statute 

that recommendations were to be made public “after receipt by the Secretary of Energy” or the 

president in appropriate cases.410 Therefore, the court concluded that the Board’s Sunshine Act 

rule was legally sound. 

On October 9, 1992, the Court of Appeals refused a petition for rehearing en banc. 

Petitioners then sought a writ of certiorari from the United States Supreme Court. On May 17, 

1993, the Supreme Court issued an order denying the petition, thus terminating the litigation.411

Prevailing in court relieved the Board of pressures to alter its internal manner of 

operating in ways that it viewed as negative. As the Board understood their legal opponents’ 

406 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 4. 407 Energy Research Foundation v. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 734 F. Supp 27 (D.D.C. 1990). 408 Energy Research Foundation v. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 917 F.2d 581, 585 (D.C. Cir. 1990). 409 NRDC/ERF v. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, No. 91-1199 (D.C. Cir. 1992). 410 42 U.S.C. Section 2286d(a);g(3). 
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demands, they would have stood in the way of conducting meetings in private, and required 

advance public notice to be given of deliberations involving more than two Board members, an 

agenda to be published, and the deliberative meetings to be held in public. As Conway said, if 

required to “follow the letter of the law under the so-called Sunshine Act,” “no more than two of 

us at any one time could ever meet and discuss something without it being a violation.”412

The Board members shared the view that their exercise of effective safety oversight 

required their ability to confer freely amongst themselves and with DOE personnel without 

formal notification. As the Board members described the advantages of their way of working, 

they mentioned their capacity to respond quickly to issues as they came up, and their ability to 

elicit the information they needed from DOE without formal procedures. They also valued their 

freedom to operate unhindered as a team of experts, delving personally and collaboratively into 

the technical specifics of issues, sometimes via multiple informal interactions throughout the 

work day or while touring sites. As Conway said, 

We . . . bring our expertise to bear, and we meet daily and more than once per day 

as we review the papers, as we discuss among ourselves . . . where we think we 

have to move and what areas we should focus on. If, as we develop our 

recommendations . . . we would not be able to work as a collegial group preparing 

and working on our recommendations ... [w]e would have to get staff to do that 

work.413

Board member Kouts elaborated on Conway’s points, emphasizing timely action as a benefit of 

the Board’s methods, 

I would reinforce what our chairman has said concerning the ability to meet and 

act together as a collegial group. This is absolutely necessary for the way we 

operate. 

You have heard various statements made concerning the Hanford waste tanks and 

the hydrogen problem. This problem came to our attention on one day. We met on 

it the same day. We got the Department of Energy in to talk to us the next day. 

We got our consultants in, in between, and we made arrangements to go to 

Hanford again with an agenda established the next day. All like that. And this 

would be absolutely impossible if we had to publish notices of our meetings 2 

weeks in advance or 1 week in advance with agendas stated. 

411 Natural Resources Defense Council v. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 969 F.2d 1248 (D.C. Cir. 1992), 

cert. denied, 508 U.S.906 (1993). 

412 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 32. 413 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 32. 
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We operate collegially. We work together collegially. We supplement each 

other’s capabilities, and this is precisely why, as we come here before you, our 

chairman can speak for us.414

Conway added that the effect of more rule-bound operations and public notification procedures 

would be the transformation of the Board into something like a panel of judges, a “quasi-judicial 

. . . as opposed to a working unit.” Without the ability of the Board members to meet freely, he 

said, 

It would be the staff that would be doing the preparing of the documents, and ... 

and then we would meet like five judges, a judicial group, and listen to staff or 

someone else present their opinion and recommendations to us, and then make 

our decisions. 

We now are doing the work, and we are working on a daily basis as a team. 415

For Conway, as well as for the other Board members and staff, any such shift in the 

direction of a “judicial group” went against the grain. They shared the general view of 

adjudicative processes as ill suited to technical complexities and to making the kind of 

substantive technical and scientific judgments that the Board’s safety mission required. As they 

saw it, echoing the sentiments of the Senate Armed Service Committee, adjudicative processes 

could result in adversarial hearings, in opportunities for judicial appeals by activist groups bent 

on delaying action, and in an emphasis on legal processes at the expense of identifying and 

finding substantive solutions to nuclear health and safety issues.416 The Board members’ 

preferred alternative⎯in-depth informal dialog and non-confrontational, hands-on 

proceedings⎯need not, in their view, compromise either their commitment to transparency or 

their independence.417

414 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 47. 415 Senate, Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date, 32. 416 Interview, Azzaro. 417 DNFSB, [Second] Annual Report to Congress, 31–34. 
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CHAPTER 4: TECHNICAL NUCLEAR SAFETY ACTIVITIES OF THE 

BOARD 

As the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB or the Board) confronted and 

addressed various issues concerning its operating procedures, its technical oversight activities 

went on at an energetic pace, yielding seven sets of formal recommendations in the first year, 

and six sets in the second.418 In conjunction with each of the sets of recommendations, the Board 

continued to work intensively with DOE on follow-up and to convene numerous public meetings 

to inform the public. 

SITE-SPECIFIC SAFETY OVERSIGHT 

In 1990 and 1991, the Board focused primary attention on the Savannah River Site, the 

Rocky Flats plant; the Hanford, Washington, site, specifically, the waste storage tanks; and the 

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. Other sites received attention through the 

Board’s coverage of generic issues and staff/contractor reviews. 

Savannah River Recommendations: Readiness for Safe Reactor Restart 

The Savannah River Site’s production reactors ranked high among the Board’s oversight 

priorities, because of the expected resumption of production activities. As the Board began 

operations, restart of the site’s K-reactor was anticipated to occur in the near term. While in the 

end, Secretary of Energy Watkins delayed the startup of the K-reactor, not authorizing it until 

December 13, 1991, the Board, DOE, and its contractors worked under the assumption of a 

shorter time frame, and the Board spent considerable time from 1990 through 1991 monitoring 

DOE’s progress toward restart. 

As the Board members, staff, and consultants continuously tracked restart activities, they 

also held a series of eight public hearings/meetings, which generally involved the full Board, as 

well as the Board’s General Counsel, Robert Andersen, and the Technical Director, Dr. George 

418 In accordance with a congressional mandate, the Board included a discussion of each year’s recommendations in 

its annual report to Congress. For non-Board descriptions of the Board’s early recommendations, see U.S. General 

Accounting Office, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year of Operation, 

GAO/RCED–91–54 (Washington, DC, February 1991), 1–33, http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat7/143684.pdf; and Bert 

Chapman, “The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Decade,” Journal of Government Information 27 
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Cunningham. The meetings addressed the proposed actions and implementation of the three 

early recommendations that applied solely to the Savannah River Site, 90–1, on operator 

training; 91–2, on the process for closing outstanding safety issues; and 91–5, on the power 

limits question, as well as more broadly applicable recommendations⎯e.g., on standards and on 

radiation protection⎯which had portions pertinent to Savannah River’s restart efforts. 

The first of the Board’s formal recommendations, 90–1, issued on February 22, 1990, 

called for training and qualifications upgrades of the operating personnel for the three Savannah 

River reactors.419 According to the Board, DOE standards for training the reactor plant operators 

and supervisors were not adequately determined and specified. The Board recommended that 

DOE determine the qualifications operators must demonstrate before restarting the reactors and 

modify its training procedures to ensure that the workforce was qualified. In determining the 

requisite qualifications, DOE was advised to identify any differences between those it demanded 

and the qualifications prescribed by the NRC for analogous positions in civilian nuclear power 

plants. DOE was further urged to assess the current state of knowledge of each reactor operator 

and supervisor⎯using both written and oral examinations⎯in order to learn how to reshape the 

training program to instill the requisite skills for restart. In addition, the recommendation called 

for the training of operators in the revised procedures that would be sanctioned for normal 

operations and emergency situations. Finally, the Board called for the provision on an 

accelerated basis of as-built drawings of safety-related systems and procedures.420

The Board received DOE’s plan to implement this recommendation from Secretary 

Watkins on July 13, 1990, and, later, a supplement that remedied a number of plan deficiencies 

identified by the Board. As stipulated in the final plan, the secretary kept the Board abreast of 

progress on the implementation of training improvements. DOE effected extensive retraining, 

focusing on K-reactor personnel, since the K-reactor was scheduled to restart first and, 

eventually, was the only reactor slated for restart. The Board continually monitored the retraining 

efforts, considering them critical to operational readiness. As Board member, John W. Crawford 

Jr., typically the lead Board member on technical personnel issues, pointed out, the Board 

(2000): 355–62, 347, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib research/70. The following discussions of Board 

recommendations are indebted to both the Board and non-Board sources. 

419 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 90–1, Operator Training at Savannah River Site 

Prior to Restart of K, L, and P Reactors (Washington, DC, February 22, 1990), 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/

recommendations/srs/rec_1990_01.txt. 

420 DNFSB, Recommendation 90–1, 1. 
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members, staff, and consultants devoted “more than 300 man hours of direct observation of the 

operating crews in the plant or the central control room simulator.”421

Another recommendation issued in conjunction with Savannah River operations, 

Recommendation 91–2, Closure of Safety Issues Prior to Restart of the K-Reactor at the 

Savannah River Site; issued on March 27, 1991, concerned the process by which DOE would 

document the resolution or “closure” of safety issues prior to the anticipated restart of the Kreactor. The safety issues requiring resolution were compiled in the Reactor Operations 

Management Plan (ROMP) issued by the site’s contractor. The ROMP identified some safety 

improvement measures as a precondition for the restart, because they related to the safe 

shutdown of the reactor in case of untoward events, e.g., a loss of coolant accident, or an 

earthquake, fire, or flood.422 Other candidates for safety upgrades were not part of a safe 

shutdown system and not a potential impediment to restart, but were part of the post-restart 

safety improvement program. In either case, when progress on a problem culminated in closure 

of the issue, an issue closure package was drawn up. The Board monitored progress on settling 

issues in the ROMP partly through review of these issue closure packages. The Board’s 

recommendation called for their improvement through fuller descriptions of the bases for closure 

claims and urged DOE to perform fuller reviews of the packages and the supporting evidence for 

the resolution of each issue.423

The third Savannah River recommendation, 91–5, grappled with the power limits 

question for K-reactor operations.424 The recommendation was issued on December 19, 1991, six 

days after Watkins’s announcement that the K-reactor would restart, resuming operations at 30 

percent of what had historically been its full operating power. As the recommendation made 

clear, the Board concurred in the view that the reactor could be operated at the 30 percent level 

without undue risk to the public. After reviewing information provided in numerous briefings 

and documents, including the safety analysis report, the Board judged 30 percent power (720 

421 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, vol. II of II 

(Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1991), 541. 422 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 496. 423 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 91–2, Closure of Safety Issues Prior to Restart of KReactor at the Savannah River Site (Washington, DC, March 27, 1991), 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/

recommendations/srs/rec_1991_02.txt. 

424 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 91–5, Power Limits for K-Reactor Operation at the 

Savannah River Site (Washington, DC, December 19, 1991), 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/

srs/rec_1991_05.txt. 
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megawatts) to be acceptable, provided that the list of identified prerequisite improvements for 

startup was accomplished. The Board rendered a different judgment about higher power levels, 

The Board is of the opinion that the existing information on the effectiveness of 

the engineered safety features, especially those that would be relied on in the 

event of a large loss-of-coolant accident, does not at present support operation at a 

power level much above the 30 percent value.425

The Board added that if higher power levels were contemplated, the assurance of safe operations 

would require further improvement efforts, starting with more definitive studies on the thermal 

hydraulic methodology used in analyzing the K-reactor’s core cooling performance under 

unusual conditions, 

The Board considers that justification of any increase in power would require 

further refinement of the thermal-hydraulic evidence on the cooling capability of 

the emergency cooling systems under accident conditions.426

Further recommended prerequisites for greater power levels included revised accident analysis 

and the implementation of controls for the models that the contractor developed, with the help of 

Los Alamos research programs, to analyze accidents.427

As the postponed restart of the K-reactor loomed closer on the horizon, the Board shifted 

its emphasis from highlighting safety-related shortcomings that needed to be fixed to assessing 

the progress in addressing them, and to assessing the reviews of safety issues performed by DOE 

and the contractor. As part of this assessment endeavor, the Board held several public meetings 

at the site in late 1991, to review the safety deficiencies and corrective actions in an open forum. 

In these meetings, the Board operated with a reduced number of members. Only four Board 

members were present to question DOE and contractor personnel and to make presentations and 

field questions, because of the death in September 1991 after a brief illness of Board member 

Edson Case. Case’s successor, Joseph J. DiNunno, nominated in May 1992, was not confirmed 

until August 1992. 

Proceeding as a team of four, the Board focused in these meetings specifically on the 

operational shortcomings that had to be resolved before restart, while acknowledging that other 

safety-related improvements would be ongoing, and their progress monitored. In the public 

meeting convened on December 9, 1991, just before the go-ahead for the K-reactor’s restart was 

425 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [Second] Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 

1992), 11, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 426 DNFSB, [Second] Annual Report to Congress, 11. 
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announced, the Board members asked in detail about preparations for the restart, inquiring both 

about the formality and conduct of operations and about specific technical engineering issues. 

The meeting was largely devoted to questioning the team of experts that conducted the 

operational readiness review (ORR) for DOE.428 The Board went through a list of issues one-byone, putting questions to the ORR team and asking that the team members in turn spell out the 

process by which each issue had been closed. Crawford pointed out that this exercise of spelling 

out the closure process not only helped the Board in its evaluation of the safety situation, but also 

served the “knowledgeable public.”429

As the Board looked in succession at safety-related elements in the ORR team’s review, 

each Board member, as usual, took the lead on particular issues. Crawford, for example, was the 

lead questioner on training, a critical element in DOE’s operational readiness reviews.430

Reviewing the progress made in training programs, he remarked on substantial improvement, 

Board members, their staff and outside experts have witnessed progressive 

improvement in discipline, conduct of operations, formality of face-to-face 

communications and procedural compliance. Understanding by the operating 

crews of the importance of this operating philosophy and practice . . . [and] this 

sense of personal responsibility for safe plant operation is a significant 

improvement over the read-and-do approach that predominated . . . at plant 

shutdown and it is approaching the level that one customarily finds in a Navy 

nuclear plant.431

Eggenberger inquired closely about the seismic qualification of various systems and components 

of the K-reactor, and also about a longer-term “phased approach to seismic upgrades.”432 And 

Kouts focused on thermal hydraulics and reactor piping.433 In pursuing their point-by-point 

questioning about safety issues and their handling, the Board members frequently framed 

questions in comparative terms, using various reference points. Crawford commonly brought up 

427 DNFSB, Recommendation 91–5, 1. 428 Interview, John E. Mansfield, Board vice chairman (since 2007, Board member, 1997–present), Washington, DC, 

August 25, 2008. As Mansfield stated, “In general, the Board considered DOE’s conduct of ORRs to be in bad 

shape.” 

429 DNFSB, Recommendation 91–5, 1. 430 Crawford also contributed substantially to the Board’s activities in the standards area and paid close attention to 

radiation protection issues. Personal communication, Kenneth M. Pusateri, Board general manager (1989–2006), 

Washington, DC, June 16, 2009. 

431 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 541. 432 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Accident and Explosion Risks at Department of 

Energy High-Level Radioactive Waste Facilities, 101st Cong., 2d sess., July 31, 1990, 39. 433 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II, 541. 
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practices in the Naval Reactors Program as his reference point, and others brought up practices 

sanctioned by the NRC in the commercial sector. 

Speaking generally about the Board’s findings in its questioning of DOE and contractor 

personnel, Kouts remarked on a “turnaround in attitude” among operations personnel since “the 

beginning of this process of improving the situation at Savannah River.”434 He spoke of 

“substantial resistance” initially to the change of culture that the secretary of energy had long 

urged, and remarked, 

At the outset, it was more common to say, “Why are you people bothering us? 

We’ve run a safe plant all these years. Why are you trying to change us?” But 

now you find that, really, people are enthusiastic about the changes that have been 

made and they feel they are accomplishing something?435

The final Board actions on the readiness of the K-reactor to resume operations took place 

in Washington, DC, where the Board met for further point-by-point examination of the adequacy 

of the measures taken to correct deficiencies with the potential to threaten public safety. In 1992 

the K-reactor operated briefly for the last time, until, in 1993, it was placed in cold standby 

condition as the nation’s tritium source, and, in 1996, in shutdown condition.436 In 2000 the Kreactor building was converted to K Area Materials Storage Facility. 

Rocky Flats Recommendations: Resuming Plutonium Operations 

Besides Savannah River, another priority focus of the Board’s attention throughout its 

first two years was DOE’s Rocky Flats plant, where plutonium components of nuclear 

weapons⎯“plutonium pits”⎯were produced until the plant’s 1989 shutdown for safety, health, 

and environmental problems.437 The Board took up its oversight responsibilities at the plant as it 

moved toward the resumption of plutonium and other weapons-related fabrication activities. 

According to the plan at that time, 

[A] succession of facilities would be readied for renewed operation, beginning 

with Building 559 (the analytical chemistry laboratory), and followed by Building 

707 and then others. This process was to include systematic upgrading of the 

quality of operations in each case, including Operational Readiness Reviews by 

434 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II. 435 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. II of II. 436 Savannah River Site, “Savannah River History Highlights,” May 20, 2008, http://www.srs.gov/general/about/

history1.htm. 

437 For expansive historical background on Rocky Flats and its problems, see Len Ackland, Making a Real Killing: 

Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002). 
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the contractor and by DOE to verify that the desired improvements had been 

accomplished by line management.438

In connection with this restart plan, Congress gave the Board explicit special legal authority, 

stipulating that no plutonium production facility at Rocky Flats could resume operations without 

a determination by the Board that public health and safety were adequately protected.439

Rocky Flats’ resumption of operations activities and the Board’s oversight proceeded 

against a background of serious environmental and safety deficiencies at the site, as well as legal 

troubles. Several fires had occurred at the plant over the years, most notably, the major fires in 

1957 and 1969, which got into the ventilation system and released radioactive contamination. 

The 1969 fire, the “second largest industrial fire in the United States in terms of dollar value,” 

and eventually prompted fire-safety upgrades across the DOE nuclear complex.440 By 1989, 

Rocky Flats was embroiled in legal troubles over environmental violations, with the contractor, 

Rockwell, under investigation by EPA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).441 This 

investigation, which lasted five years, found that DOE and Rockwell had failed to produce an 

adequate waste disposal analysis plan, and failed to store waste with a permit as required by the 

Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA). They also had failed to maintain an accurate 

operations record and to provide written notification of incidents requiring a contingency plan.442

These and other Rocky Flats problems culminated in a June 1992 plea bargain agreement 

between Rocky Flats contractor, the Rockwell Corporation, and the U.S. Department of Justice. 

The charged history of problems at Rocky Flats provided the context of the Board’s 

oversight activities at the site and dictated their intensity. The Board members not only knew that 

438 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 92–5, Discipline of Operation in a Changing Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Complex (Washington, DC, August 17, 1992), 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/

recommendations/all/rec_1992_05.txt. 

439 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993, Pub. L. No. 102–190, Section 3133, 105 

Stat 1290, 1574, December 5, 1991. For discussion of this legal authority, see also a hearing on the proposed Federal 

Nuclear Facilities Licensing and Regulation Act, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Natural 

Resources, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities Licensing and Regulation 

Act, 103rd Cong., 2d sess., March 1, 8, 1994, 240. 440 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1995, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (Washington, DC: 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1991), 20. See also U.S. Department of Energy, Assistant Secretary for 

Defense Programs, Assessment of Plutonium Storage Safety Issues at Department of Energy Facilities (Washington, 

DC, 1994), 16. 

441 Ackland, 214–24. 442 U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, 

Environmental Crimes at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility, 102d Cong., 1st sess. ,Vol. 1, executive 

session: September 10, 11, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 30, 1992; public session: September 23, October 2, 5, 1992, 9. See 

also Vol. 2, September 17, 18, 1992. 
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they faced the site’s numerous safety problems, but also believed that restarts of idled facilities 

after extended outages demanded special vigilance to ensure safety. Expressing a view often 

advanced by the Board, its Recommendation 92–5 stated,

Experience shows that the resumption of operations at a facility that has been idle 

for an extended period, or the operation of a facility in a new mode created an 

above-average possibility of mistakes, equipment failures, and violations of safety 

requirements, all of which could cause accidents.443

Of immediate concern at Rocky Flats, as the Board ascertained during its first site visit in 

January 1990, was the accumulation of radioactive material, mainly plutonium, in the facilities’ 

ventilation ducts and related systems. The Board issued a recommendation, 90–6, Criticality 

Safety at the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Plant, CO, the third in its string on Rocky 

Flats, on June 4, 1990, on this debris accumulation.444 In April 1990, DOE had revealed that 

some 62 pounds of plutonium had collected in the ducts. The Board’s recommendation advised 

DOE, prior to resuming plutonium operations at the plant, to prepare a written program with 

commitments to address the problem. The proposed program’s immediate objective was to 

evaluate and mitigate the hazards associated with the ducts’ radioactive accumulation and, in 

particular, to address the risk of a criticality accident, an accident involving sufficient radioactive 

material to produce a self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction. The Board’s concern was that 

the reported 60 pounds of fissile material posed the possibility of a criticality event, with the 

attendant threat of excessive radiation exposure, particularly to on-site operating personnel. 

Although DOE and several contractors had examined the criticality safety problem, they had not 

completed full characterization of the situation or plans for remediation actions. 

The Board’s recommendation called for an initial reduction of the amount of fissile 

material in a “prior to resumption” building-by-building duct cleanup, to ensure the prevention of 

criticality accidents. Stating an assumption of the cleanup, a DOE official at Rocky Flats said, 

“Under the most conservative assumptions, there can by no criticality event if the total quantity 

of plutonium involved is less than 400 grams.”445 The longer-term objective of the recommended 

program was to remove additional duct debris and to minimize the possibility of future 

443 DNFSB, Recommendation 92–5, 1. 444Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 90–6, Criticality Safety at the Department of Energy’s 

Rocky Flats Plant, CO (Washington, DC, June 4, 1990), 1–2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/

rfets/rec_1990_06.txt. 

445 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (Washington, DC: 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1990), 577. 
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accumulation of plutonium deposits in the ducts, “so that we don’t get another sixty pounds of 

the stuff up there in the future.”446 The program was to prioritize specific remediation actions, 

including duct design and operational changes, and to assess criticality safety for individual 

lines, systems, and components. The program also needed to include justification of the 

techniques, modeling, and methodology used to study systems and to estimate gamma ray and 

fast neutron radiation levels in occupancy areas.447 In responding to the Board’s 

recommendation, the secretary instituted a debris removal program that involved systematic 

inspections, sample analyses, the use of a mock-up facility for a cleanup rehearsal, and the 

development of unique procedures for each duct.

Other important Board recommendations on Rocky Flats concerned operational readiness 

reviews prior to the resumption of plutonium processing. In the first ORR-related 

recommendation, 90–4, the Board urged DOE to conduct ORRs at Rocky Flats on a facility-byfacility basis, viewing them as important both to ensure the safety of the restart and to provide a 

well-documented public record attesting to the preparedness of DOE and the operating contractor 

safely to resume operations.448 The Board followed closely the implementation of the ORR 

process at Rocky Flats, because it was expected to be a source of lessons learned and a model for 

the conduct of further ORRs. As the Board stated, 

The contractor, DOE, and the Board each recognized that the first ORR conducted 

at Rocky Flats would establish an important precedent for future ORR's, both at 

Rocky Flats and other defense nuclear facilities.449

On receiving DOE’s implementation plan for 90–4, the Board suggested improvements. 

Subsequently, it found that DOE’s ORR for Building 559, “the first building that DOE intends to 

start up” was conducted prematurely, that is, before known safety deficiencies were corrected or 

near closure.450 Because of the status of the Rocky Flats ORR process as a model, the Board 

insisted that the ORR for the building be performed with close adherence to the implementation 

plan. To further this end, the Board issued Recommendation 91–4 on September 30, 1991, 

calling upon DOE to complete the operational readiness review for Building 559 only after 

446 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, 595. 447 DNFSB, Recommendation 90–6, 1–2. 448 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 90–4, Operational Readiness Review at the 

Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Plant, CO (Washington, DC, May 3, 1990), 1–2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_ 

docs/recommendations/rfets/rec_1990_04.txt. 449 DNFSB, [Second] Annual Report to Congress, 7. 450 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, 638. 
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safety problems were closed or nearly closed and the contractor had issued a Readiness to 

Proceed Memorandum. DOE’s follow-on operational readiness review for Building 559 was 

completed in January 1992 and the resumption of operations authorized. Considered adequate by 

the Board, the readiness review addressed the elements that 91–4 had specified as necessary 

features of a satisfactory ORR. These elements included an assessment of the knowledge levels 

achieved during operator requalification, an examination of test records and safety systems, 

verification that plant modifications affecting safety systems were reviewed for any impacts on 

training and operating procedures, a review of accident analyses, and a description in the ORR 

team’s final safety analysis report of issues still needing resolution before restart.451

Besides addressing ORRs, a feature of near-term restart preparations, the Board also 

recommended another type of review for Rocky Flats, a Systematic Evaluation Program (SEP) to 

assist planning for longer-term site upgrades of design and operations. The SEP that the Board 

envisioned resembled a program undertaken by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the early 

1980s. That program, as the Board noted in its May 1990 Recommendation 90–5, was a means 

of evaluating older facilities against current safety standards, in order to prioritize and integrate 

potential plant modifications to assure safe operations. The Board urged that DOE conduct a 

similar SEP site-wide at Rocky Flats to review systematically outstanding safety issues and to 

assess the design adequacy and capacity of facilities to provide a reasonable assurance of safety 

under a variety of conditions. The Board advised that Rocky Flats’ SEP address “over about the 

next four years” the potential effects on structures and equipment of severe external 

developments, e.g., natural phenomena, such as seismic events and high winds, and the effects of 

severe internal events, particularly fire. A particular focus was to be the capability of the 

ventilation systems under severe external and internal events. Additionally, the SEP would 

consider the basis and procedures for deciding which facilities would be backfitted and on what 

schedule.452

The Board underscored that its intent in calling for this “systematic and integrated” longterm planning mechanism was to ensure that safety-enhancing design improvements “should be 

451 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 91–4, DOE’s Operational Readiness Review Prior to 

Resumption of Plutonium Operations at the Rocky Flats Plant (Washington, DC, September 30, 1991), 1–4, 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/rfets/rec_1991_04.txt. 

452 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 90–5, Systematic Evaluation Program at Department 

of Energy’s Rocky Flats Plant, CO (Washington, DC, May 17, 1990), 1–2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/

recommendations/rfets/rec_1990_05.txt. 
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considered in an integrated manner to ensure that a balanced and integrated level of safety is 

achieved.”453 Integrated review could help ensure, for example, that enhancements of the seismic 

resistance of safety equipment were balanced in relation to improvements to the seismic 

capability of the building housing such equipment. In addition, as Recommendation 90–5 stated, 

“Use of an integrated program also would permit appropriate emphasis to be placed on 

improving defense in depth as a means for enhancing safety at the plant.”454 Under the concept 

of “defense in depth,” as the Board used it, “Safety is assured through robust systems that use 

multiple layers of protection such that no single layer is depended upon to ensure safety.”455

The Board’s attention to the Rocky Flats SEP, like its focus on the site’s ORRs, had 

ramifications that ultimately went beyond that particular site. Meant to further the enhancement 

of safety through design improvements, the Systematic Evaluation Program figured among the 

approaches the Board recommended to promote design adequacy in an integrated fashion. One 

Board member, Edson Case, remarked on a potential disadvantage of the SEP, namely, that its 

implementation could provide an excuse for deferring action on immediate safety issues, and he 

questioned DOE officials at Rocky Flats accordingly.456 However, the Board members agreed on 

the SEP’s general value as a mechanism to ensure that changes would not be haphazard and 

wasteful. The Board later linked the SEP more explicitly with other processes designed to ensure 

integration in planning, emphasizing, for example, that an effective SEP required a more 

thorough application of the systems engineering approach. Planning founded on the principles of 

systems engineering took into account the entire life cycle of a facility, including the phases of 

design, construction, operation, decommissioning and site restoration. The Board also later 

became more explicit about the types of studies that needed to be conducted as part of a SEP, for 

example, studies related to the assessment of seismic capabilities, such as site geologic fault 

investigations, vibratory ground motion studies, dynamic building analyses, and soil-structure 

interaction analyses. 

453 DNFSB, Recommendation 90–5. 454 DNFSB, Recommendation 90–5. 455 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009 (Washington, DC: November 17, 2003), 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/rcsp_2003.pdf. 

456 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, 616. 
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Hanford Recommendations: Nuclear Waste Safety and Waste Characterization 

Besides the Board’s Rocky Flats and Savannah River activities, which were predicated 

on the sites’ resumption of production, the third major focus of the Board’s attention in its early 

years of operation was DOE’s Hanford facility, more specifically, the threats posed by Hanford’s 

tank farm and waste operations.457 The tank farm consisted of 177 tanks holding in total more 

than 50 million gallons of radioactive waste. Storage tanks at the Hanford site had been used 

since 1944 to hold wastes generated by Hanford’s plutonium production⎯both radioactive and 

non-radioactive hazardous wastes and both liquids and solids.458 For several years prior to the 

Board’s start of operations, these tanks have been the subject of concern related to leaks, 

“‘events’ leading to worker exposure to tank vapors,” and ill-defined risks of explosions and 

accidents.459 With respect to the leakage, a November 1986 GAO study reported that the tank 

farm’s 149 older, single-walled tanks, built from 1943 to 1964, had leaked approximately 

500,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste into Hanford soil.460 With respect to explosion 

risk, debate had been ongoing for some time, notably, in the Senate Governmental Affairs 

Committee, about the susceptibility of the site’s old single-shell high-level waste tanks to 

spontaneous explosion. It was feared that such an explosion could disperse a large amount of 

radioactive material to the environment. 

When the members of the Board visited Hanford in December 1989 to investigate the 

waste tank issues, with specific attention to the possible explosion hazard, they were informed of an 

analysis conducted by the Hanford contractor, arguing that the possibility of an explosion in the 

tanks was low.461 Technical experts retained by the Board reinforced this conclusion in March 

1990, when they visited the Hanford site to continue the Board’s investigation. They found no 

imminent risk of explosion posed by the single-shell tanks. The uncertainty about the chemical 

composition of the contents and physical conditions within the tanks were identified as matters 

of concern requiring further study. In addition, they reported on the problem of slurry growth and 

457 For an in-depth historical account of the Hanford facility and its problems, see Michele Stenehjem Gerber, On the 

Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992). 458 Interview, John E. Mansfield, Board vice chairman (since 2007; Board member, 1997–present), Washington, DC, 

September 10, 2008. 

459 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Hazards Ahead: Managing Cleanup Worker Health and 

Safety at the Nuclear Weapons Complex, OTA–BP–O–85 (Washington, DC, February 1993), 55. 460 U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Waste: Unresolved Issues Concerning Hanford’s Waste Management 

Practices, RCED–87–30 (Washington, DC, November 1986), http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat23/131661.pdf. Other 

sources put the leakage at 1 million gallons of high-level waste. 
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associated hydrogen generation in some of the 28 double-walled tanks, an issue that had surfaced 

as a result of questions they had asked⎯an issue “potentially more serious than the questions 

related to the single-shell tanks.”462 These newer million-gallon double-walled carbon steel 

tanks, built from 1967 to 1986, were meant to replace Hanford’s single-shelled tanks.

The serious concerns about the Hanford waste tanks prompted the Board to issue the third 

of its early recommendations, Recommendation 90–3, Future Monitoring Programs at the 

Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, WA on March 27, 1990. Proposing a surveillance 

program, the recommendation called upon DOE to: 

• study the chemical reactions in the single-shell tanks that could generate heat, 

potentially elevating the temperature sufficiently to trigger explosive ferrocyanide 

reactions; 

• develop a program of continuous monitoring to detect conditions in the single-shell 

tanks that might signal the onset of instability in their contents, e.g., conditions such 

as rising temperature, physical deformation of the waste surface, or unusual 

components, such as hydrogen, in the tanks’ cover gas; 

• provide alarm indicators in the monitoring instruments to signal abnormalities; 

• and develop an action plan to neutralize the conditions signaled by the alarms.463

The recommendation also made clear that the Board considered as potentially serious the 

conditions in the double-walled tanks experiencing slurry growth and associated hydrogen 

generation. 

Following the issuance of its first recommendation on Hanford’s waste storage tanks, the 

Board received DOE’s implementation plan on August 10, 1990, and found it to be 

“insufficiently responsive,” on the grounds that it did not reflect the urgency of the waste tank 

situation. The Board stated, 

It did not reflect the urgency that was merited by the circumstances . . . . It also 

did not appear that the contractor involved had been required to marshal the 

461 Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Accident and Explosion Risks, 35. 462 Interview, A.J. Eggenberger, Board chairman (since 2005; vice chairman, 1989–2005), Washington, DC, July 9, 

2008. 

463 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 90–3, Future Monitoring Programs at the 

Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, WA (Washington, DC, March 27, 1990), 1–2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_ 

docs/recommendations/hanford/rec_1990_03.txt. The Board held a public meeting on this recommendation at its 

Washington, DC, headquarters on January 14, 1991. 
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managerial and technical resources required, nor to focus those resources on the 

problem in a measure commensurate with its gravity.464

After further site visits and discussions between the Board and DOE staff, the Board issued 

Recommendation 90–7, Ferrocyanide Tank Safety at the Hanford Site, on October 11, 1990, 

which addressed the same issues in greater detail and pressed DOE to step up its corrective 

actions. DOE was advised to accelerate its tank-sampling program, to expand its study of the 

chemical properties and explosive behavior of the tank contents, and to develop an emergency 

plan in the event of an airborne release of radioactive material from the tanks.465

The Board’s concern with the uncertain characterization of the heterogeneous contents of 

the Hanford tanks persisted well beyond the Board’s first two years of operations. 

Recommendation 93–5, issued on July 19, 1993, once again addressed Hanford waste tank 

characterization studies, citing a newly released DOE audit that found significant weaknesses in 

Hanford’s sampling, laboratory, and core management activities. In Recommendation 93–5, the 

Board advised DOE to undertake a thorough reexamination of Hanford characterization efforts 

and a prioritization of the tank-sampling schedules, to expand laboratory capacity for tank 

sample analysis, and to assess the necessity of all the chemical analyses performed.466 The 

Board’s persistence in its push for waste characterization in the Hanford tanks reflected the 

members’ view that knowledge of the contents of such tanks both at Hanford and elsewhere was 

crucial to the mitigation of their dangers in both the short and long run. As the Board stated, 

Characterization is essential for ensuring safety in the near-term during custodial 

management and remedial activities, and also in the long-term for advancing the 

development of permanent solutions to the high level waste problems at Hanford. 

The wastes in the Hanford tanks differ markedly from tank to tank. Without 

timely characterization of the wastes, the nature of the risks associated with the 

tanks cannot be fully assessed and, where necessary, mitigated. Further, until the 

characteristics of the wastes are known, final methods for monitoring, retrieval, 

transport, and treatment of wastes now in tanks cannot be realistically planned.467

464 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [First] Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1991), 9, 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 465 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 90–7, Ferrocyanide Tank Safety at the Hanford Site

(Washington, DC, October 11, 1990), 1–3, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/hanford/rec_1990_ 

07.txt. 

466 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 93–5, Hanford Waste Tanks Characterization Studies

(Washington, DC, July 19, 1993), 1–3, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/hanford/rec_1993_05.txt. 

See also Chapman, 359, and Gerber, 254–55. 

467 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, [Fourth] Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1994), 

32, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 
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The systematic monitoring and characterization of the contents of the waste tanks for which the 

Board called were a prerequisite for other tank waste remediation activities the Board would 

address, e.g., stabilization of the wastes for near-term custodial management, preservation of the 

integrity of the existing tanks, and planning for the construction of new tanks, as well as for the 

eventual development of permanent waste disposal solutions.468

COMPLEX-WIDE SAFETY ISSUES 

In addition to the Board’s site-specific review activities in its early years, the Board took 

up generic topics and issued recommendations applicable to most or all sites. Foremost among 

these were recommendations on the key topical areas of nuclear safety standards, and training 

and qualification of technical personnel. 

Development and Application of Standards Related to Nuclear Safety: Key Problem Area 

One of the earliest and most important Board recommendations was 90–2, Design, 

Construction, Operation and Decommissioning Standards at Certain Priority DOE Facilities, 

issued on March 8, 1990. The recommendation aimed to spur DOE toward an improved 

standards-based nuclear safety program through the development and revision of nuclear safety 

standards at selected priority sites, mainly, Savannah River, Rocky Flats, Hanford, and WIPP.469

Recommendation 90–2 also proved to be the most problematic when it came to getting a 

satisfactory implementation plan from DOE. 

The Board’s early and persistent attention to the issue of standards was in keeping with 

the emphasis given to it in the Board’s authorizing legislation. The Board’s first statutory duty 

was to “review and evaluate the content and implementation of the standards relating to the 

design, construction, operation, and decommissioning of defense nuclear facilities of the 

Department of Energy (including all applicable Department of Energy Orders, regulations, and 

requirements) at each Department of Energy defense nuclear facility.”470 The Board shared the 

468 For a general account of tank waste remediation activities at Hanford, see Gerber, 248–58. 469 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 90–2, Design, Construction, Operation and 

Decommissioning Standards at Certain Priority DOE Facilities (Washington, DC, March 8, 1990), http://www. 

dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1990_02.txt. 470 Pub. L. No. 100–456, Section 1441(a), 102 Stat 1918, 2077; this new language became chapter 21, Section 

312(1) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. For a list of the orders subject to Board oversight in its first years, see 

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb and Managing the Nuclear Materials, 
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recognition of its congressional oversight committees that “DOE did not have a well-developed 

set of requirements or a fully functional standards-based nuclear safety program.”471 In its initial 

work on standards at the four priority DOE facilities, the Board confirmed this recognition of 

deficiency, finding that standards and requirements to be used for safety reasons had not been 

established, were highly variable, or were far less specific than corresponding NRC standards.472

The first among the Board’s recommendations urging DOE to correct the situation, 90–2, 

set forth three fundamental requirements. The first was to identify the applicable safety 

standards, DOE orders, technical standards, and other requirements. The Board also 

recommended that DOE provide its view on the adequacy of the standards. As in the case of 

other DOE improvement efforts, the Board recommended a comparative approach, stating a 

number of reasons, 

An important aspect of this standards assessment will be a comparative evaluation 

between nuclear and other standards used by the DOE for safety purposes and 

those which are used in the licensing and regulation of commercial nuclear power 

reactors. 

The Board in its review of requirements set forth in DOE’s safety related Orders 

(and more recently Rules) has always used industry-wide regulatory standards as 

a frame of reference. The Board’s reasons for doing so are two fold: (1) The 

collective experience of the Board and its staff is that compliance with such 

standards is essential for ensuring protection of public health and safety. (2) 

Congress has stated its expectation that the Board endeavor to bring nuclear safety 

at defense nuclear facilities up to the level of the commercial nuclear industry.473

Explaining its advocacy of a comparative approach further, the Board mentioned one additional 

reason in a public meeting, 

The Board has . . . proceeded on the assumption that the public wants to know, 

very importantly in an assessment of standards, how the standards the DOE . . . 

has used compare to those that pertain to analogous operations in the domain of 

OTA–O–572 (Washington, DC, September 1993), 41, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_1/DATA/1993/

9320.PDF. 

471 Joseph J. DiNunno, “Fundamentals for Understanding Standards-Based Safety Management of DOE Defense 

Nuclear Facilities,” DNFSB/TECH–5 (paper prepared for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Public 

Meeting On Standards-Based Safety Management, Washington, D.C., May 31, 1995), n.p., http://www.dnfsb.gov/

pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_19950531.html. 

472 GAO, Nuclear Safety: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Year, 15. 473 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Year 1996 and the Future Years Defense Program, 104th Cong., 1st sess., March 28, April 25, May 2, 16, 

18, 1995, 100. 
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commercial nuclear power reactors and other nuclear activities in the commercial 

domain.474

The third action that Recommendation 90–2 urged upon DOE was to determine the extent of the 

implementation in the field of the identified standards. In response to 90–2, despite difficulties in 

drafting an acceptable plan, DOE committed to a comprehensive DOE-wide review of nuclear 

safety standards and to providing reports on progress to the Board. Regarding DOE’s plan, 

especially for the key management tool to document standards, Standards/ Requirements 

Implementation Documents (S/RIDs), the Board later explained, 

The principal product of implementation was to be a set of facility-specific 

documents that set forth the applicable standards and requirements for a selected 

set of DOE’s defense nuclear facilities. These were termed Standards/ 

Requirements Implementation Documents (S/RIDs). The S/RID was to contain 

those requirements considered necessary and sufficient for ensuring safety in the 

particular application. These were to be principally extracted from DOE Orders, 

appropriate standards, NRC guides, and similar sources. The S/RID was 

envisioned as the basis upon which work controls would be developed and 

implemented.475

Embarking on its promised actions, DOE strengthened its arrangements for managing its 

nuclear standards program and briefed the Board on its modifications. It also produced a 

prioritized list of nuclear safety orders needing upgrading or development, noting that the 

process would be “arduous,” 

The first set of Orders chosen for priority development includes: Personnel 

Selection and Training, Conduct of Operations, Occurrence Reporting, Safety 

Analysis Reports, Technical Safety Requirements, Unreviewed Safety Questions, 

Radiation Protection, Maintenance Management, and Quality Assurance. The 

process for issuing these upgraded Orders and Rules includes review by all 

Department of Energy elements that would be affected including DOE Field 

Offices, review by the Department’s operating contractors, and finally, approval 

by the senior nuclear managers of the Department . . . . It is not unusual to receive 

800 or more comments on a revised Order or Rule.476

DOE’s implementation effort lagged behind the pace to which DOE committed in its 

implementation plan, prompting the Board on May 20, 1991, to write a stern letter to Secretary 

474 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1990, 610. 475 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 95–2, Safety Management (Washington, DC, October 

11, 1995), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1995_02.html. The recommendation 

superseded Recommendations 90–2 and 92–5. 

476 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, vol. I of II 

(Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1991), 482. 
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Watkins on the inadequacy of the effort with respect to all three of the Board’s recommended 

actions. In its ongoing review of DOE’s response to the Board’s recommendation to assess the 

adequacy of standards, for example, the Board found that DOE has evaluated only two, and 

“then in only a limited and non-specific fashion,” 

These assessments appear to be quite superficial in content and in general convey 

the impression that a thorough review of even this limited group of Orders has not 

been undertaken. Finally, no criteria for determining the adequacy of Orders in 

general has been presented.477

The unimpressive content and pace of DOE’s efforts on standards identification, 

assessment, and implementation provoked “continuing frustration” on the part of the Board, and 

prompted it to issue a number of additional recommendations in this key problem area, 

beginning with 91–1, Strengthening the Nuclear Safety Standards Program for DOE’s Defense 

Nuclear Facilities.

478 Dated March 7, 1991, this recommendation applied broadly to all DOE 

defense nuclear facilities. It urged, among other things, improvement of the process by which 

DOE developed and implemented nuclear safety standards through upgrades of the standards 

development infrastructure “at Headquarters, in the field, and at contractors.”479 The Board also 

continued to issue recommendations addressing specific standards topics, e.g., 91–6, which 

urged DOE to compare its radiation protection standards to commercial industry standards, and 

92–6, which called upon DOE to develop standards on operational readiness reviews.480

As DOE pursued its upgrades of standards and the standards development program, it 

made measurable progress in circumscribed spheres. As the Board noted, specific facilities 

managed to identify applicable DOE orders and ensure compliance as part of the operational 

readiness review process.481 However, just the task of identifying requirements was formidable. 

At Rocky Flats, for example, just one element of the larger Standards Program⎯the Historic 

477 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993, 102d Cong., 1st sess., April 23, May 9, 17, 22, 23, June 5, 12, 13, 19, 20, 1991, 615. 478 DNFSB, [Second] Annual Report to Congress, 17. 479 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. I of II, 485. 480 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 91–6, Radiation Protection for Workers and the 

General Public at DOE Defense Nuclear Facilities (Washington, DC, December 19, 1991), http://www.dnfsb.gov/ 

pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1991_06.txt; and Recommendation 92–6, Operational Readiness Reviews 

(Washington, DC, August 26, 1991), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1992_06.txt. 481 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Fifth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1995), 

79, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. With reference to standards on ORRs, the Fifth 

Annual Report acknowledged adequate progress by DOE, stating, “In response to several Board recommendations, 

DOE has now developed and issued a nuclear safety order on operational readiness which, when properly used, is an 
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Building Standards Program⎯involved a considerable effort, as a manager with the contractor, 

EG&G Rocky Flats, Inc., reported, 

The Historic Buildings Program consisted of a broad “sweep” to identify source 

documents that were used as a design basis for the nine plutonium facilities . . . 

This sweep included selective searches of AEC/ERDA/DOE files; and of 

permanent federal record storage including project files; and, discussions with 

construction contractors, and RFP staff and retirees. The report, which has been 

submitted to the DOE, found reasonable records for buildings constructed since 

1970 (Buildings 371 and 374) and weak records for buildings constructed 

between 1952 and 1970 (Buildings 771, 774, 776, 777, 779, 707, and 991). No 

decommissioning standards were identified.482

In the face of such challenges in a single standards-related task at one site, DOE 

continued to have difficulties in its far more comprehensive task of identifying, assessing and 

implementing standards complex-wide. DOE was long unable to produce an acceptable 

implementation plan, managing to do so only with a fifth draft of the plan in November 1994⎯a 

draft produced only with “the assistance of the [Board’s] own Technical Director and General 

Counsel in order to get progress.”483

After several years in which DOE continued to develop and implement facility-specific 

Standards/Requirements Identification Documents (S/RIDS), the Board closed Recommendation 

90–2, consolidating the schedule for their issuance with Recommendation 94–5, Integration of 

DOE Safety Rules, Orders, and Other Requirements.

484 This recommendation urged DOE to 

continue issuing S/RIDS, while integrating them into a clear, coherent, and consistent standardsbased nuclear safety program. In early 1996, after again addressing DOE standards in the still 

broader Recommendation 95–2, Safety Management, the Board notified DOE that 90–2 

commitments would remain in effect until the ultimate disposition of outstanding actions were 

addressed in DOE’s implementation plan for 95–2.485

effective tool for ensuring adequate protection of public health and safety prior to startup or restart of nuclear 

facilities.” 

482 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, vol. I of II, 492. 483 John W. Crawford Jr., An Assessment Concerning Safety at Defense Nuclear Facilities: The DOE Technical 

Personnel Problem, DNFSB/TECH–10 (Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, March 1996), 

15, http://www.cnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_199603.html. 484 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 94–5, Integration of DOE Safety Rules, Orders, and 

Other Requirements (Washington, DC, December 29, 1994), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/ 

all/rec_1994_05.txt. 485 DNFSB, Recommendation 95–2. The Fifth Annual Report offered a number of observations on progress on 

Recommendation 90–2, including: “(1) both Secretary Watkins and Secretary O’Leary have committed the 

Department to a requirements-based safety program; (2) DOE has made some progress in moving towards a 
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As the Board continued to press DOE in its standards effort, it attributed the 

Department’s slow pace and difficulties to a number of causes, some very long-standing and 

some more recent. A near-term potential hindrance of concern to the Board was DOE’s decision 

under Admiral Watkins to transition from the use of the Orders system to the “promulgation of 

nuclear safety requirements through rulemaking”⎯a process that tended to be timeconsuming.486 DOE adopted this approach after the Price-Anderson Amendment Act of 1988 

(Pub.L. No. 100–408) gave DOE new authority to impose penalties on its indemnified 

contractors for violations of nuclear safety requirements when these requirements were 

promulgated in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act (Pub.L. No. 89–55). The 

Board acknowledged the benefits that DOE anticipated from the transition to notice and 

comment rulemaking, namely, “uniform, enforceable requirements and . . . greater opportunities 

for public input into the process for establishment of requirements.”487 However, the Board 

repeatedly urged DOE, including in 94–5, not to allow this transition to delay or relax the 

ongoing effort to upgrade requirements and to incorporate them into the terms of management 

and operations (M&O) contracts. 488 As 94–5 advised, 

Impending developments should not be taken as cause for a slow-down on 

compliance efforts or the upgrading of applicable requirements now in Orders and 

contracts.489

Among more long-standing hindrances to the timely upgrade of standards were, as 

Crawford said in a hearing, “a mentality and a culture that had tended to deprecate the need for 

standards.”490 A continual theme of the Board was that DOE had long manifested an “expertbased” culture, rather than a ‘”standards-based” culture. That is, DOE relied for the achievement 

of safety on the expertise of individuals, rather than on standards that provided a definite and 

requirements-based safety program; (3) unrelenting attention by the Board caused DOE to achieve an adequate level 

of compliance with standards before restarting several facilities shut down for safety reasons . . . . (5) a great deal of 

work remains to be done, both to erect a complete, adequate set of safety requirements for DOE’s diverse operations 

and to implement these requirements at the field level.” 

486 DNFSB, Recommendation 94–5. See also DiNunno, “Fundamentals for Understanding Standards-Based Safety 

Management.” 

487 DNFSB, Recommendation 94–5. 488 U.S. Department of Energy, Annual Report to Congress, Department of Energy Activities Relating to the Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board: Calendar Year 1995, DOE/S–0115 (Washington, DC, March 1996), II–3. By the 

end of 1995, the conversion of nuclear safety directives to rules had produced four rules, with eight others in 

process. 

489 DNFSB, Recommendation 94–5. 490 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1993, 243. 
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uniform set of explicit expectations. DiNunno touched upon this reliance on expertise, when 

publicly questioning a readiness review team member about the basis for his judgments about 

order compliance in a facility. DiNunno observed, 

I am left with the feeling that I’m relying on your judgment as an expert. And I 

am not diminishing that in any way, but it isn’t quite as regularized and criteriabased as we are stressing in an order compliance review.491

This expert-based culture that the Board confronted in DOE was deeply ingrained, particularly at 

Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories. The laboratories’ high 

concentration of scientists and engineers, as opposed to production personnel, contributed to 

their disinclination to be bound by standards. 

Notwithstanding the resistance to change at the laboratories, Conway made the case there 

as elsewhere for a shift from an “expert based” culture, making explicit one key reason in a 

public discussion of a review of order compliance at Los Alamos. He connected the need to 

establish a “standards-based” culture in the weapons complex with one aspect of “technical 

personnel problem”⎯the dearth and ongoing loss of technical expertise as the DOE nuclear 

complex downsized. 

One of the concerns that this Board has had, and we’ve expressed it in 

recommendations to the Secretary, is that particularly now with the 

encouragement by the laboratory for many of your personnel to take early 

retirement, we are losing much of the experience that the lab has had over the 

years, where you were able to operate facilities because of the technical knowhow and experience of personnel. 

But as new people come in, new technicians come in, without having the 

mentoring of the older experienced personnel, we’re liable to lose some of that 

technical capability. The only way we know . . . to assure ourselves . . . is to have 

certain standards, requirements and orders that are complied with and procedures 

to do so. 

So that’s one of the reasons that this board is giving a great deal of attention to the 

need to have written procedures and that they be rigidly adhered to.492

In short, the Board viewed the establishment of a standards-based nuclear safety program as a 

means to ameliorate to a degree the loss of unique technical know-how in the weapons complex. 

491 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1994, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (Washington, DC: 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1994), 85. 

492 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1994, 39. 
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The Board’s Concern for Technical Personnel Quality in the DOE Nuclear Complex 

Although the Board always underscored the benefits of standards-based operations, it 

also regularly emphasized that standards could be effective only if there were trained and 

qualified, technically competent personnel to use them. In all of its early annual reports, the 

Board flagged the “technical personnel problem” as the “most important and far-reaching 

problem affecting the safety of DOE defense facilities.”493 As with the Board’s sustained 

involvement in urging DOE to discharge its commitments in the standards area, the Board 

applied persistent pressure on DOE to upgrade the technical qualifications of personnel 

throughout the DOE nuclear complex. In addressing the technical competency issue, the Board 

sometimes referred to the technical levels of both DOE personnel and the workforce in 

contractor organizations. More often, the Board’s advice was directed to strengthening the 

technical capabilities of DOE personnel specifically, as those responsible for directing the work 

of contractors, including their training initiatives. 

The Board issued a succession of recommendations on various aspects of the technical 

competency issue, beginning with the Board’s very first recommendation calling upon DOE to 

upgrade the training and qualification of operating personnel at Savannah River. The Board 

acknowledged progress achieved at Savannah River. Crawford, for example, who brought from 

his leadership position in the Naval Reactors Program a strong interest and expertise in personnel 

matters, applauded DOE’s initiatives to provide reactor operators with technical primers modeled 

on educational materials in the navy nuclear program. He also approved of the oral examinations 

that DOE instituted to supplement written tests in its assessment of operator knowledge.494

However, the Board was disappointed in its expectation that training successes in the restart 

efforts at Savannah River would prompt DOE to take similar technical personnel initiatives 

elsewhere. As Crawford recalled, 

The Board soon discovered that DOE had not profited from the lesson it should 

have learned at K-Reactor. As other facilities at the Savannah River Site were 

being readied for operation, the Board repeatedly found it necessary to use its own 

personnel to make sure that operators were properly trained and qualified. The 

493 DNFSB, Recommendation 93–3, Improving DOE Technical Capability in Defense Nuclear Facilities Programs

(Washington, DC, June 1, 1993), 1–4, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1993_033.txt. See 

also George, 137. 

494 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1991, 100–101. 
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Board was spending too much time doing work that was DOE’s responsibility, 

but which DOE was not doing due to a lack of qualified technical personnel.495

After the Board had a chance to observe the actions undertaken in response to its first 

recommendation, it followed up with the broader generic Recommendation 92–7, Training and 

Qualification, which dealt with training and qualifications programs complex-wide.496 The 

recommendation found that technical personnel and supervisors at the facilities often lacked 

sufficient understanding of the fundamentals of engineering, chemistry, nuclear physics, and 

radiation protection to operate safely. At the same time, as at Savannah River’s K-reactor, the 

tools to appraise operator understanding consisted largely of unchallenging written examinations. 

The Board urged that DOE take corrective measures, including the expansion of senior 

management’s involvement in nuclear safety training at all levels in DOE and contractor 

organizations, and the strengthening of organizational units responsible for training and 

qualification.497

A third key recommendation on the personnel problem, Recommendation 93–3, 

Upgrading DOE Technical Capability, focused exclusively on raising the “in-house” technical 

capability of the DOE organizations responsible for safety in the nuclear complex⎯both the line 

and oversight organizations operating both at headquarters and in the field. The recommendation 

called upon DOE to establish as a primary agency goal the attraction and retention of exceptional 

scientific and technical personnel. Such strengthening of technical expertise within DOE was one 

of the primary congressional assignments for the Board, as the Senate Conference Report that 

accompanied the Board’s enabling legislation stated: “The Board is expected to raise the level of 

technical expertise in the Department substantially.”498 Congress recognized, as had other 

evaluators, that DOE lacked sufficient technical capabilities to provide effective management of 

contractor personnel in the weapons complex. Many pointed to an imbalance between DOE and 

495 Crawford, 24. 496 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 92–7, Training and Qualification (Washington, DC, 

September 22, 1992), 1–2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1992_07.txt. 497 DNFSB, Recommendation 92–7, 3–4. Line and oversight positions involved with nuclear safety were found in 

the office of the assistant secretary for defense programs (DP) and in the offices of the assistant secretaries for 

environmental management (EM) and for environment, safety, and health (EH). In 1992 a reorganization 

consolidated oversight and enforcement of nuclear safety functions within EH, placing the oversight of DOE field 

offices and contractors in the hands of DOE employees outside of line management. 

498 S. Rep. No.100–232 (to accompany S. 1085), at 20–21 (1987). 
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the contractors, in which the latter’s superior technical capabilities forced DOE to place 

“inordinate reliance on contractor intentions and capabilities”499

The origins of this DOE–contractor disparity in technical skills lay in the past, in the 

division of functions between DOE’s predecessor organization, the AEC, and the contractors. As 

Crawford explained, 

The technical aspects of programs and activities were, for the most part, handled 

by the AEC’s laboratories and industrial contractors. Government organizations 

confined their activities mostly to contractual, budgetary, and administrative 

matters.500

Carrying forward this traditional division of functions, Crawford observed, “DOE did not build 

up the cadres of strong technical capability “in-house” to the degree needed to provide effective 

technical line management direction and guidance.”501 He added, “Without an equivalent level 

of technical competence, DOE managers cannot effectively engage in technical dialogue with 

their laboratory and contractor counterparts.”502 He contrasted the unequal DOE–contractor 

relationship with the situation that prevailed in “the Naval Reactors organization,”503

The U.S. Navy, under Admiral Rickover . . . had a small, but superb . . . cadre of 

people, well educated technically . . . always in a position of ascendancy vis-à-vis 

the contractors. We were never, ever dependent for technical choices by deferring 

to Westinghouse or General Electric or whomever . . .you have to have interior, 

in-house capability.504

In the terminology that Admiral Rickover had used, the strong technical qualifications of 

personnel in the Naval Reactors Program allowed the navy to perform as a “demanding 

customer” vis-à-vis its participating contractors. For Crawford and others on the Board, DOE 

needed to build similar technical strengths, in order similarly to act as a demanding customer. 

After the issuance of 93–3, the Board complained of insufficient progress on the 

commitments that DOE made in response to it and other admonitions about the technical 

personnel problem. The Board ascribed DOE’s personnel problem, in part, to the DOE’s lack of 

excepted appointment authority for technical personnel. As Crawford said, 

499 DNFSB, [First] Annual Report to Congress, 30. 500 Crawford, 3. 501 Crawford, 3. 502 Crawford, 6. 503 DNFSB, [First] Annual Report to Congress, 30. 504 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1993, 246. 
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In a market of limited numbers of highly competent nuclear technology personnel, 

it has long been evident that government agencies have difficulty hiring and 

retaining such personnel under the Civil Service System.505

The Board urged DOE to seek from Congress, as the Board had earlier successfully done for 

itself, a legislative change granting DOE additional hiring authority. The Board’s general 

counsel, Robert M. Andersen, described the actions taken by the Board on DOE’s behalf, stating, 

Obtaining this legislative change for DOE took many months and the combined 

efforts of the Board and some within DOE . . . some DOE officials were reluctant 

and slow to initiate action. The Chairman of the Board met with the Secretary of 

Energy, officials in the Congressional Affairs Office, and the Assistant Secretary 

of Energy for Human Resources on numerous occasions to try to jump start the 

proposal. Mr. Conway used every opportunity to testify before Congress 

regarding the need for DOE excepted appointment authority and the Board’s 

successful use of its excepted authority in attracting fully capable people to staff 

positions.506

Andersen added that he and the Board’s general manager, Kenneth M. Pusateri, 

Slowly overcame opposition to the proposal within DOE, the Office of 

Management and Budget, and Office of Personnel Management. A draft 

legislative proposal was prepared and given to DOE.507

With the Board’s assistance and “prodding,” as Crawford put it, DOE sought and was 

finally granted expanded excepted service personnel authority. Congress increased DOE’s 

excepted service authority, effective in 1995, from 200 to 400 technical personnel positions. 

DOE’s corrective actions on the technical personnel problem, however, continued to disappoint 

the Board. Among other things, DOE failed to use of its augmented hiring authority 

“aggressively and effectively” to raise the technical expertise of its staff.508 Crawford’s overall 

assessment, seconded by the rest of the Board, of DOE’s corrective action on the technical 

personnel problem was blunt, “DOE’s efforts to attract and retain highly technically competent 

scientists and engineers . . . have been unsuccessful.”509

505 Crawford, 26. 506 Statement of Robert M. Andersen, General Counsel, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Public Meeting, 

January 23, 1996, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_199603_09.html. Also included as Appendix H in 

Crawford, H/1–H/17. 

507 Statement of Robert M. Andersen, in Crawford, H/7–H/8. 508 Crawford, 26. 509 Crawford, 26. 
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CHAPTER 5: POST–COLD WAR REDIRECTION OF THE DEFENSE 

NUCLEAR COMPLEX AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BOARD’S WORK 

DOWNSIZING AND MISSION CHANGE IN THE COMPLEX: NEW DUTIES FOR 

THE BOARD 

For the first several years that the Board was in operation, Board recommendations and 

Department of Energy (DOE) implementation plans had been predicated upon resumption of 

production at a number of major sites in the DOE nuclear complex. In the course of 1992, 

however, a different trajectory for those sites and the entire complex became clear. The abrupt 

declaration of the end of the Cold War in November 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet 

Union in late 1991 had already signaled a rapid reduction in U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile 

requirements and a sharp curtailment of the processing of nuclear materials. Then, in late 1992, 

the Senate’s ratification of the historic Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), and 

congressional passage of a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, brought about the cessation 

of the production and testing of nuclear weapons.510 With these changes, the mission and 

activities of DOE’s weapons complex shifted sharply away from its primary mission for nearly 

half a century, weapons production and testing.511 The new mandate of the DOE nuclear weapons 

complex in regard to weapons was to manage the remaining weapons stockpile, to dismantle 

thousands of surplus nuclear weapons, and to pursue alternatives to the testing of nuclear 

weapons, while maintaining testing capability. DOE also faced the tasks of bringing many sites 

and facilities to a safe shutdown condition and of preparing decaying and contaminated facilities 

for decontamination and decommissioning (D&D). As Board Chairman John T. Conway noted, 

510 A. Costandina Titus, Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics (Reno: University of Nevada 

Press, 1986), 144. When the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 republics in December 1991, the Soviet nuclear 

stockpile was dispersed among four of the successor states⎯Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The United 

States and the four nuclear states entered into the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which reduced 

the U.S. inventory of intercontinental nuclear weapons from roughly 12,000 to 9,000 and the combined former 

Soviet force from 10,000 to 6,500. On the testing moratorium, see Titus, 146, and Jonathan Medalia, “Nuclear 

Testing and Comprehensive Test Ban: Chronology Starting September 1992,” CRS Report for Congress, Order 

Code 97–1007 F, Updated June 9, 2005 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 

2005). The moratorium on testing, initially for nine months, was enacted on October 2, 1992, in the form of an 

amendment to the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act (Pub.L. No. 102–377). The United States 

conducted its last U.S. test in 1992, just before START I and the testing moratorium became effective. Extended 

several times during the Clinton administration, the moratorium remained in effect throughout the Clinton 

presidency, as President Clinton unsuccessfully pushed the Senate, with its Republican majority after 1994, for 

ratification of a comprehensive test ban treaty. 
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“Such nuclear materials processing as [would] still be done would be to convert residue, semiprocessed materials to more stable chemical forms for safe storage.”512 DOE’s new tasks 

entailed a mammoth cleanup of the radioactive contamination that had accumulated over 50 

years⎯a cleanup projected to require decades and hundreds of billions of dollars.513

Broadened Board Jurisdiction and Activities 

The realignment and downsizing of the weapons complex and the change in DOE’s 

mission shifted the focus of the Board’s oversight away from the now abandoned restart 

activities at various production facilities. However, as the decision to halt production eliminated 

some weapons-production activities from the Board’s purview, the Board acquired new 

responsibilities related to nuclear weapons oversight. Concurrently with the transition from the 

Cold War production system in the weapons complex, Congress broadened the scope of the 

Board’s jurisdiction, with the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 

1992 and 1993 on December 5, 1991.514 Congress amended the Board’s authorizing statute, 

adding the assembly, disassembly, and testing of nuclear weapons to the Board’s health and 

safety responsibilities. With this amendment, the Board acquired new safety oversight 

responsibilities for the Nevada Test Site, and for the Pantex facility in Amarillo, Texas, where 

most of the newly expanded activities of weapons dismantlement would take place. With this 

broadened jurisdiction, the Board’s mandate included most nuclear weapons facilities and 

activities, with the exception, still, of the navy’s nuclear programs.515 To accommodate the 

511 Terrence R. Fehner and Jack M. Holl. Department of Energy, 1977–1994: A Summary History (Washington, DC: 

U.S. Department of Energy, November 1994), 94–95, http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/10106088-

mgIkuD/webviewable/10106088.PDF. 

512 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Year 1996 and the Future Years Defense Program, 104th Cong., 1st sess., March 28, April 25, May 2, 16, 

18, 1995, 98. 

513 Since the late 1980s, numerous estimates of cleanup costs had appeared, usually placing the costs in the $100–

$150 billion range. In 1996, in response to a congressional charge, DOE produced a report on costs, which proposed 

the figure of $227 billion. See U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, 1996 Baseline 

Environmental Management Report: Executive Summary (Washington, DC, July 1996), http://www.em.doe.gov/

bemr/pages/bemr96.aspx. 

514 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993, Pub.L. No. 102–190, 105 Stat 1290 (1991). 515 Interview, John W. Crawford, Jr., Rockville, MD, September 21, 2008. Crawford ascribed the exemption of the 

navy’s nuclear programs from Board oversight largely to the navy’s record of, and reputation for, strong safety 

management. 
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Board’s added responsibilities, which would substantially increase its workload, Congress raised 

the Board’s statutory personnel ceiling from 100 to 150 full-time employees.516

The addition of weapons-related activities to the Board’s jurisdiction involved the Board 

in the safety aspects of nuclear weapons dismantlement. As a result of the national commitment 

to nuclear weapons reduction, approximately 2,000 weapons per year were slated for 

dismantlement, mostly at Pantex, but also at the Y–12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with input 

in both cases from the national weapons laboratories.517 The Board’s increased responsibilities 

also included safety oversight of activities involved in the maintenance of the smaller nuclear 

weapons stockpile and in preparations to expand the storage of strategic fissionable materials 

retrieved from dismantled weapons⎯e.g., weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium. 

Finally, the Board took up additional tasks related to stockpile stewardship, which involved 

increased activities by the weapons laboratories carried on as an alternative to nuclear weapons 

testing. 

In addition to the new duties associated with its expanded jurisdiction in the weapons 

arena, the Board acquired augmented responsibilities having to do with the expansion of DOE’s 

remediation of nuclear residues, wastes, and other legacies of the nuclear arsenal buildup.518 The 

Board was already engaged in considerable efforts to address the threats posed by such wastes 

and residues of production, most notably, in its push at Hanford to remedy the uncertain 

characterization of the radioactive wastes in the storage tanks, and in its initiatives at Rocky Flats 

to address radioactive materials accumulated in ventilation ducts.519 However, with the higher 

priority now given to waste stabilization and cleanup/decontamination throughout the complex, 

the Board’s mandate in the area of the residues of nuclear materials production became even 

516 For additional amendments to the Board’s authorizing legislation, see Energy Policy Act of 1992 (Pub. L. No. 

102–486, 106 Stat 2776, Oct. 24, 1992), and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (Pub. L. No. 

103–160, 107 Stat 1547, Nov. 30, 1993). 

517 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb and Managing the Nuclear Materials. 

42–49, OTA–O–572 (Washington, DC, September 1993), http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_1/DATA/1993/

9320.PDF. 

518 For background on nuclear waste and environmental remediation as viewed in 1994, see U.S. Congress. 

Congressional Budget Office, Cleaning Up the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Weapons Complex (Washington, 

DC, May 1994), http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/49xx/doc4914/doc26.pdf. 519 For an extensive non-Board, non-DOE account of cleanup issues at Rocky Flats, see Len Ackland, Making a 

Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), esp., 203, 

220–42. 
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more encompassing.520 The Board’s oversight responsibilities extended to all of the major 

sources of radiological threat throughout the DOE defense nuclear complex, including waste 

tanks apart from Hanford’s, deteriorating reactor fuel in storage basins, and radioactive materials 

left in production lines. In addition, the Board’s purview included the decontamination and 

decommissioning of facilities⎯activities that were expected to grow as DOE reconfigured the 

complex, consolidating and shutting down certain facilities, e.g., at Fernald, the Mound 

Laboratory, Savannah River, and Hanford. 

Cutoff of Defense Production, Heightened Safety Challenges Requiring Board Oversight 

The Board regularly noted that the changed mission and downsizing of the weapons 

complex had a significant impact on the Board’s safety-related activities, shifting their focus. At 

the same time, the Board members also frequently pointed out that this shift of focus would not 

entail any reduction in the need for safety oversight or in the technical challenges that ensuring 

safety entailed. For example, as Chairman John T. Conway said in congressional testimony, “It is 

tempting to conclude that the reduction of weapons production activities at DOE facilities means 

that safety oversight can be reduced.”521 However, as he added on another occasion, 

The reduction of weapons production activities at DOE facilities does not mean 

that safety management and oversight can be reduced. The reality is that 

independent technical oversight continues to be needed in order to ensure that 

both the workers and the public are adequately protected.522

Indeed, far from diminishing safety problems requiring technical solutions, the new situation in 

the DOE complex magnified safety challenges. Conway said, 

With the shut down of many DOE facilities, the conditions and hazards being 

faced by DOE are potentially more urgent and present a more serious safety 

problem than when the facilities were in operation. 

520 On DOE’s view of the cleanup task, see Fehner and Holl, 87–88. See also Titus, 157–59. As Titus recounts, 

under the Energy and Water Development Act for 1992, Congress created the Defense Environmental Restoration 

and Waste Management Account to specify the level of funding for the cleanup program. Additional accounts were 

set up in 1998 and 1999 to expedite the remediation of 113 contaminated sites⎯all but 10 by FY 2006. The 10 sites, 

the largest and most contaminated, were slated for long-term remediation not to be completed until 2070, at an 

additional estimated cost of $147 billion. 

521 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Year 1995 and the Future Years Defense Program, 103rd Cong., 2dt

 sess., February 8, March 2, 3, 8, 9, 

15, 23, April 20, 1994, 920. 

522 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 99. 
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Conway elaborated on the heightened risks involved in the processes of “shutting down,” 

explaining, 

Many technical issues arising from the DOE’s change in mission have never been 

addressed before; others involve operations and processes that are new to the 

nuclear weapons industry. For example: 

• As a facility is deactivated and decommissioned, the workers are subjected to 

more hazardous conditions than during operation. The workers will come into 

closer contact with radioactive materials, enter portions of facilities that were 

not intended to be occupied and will face other unexpected conditions. 

• The aging and degradation of equipment that is at the end of its design life 

will present increasing hazards as safety systems become unreliable and break 

down more frequently.523

He further observed in another hearing, 

Simply put, the process of “shutting down” many defense nuclear facilities 

compounds existing hazards involving handling and storing nuclear materials 

with additional hazards associated with cleaning up the facilities. If safety systems 

are not properly maintained, and other precautions are not taken, these facilities 

can pose an increasing risk to worker and public health and safety. . . . . 

Workers are more likely to come in contact, often unexpectedly, with radioactive 

and chemical materials that have been inaccessible for many years. 

Dismantling a defense nuclear facility can actually increase the risk of dispersal of 

radioactivity through material degradation, natural phenomena, fires, or accidental 

nuclear criticality. . . . . 

The potential for detonation, fire, and corrosion hazards may increase as chemical 

compounds become unstable through time. Some existing radiological hazards 

may become worse as daughter radionuclides emitting more penetrating radiation 

accumulate (for example, americium) . . . . 

Also, cleanup operations are rarely as routine or predictable as production 

operations.524

In underscoring the increased hazards posed by the termination of weapons production in the 

DOE complex, Conway and the other Board members also typically pointed to the aggravation 

of risks that stemmed from the continuing “erosion of technical capability”⎯the significant 

losses of technical personnel who had experience in operational safety-related issues. 

523 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water 

Development, Energy and Water Development Appropriations for 1996, 104th Cong., 1st sess., January 31, 1995 

(statement of John T. Conway, “Possible Restructuring of the U.S. Department of Energy”), 919–30. 

524 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 98–99. 
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SAFE MANAGEMENT OF A REDUCED NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAPABILITY 

In surveying the heightened safety challenges associated with the cessation of weapons 

production in the DOE complex, the Board identified weapons-related activities newly under its 

jurisdiction⎯specifically large-scale dismantlement operations⎯as among the most potentially 

risky and thus among the most pressing priorities for Board oversight.525 The sheer magnitude of 

the task of dismantling some 20,000 weapons at the rate of 2,000 per year contributed to the 

potential hazardousness of dismantling operations. 

Recognizing the urgency of ensuring that dismantlement posed no “undue risk” to health 

and safety, the Board inaugurated a new practice⎯starting at the main dismantlement site, 

Pantex⎯of maintaining permanent on-site field representatives at certain high-priority sites. In 

initiating this practice, the Board built on the precedent of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

(NRC), which maintained on-site inspectors at licensed nuclear plants.526 The Board provided 

for a field presence first at Pantex⎯with two full-time representatives⎯and later at Hanford, 

Savannah River, Los Alamos, and other sites. The Board’s technical field representatives were 

charged with providing continuous feedback both to DOE site managers and to Board managers 

in Washington, DC. Weekly site representative reports and conference calls augmented the 

information from the field already regularly provided by technical staff trip reports. 

The intensified scrutiny of Pantex operations that the on-site representatives allowed 

supplemented the Board’s usual information-gathering practices for safety reviews. In 

conducting its technical reviews of weapons operations at DOE’s assembly, disassembly, and 

testing sites, the Board and staff reviewed available Tiger Team reports on health and safety 

issues at the sites, hired additional expert consultants with nuclear weapons expertise, and made 

numerous site visits, with most effort focused on Pantex, and some visits to the Y–12 plant and 

the Los Alamos National Laboratory.527 In the reviews for these sites, as well as the Nevada Test 

Site, the Board identified a need for improvement in numerous broad safety-related controls that 

it had addressed in previously issued recommendations. The Board found deficiencies in such 

525 For general background on the dismantlement mission, see Arjun Makhijani, Stephen I. Schwartz, and Robert S. 

Norris, “Dismantling the Bomb,” in Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. 

Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 326–52. 526 Glenn Russell George, “Negotiated Safety: Intragovernmental Risk Regulation in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons 

Complex” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, May 1995), 153 (accessed via Proquest). 
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multi-site safety issues as the utilization of standards, safety analysis, the operational readiness 

review process, and training and qualifications programs. As the Board had found elsewhere, it 

saw a strong need for improvement in these areas and pressed these sites to institute more 

formality in their conduct of operations. Particularly in view of ongoing losses of technical 

personnel at the sites, it urged DOE to move from a system that was relatively “expert-based” to 

a system more driven by formal conduct of operations. 

Toward Improving Safety of Weapons Disassembly: Standards and Procedural Reviews 

Some issues emerged as of particular concern at the dismantlement sites. At Pantex, the 

Board focused on the status of safety analyses and criticality analysis and requested the 

production of reports on criticality safety, as well as on radiation control practices. The Board 

also faulted DOE’s guidelines on explosive safety, finding them insufficiently attentive to the 

potential for radioactive material releases in the event of accidents in the disassembly cells.528

The Board recommended that criticality experts at Pantex participate in the Nuclear Explosive 

Safety Study Group (NESSG) that approved all weapons assembly/disassembly procedures.529

At the Y–12 plant, the Board identified inadequate compliance with orders/standards, especially 

in radiological control practices, but also in the operational readiness review (ORR) process, 

training, and contamination control practices.530 The Board requested a report from DOE 

evaluating the technical adequacy of radiological control practices at Y–12 compared with DOE 

and consensus standards, and a second report on plans to address long-standing problems of 

compliance with DOE orders. 

Drawing upon the findings of its various reviews, the Board issued one formal 

recommendation specifically applicable to dismantlement facilities, Recommendation 93–1, 

Standards Utilization in Defense Nuclear Facilities.531 This recommendation noted the 

discrepancy in nuclear safety requirements/standards between facilities that produced and 

processed fissionable materials, and those such as Pantex that assembled, disassembled, and 

527 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 49–50. 528 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 49. 529 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 49. 530 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 51. 531 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 93–1, Standards Utilization in Defense Nuclear 

Facilities (Washington, DC, January 21, 1993), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1993_ 

01.txt. 
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tested nuclear weapons. The Board recommended that DOE review its nuclear safety orders and 

directives, develop a plan to make nuclear safety assurances comparable at both types of 

facilities, and give priority to a site-wide compliance review at Pantex. 

Board activities at Pantex and other dismantling facilities involved the observation of, 

and intervention in, the processes of preparing to dismantle specific weapons systems. The Board 

sought a review process improvement that would entail, among other things, regularizing the 

practice of consulting with the laboratory weapons experts prior to the initiation of disassemby or 

dismantlement for a particular weapon type. As the designers of all U.S. nuclear weapons, 

DOE’s three national weapons laboratories⎯Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and 

Sandia⎯constituted “a unique source of information about the nuclear weapons slated for 

dismantlement.”532 The national laboratories, together with DOE management, had the 

responsibility for developing the standard operating procedures for nuclear weapons 

dismantlement at Pantex, with the laboratories having final approval authority.533 However, the 

Board found that the optimal use was not being made of laboratory expertise either in the 

formulation of procedures or in the oversight of procedural compliance. As Conway said, 

We have made some suggestions to improve on the analyses needed to prepare for 

a particular weapon that has to be disassembled. We have a group of experts 

reviewing the entire method by which DOE and the contractor at Pantex prepare 

for a particular disassembly procedure. 

We found that initially they were not bringing in laboratory personnel who had 

helped design the weapons and who had intimate knowledge of the weapons. 

They were not bringing them in as the procedures were being drafted and written 

as to how the personnel were to take the weapons apart. 

We then recommended that they not move ahead with disassembly of any specific 

weapon until bringing in the specific laboratory personnel that designed that 

weapon, and have those personnel that helped design the weapon participate in 

writing the disassembly procedures, and in effect, saying the disassembly 

procedure is not a problem.534

The Board found fault with the overall safety attitude during dismantlement operations, noting 

excessive latitude for disassembly technicians to use their judgment when an operation was not 

proceeding as expected. Alarmingly, changes to the procedures were sometimes made without 

532 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 43. 533 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 43. 534 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1995, 939. 
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the involvement of the cognizant weapons design laboratory.535 The Board urged and eventually 

saw improvement in the attitude about preparing for unanticipated difficulties. As Conway said, 

Initially, we were told, well, if we run into a problem, we will bring in the 

laboratory personnel. They would not have known beforehand if they were going 

to have a problem. You have to have this knowledge ahead of time. We have got 

the laboratory people intimately involved now.536

Advocating the increased involvment of laboratory personnel in disassembly and 

dismantling operations, the Board was instrumental in persuading DOE to expand the 

“qualification evaluation” procedure, the third of three review procedures for approving 

dismantlement operations. The first review was the operational readiness review (ORR) 

conducted by a team of contractor engineers to ensure that the necessary equipment and 

procedures to begin dismantlement were in place.537 The second review, an operational readiness 

evaluation (ORE), was a critique of the ORR conducted to confirm readiness. The third 

procedure, the Qualification Evaluation for Dismantlement Release (QED), was an additional 

review by national laboratory design engineers to verify the DOE critique, the correctness of 

disassembly procedures, and the proper handling of safety considerations. The Board sought the 

expansion of this procedure on finding persistent shortcomings in the safety aspects of DOE’s 

ORR/ORE process for particular weapons systems at Pantex.538

Knowledge Preservation: Mitigating the Loss of Safety Expertise in Weapons Operations 

After urging stepped-up involvement by national laboratory personnel to enhance the 

safety of specific disassembly operations, the Board made a broader recommendation concerning 

such personnel and other technical experts involved with weapons-related operations throughout 

the DOE complex. The Board called upon DOE to institute processes to retain access to and 

document the unique capabilities of individuals with experience in certain critical operations. 

535 See John W. Crawford Jr., An Assessment Concerning Safety at Defense Nuclear Facilities: The DOE Technical 

Personnel Problem, DNFSB/TECH–10 (Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, March 1996), 

4, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_199603.html. Crawford said of disassembly operations, “The 

procedures, while based on those provided by the weapons laboratory personnel, who are the technical experts for 

weapons operations, were being changed by personnel at Pantex without having the changes reviewed and approved 

by the weapons laboratory. 536 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1995, 939. 537 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 43. 538 Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb, 43.
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The Board was concerned about safety implications of the losses of technical personnel and 

skills from DOE and its contractors, because the safety of many critical processes depended too 

heavily on the informal knowledge of the individuals currently involved⎯technical knowledge 

that was often inadequately documented. With the downsizing of the DOE nuclear complex, the 

reduction of the nuclear stockpile, the hiatus in testing, and budget pressures, the problem of the 

loss of unique weapons and testing knowledge stood to grow worse.539

Speaking generally of the cadre of technical experts and the need to preserve their 

knowledge, Conway remarked, “It is a dwindling group. Unless we can tap that capability now, 

it will disappear on us.” He elaborated on the consequences of the loss, stating, “As experienced 

operating personnel leave, the knowledge of facility designs and contents erodes, reducing the 

margin of safety.”540 He made the further points that the losses were worsening with the 

downsizing of the weapons complex, and that an eroding skill base had especially serious 

consequences for the safety of weapons-related activities, especially disassembly and testing. As 

he stated in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on April 25, 1995,

The Board has been concerned with the loss of unique talents from DOE and its 

contractor organizations caused by the downsizing of the defense nuclear 

complex. This concern is particularly acute for the weapons laboratories and the 

facilities involved in the assembly, disassembly, and maintenance of weapons, 

where budget pressures and other constraints are leading to the severe erosion of 

the talent pools upon which much of the weapons program has depended. 

We have also been a strong supporter of maintaining technical competence within 

the laboratories. We were concerned that we were losing some of that technical 

competency, and particularly with the retirement of many of the weapons 

personnel that have intimate knowledge about design of weapons . . . .541

Conway mentioned Board action to ameliorate the erosion of technical expertise, 

including the issuance of Recommendation 93–6, Maintaining Access to Nuclear Weapons 

Expertise in the Defense Nuclear Facilities Complex, 

We made recommendations on how we can utilize the personnel that have this 

knowledge, even though they are retired, to bring them back and make sure we 

can get their knowledge down and documented for future laboratory personnel. 

539 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 93–6, Maintaining Access to Nuclear Weapons 

Expertise in the Defense Nuclear Facilities Complex (Washington, DC, December 10, 1993), http://www.dnfsb. 

gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1993_06.txt. 

540 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 108. 541 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 93–94. 
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We are fearful that this technical competence may be evaporating. . . . I do not 

want to see those laboratories lose their capabilities.542

Recommendation 93–6 urged DOE to inaugurate a formal process to document and archive the 

collective knowledge that might otherwise be lost as facilities were closed and technical 

personnel retired. In particular, the Board called upon DOE to identify the critical skills and 

unique knowledge needed for particular operations, especially operations of two types, the 

dismantlement of weapons and nuclear explosives testing. In connection with disassembly, the 

recommendation emphasized the need to develop and document procedures for the safe 

disassembly or modification of all remaining types of weapons systems while personnel with the 

requisite expertise were still available and while scattered records could still be retrieved. The 

sites targeted with this advice included the weapons dismantling site at Pantex, the Oak Ridge 

Y–12 plant, and the national weapons laboratories. Accepting the Board’s recommendation, 

DOE initiated programs at these sites to obtain and record from departing and retired personnel 

undocumented technical information that would enhance the technical knowledge of future 

personnel. The Board’s advice also spurred DOE sites to step up their archiving of engineering 

records.543 The Knowledge Preservation Program of Y–12, for example, completed in four years, 

established an electronic archive containing full-text-searchable transcripts of 239 one-to-twohour-long interviews with current and retired employees. The interviews documented key safety 

knowledge of the employees, as well as historical process knowledge for diagnostic and 

upgrading purposes.544

In connection with weapons testing⎯specifically testing at the Nevada Test Site⎯the 

Board offered similar advice on retaining and documenting expertise in case testing were 

resumed. Although nuclear testing was under a moratorium, Conway noted in hearing testimony 

that the lifting of a moratorium on testing would not be unprecedented.545 Recommendation 93–

6 called for the identification of the skills needed to conduct nuclear testing operations safely, a 

review of personnel losses at the Nevada Test Site and the nuclear weapons laboratories, and the 

542 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 93. 543 Kevin O’Neill, “Building the Bomb,” in Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of 

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 92. 544 Best Manufacturing Practices Center of Excellence, Department of Energy, Oak Ridge Operations (National 

Nuclear Security Administration–Y–12), Oak Ridge, TN (Information: Knowledge Preservation Program, January 

18, 2007), http://www.bmpcoe.org/bestpractices/internal/oakri/oakri_113.html. 
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establishment at each site of archiving and knowledge capture programs.546 The Board 

considered the capture of this information from the test site and laboratories vital to DOE’s 

capability to avoid safety problems in the event of future testing and, more generally, in the 

stewardship of the weapons stockpile, now the primary mission of the weapons laboratories. 

Board Support for Criticality Studies at the National Defense Laboratories 

In addressing the retention of technical expertise at DOE weapons-related sites, including 

the laboratories, one particular aspect of the issue singled out by the Board was the need to retain 

capabilities at the laboratories to conduct criticality experiments. The Board viewed basic 

scientific knowledge about criticality as crucial for the safe conduct of many activities in the 

weapons complex ⎯any activities involving, or potentially resulting in, a sufficient 

concentration of radioactive materials to produce a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. In the 

performance of its oversight duties, the Board encountered frequent nuclear criticality safety 

risks and deficiencies.547 For example, during routine site reviews at the Oak Ridge Y–12 plant 

in 1994, the Board observed violations of criticality safety limits in storage vaults that were 

sufficiently serious to prompt the issuance of a formal recommendation specifically addressing 

the problem at the site.548

Despite the concerns about the potential of accidental criticality events throughout the 

complex, however, the budget cutting that accompanied the downsizing of the weapons complex 

and President Clinton’s deficit-reduction efforts threatened the resources and capabilities that the 

laboratories devoted to experimental criticality studies. In 1993 the Board was apprised of 

DOE’s impending closure of the last nuclear criticality experimental facility, located at the Los 

Alamos National Laboratory.549 In response, the Board issued Recommendation 93–2, The Need 

545 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 103. 546 DNFSB, Recommendation 93–6, 2–4. 547 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Fifth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1995), 

20, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/ar_1995.html. 548 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 94–4, Deficiencies in Criticality Safety at Oak Ridge 

Y–12 Plant (Washington, DC, September 27, 1994), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_ 

1994_04.txt. See also Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Status of Highly Enriched Uranium Processing 

Capability at Building 9212 Oak Ridge Y–12 Plant, DNFSB/TECH–9 (Washington, DC, December 8, 1995), 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_19951208_or.html. 549 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Eighth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1998), 

1–10, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/ar_1998.pdf. 
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for Critical Experiment Capability, which urged DOE to take actions to retain facilities and 

criticality engineering expertise to perform general-purpose criticality experiments. Such 

experimentation was needed to improve the scientific basis for calculating margins of safety 

against runaway nuclear reactions.550 As Conway said, speaking of the laboratories and the 

threatened end of experimental criticality studies, 

Many of the recommendations we have made are to strengthen the laboratories. 

One, in particular, we found out that through lack of money they were going to 

have to close down their capability of doing criticality studies. We thought that 

was wrong. One of our major recommendations was to assure that adequate 

funding would go on for their continued work in criticality studies551

In response to Board Recommendation 93–2, DOE altered course, and formed a Nuclear 

Criticality Steering committee to reinvigorate the program of experimentation in nuclear 

criticality, identifying the Los Alamos Critical Experiments Facility (LACEF) as the research 

facility to be used for it. The Board advocated continuing support for the facility and, in 

furtherance of safety in the complex, proposed to monitor DOE’s use of critical experiment 

capability. 

The Board Weighs in on the Defense Laboratories and Stockpile Stewardship 

Besides supporting retention of the capabilities for criticality research in the DOE defense 

laboratories, the Board made a broader push to strengthen the laboratories, both through its 

advocacy for their activities and continued funding and through safety oversight of the 

laboratories’ research and development operations. The Board argued for the continuing crucial 

role of the defense laboratories, notwithstanding the change in their mission that accompanied 

the changed mission of the nuclear complex.552 The laboratories were no longer engaged in the 

design and development of new nuclear weapons. However, they had augmented research 

responsibilities relevant to safety throughout the complex, including duties in relation to the 

maintenance of the nuclear stockpile, which still consisted of more than 5,000 warheads.553 The 

550 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 93–2, The Need for Critical Experiment Capability

(Washington, DC, March 23, 1993), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1993_02.txt. 551 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 101. 552 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Arms Control, “The Stockpile Stewardship Program,” http://www.state.gov/

www/global/arms/factsheets/wmd/nuclear/ctbt/fs_991008_stockpile.html. 

553 U.S. Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, “Weapons Stewardship Presents New Challenges 

for National Labs” (Los Alamos, NM, 1996). 
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laboratories had increased responsibilities vis-à-vis the stockpile, because, in the absence of 

underground nuclear testing, laboratory research offered an alternative means to assure the 

reliability and safety of the nation’s remaining weapons. Prior to the testing suspension in 1992, 

testing was the chief means to evaluate and certify nuclear warheads.554 Absent testing, Congress 

and the Clinton administration agreed to the Stockpile Stewardship Program, a science-based 

program administered by the national laboratories, to provide basic knowledge to support “lifeextending” operations for weapons.555 In such operations, the weapons and components retained 

in the now smaller and aging stockpile underwent surveillance and periodic disassembly, 

refurbishment, reassembly, and re-certification.556 In assessing the reliability and safety of the 

weapons so handled, the Stockpile Stewardship Program drew upon past nuclear test data, 

computer modeling, experimentation, and simulations.557

The Board’s exercise of safety oversight over the stewardship activities of the 

laboratories entailed a number of special challenges. Among them were the heightened risks the 

laboratories’ activities posed. These activities involved special hazards associated with the 

nuclear explosive activities, and with experiments involving co-located high explosives and 

nuclear material.558 This co-location created the potential for explosive dispersal of radioactive 

materials or inadvertent nuclear detonation. In addition, the highly educated workforce exhibited 

a special reluctance to submit to the discipline of standards-based operations. The Board 

acknowledged some legitimacy in the laboratories’ sense of their uniqueness, and proposed to 

address it in reviews of standards, stating, 

[The] Board has recognized that there can be considerable differences between 

the conduct of R&D activities by skilled scientists and engineers in laboratories, 

and “production” activities of less skilled workers . . . . A review effort [is] 

presently underway by the Board to determine whether there may be a more 

appropriate subset of requirements for the management of safety of research and 

554 See U.S. Government Accountability Office, Nuclear Weapons: Annual Assessment of the Safety, Performance, 

and Reliability of the Nation’s Stockpile, GAO–07–243R (Washington, DC, February 2007), 1, http://www.gao.gov/

new.items/d07243r.pdf. GAO explains that certification is the process by which the weapons laboratories establish 

that a particular nuclear warhead meets the military’s required operational specifications. 555 See GAO, Nuclear Weapons, 1. With the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 

1994, Pub. L. No. 103–160, Section 3135 (1993), “Congress directed DOE to establish the Stockpile Stewardship 

Program.” 

556 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Arms Control, “The Stockpile Stewardship Program.” 557 On the Stockpile Stewardship Management Program, see U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental 

Affairs, Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, Safety and Reliability of the 

U.S. Nuclear Deterrent, 105th Cong. 1st sess., October 27, 1997, 1–12. 558 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Strategic Plan: FY 2003– 2009 (Washington, DC, November 17, 2003), 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/rcsp_2003.pdf. 
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development activities other than those now in DOE Orders, which are slanted 

more toward production and utilization facilities. . . . [T]he Board recognized that 

requirements in Orders had to be fitted to the specific facilities and sites.559

However, the Board chided the laboratories for persisting in their resistance to cooperate in the 

Board’s efforts to upgrade standards, 

While the weapons laboratories have had the opportunity to help define the safety 

related requirements that are applicable to their activities they have not 

expeditiously moved to do so . . . 

In general, the Board has found DOE nuclear safety requirements reasonably 

consistent with comparable requirements used to regulate the commercial nuclear 

industry. 

The Board would be pleased to see the laboratories operate to such standards. The 

problem is that they historically have viewed such requirements as undue 

restraints. The record is replete with examples where safety practices at the 

weapons laboratories do not meet commercial industry standards.560

Despite the difficulties of gaining full “buy-in” by the laboratories to standards-based 

operations, the Board remained a supporter of the laboratories’ work as the source of “a better 

predictive understanding of the safety and reliability of weapons.” Against the threat of budget 

cuts for the laboratories, the Board advocated bolstering their scientific and engineering 

resources and infrastructure, calling for “continuing support for specific national laboratory 

facilities that will be essential for support of the stockpile stewardship mission.” The Board 

wanted more, not less, reliance on the laboratories and “the untapped potential resident in [their] 

scientists and engineers,” 

The Board . . . believes that the existing knowledge and skill base at the 

laboratories could be better used today to help solve problems that exist 

throughout the complex.561

The Board urged greater involvement of the laboratories not only in weapons-related 

activities, but also in “the monumental task of dealing with the radioactive and hazardous wastes 

at [DOE’s] former nuclear weapons production sites and national laboratories.”562 The Board 

559 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 105. 560 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 106. 561 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 105. 562 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 104. 
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saw potential for more research in the laboratories not just on such topics as how to safely 

dismantle specific weapons, but also on how best to stabilize and package various fissionable 

materials for safe storage. As the Board noted in congressional testimony, 

For example, the Board has strongly encouraged DOE to bring to bear the 

considerable expertise at Los Alamos in stabilization of plutonium residues . . . 

The potential for the national laboratories to conduct such research and 

development is beyond argument.563

NUCLEAR MATERIALS STABILIZATION AND SAFE STORAGE: GROWING 

BOARD FOCUS FROM 1994 

The hazards posed by the remnants of weapons production⎯surplus “special nuclear 

materials” stored in an interim fashion and residual wastes⎯became a top priority for the 

Board’s attention with the end of the Cold War, a priority on a par with weapons-related 

hazards.564 The post–Cold War end of weapons production brought to the forefront the urgent 

risks associated with the huge inventory of such remnants of production⎯principally 

unencapsulated plutonium left in various forms in processing lines, high-level radioactive and 

hazardous waste in storage drums and tanks, and corroding spent radioactive fuel elements in 

water-filled reactor basins and storage pools.565 The Board, with its safety mission, was 

especially appreciative of the “serious near-term safety issues” associated with these unstable 

nuclear materials and asserted forcefully, “We have material that is in unstable form that should 

be stabilized,” lest it lead to an “inevitable spread of radioactive contamination.”566 However, the 

Board labored to persuade DOE of the immediacy of the need to put the materials in a safe and 

stable condition. Davis Hurt, an expert on the Board’s technical staff on the “materials problem” 

and safe storage, recalled some complacency on DOE’s part, stating in 1995, 

563 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 104. 564 The term “special nuclear material,” as defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (as amended) means 91) 

plutonium, uranium enriched in the isotope 233 or in the isotope 235, and any other material which the Commission, 

pursuant to the provisions of section 51, determines to be special nuclear material, but does not include source 

material; or 92) any material artificially enriched by any of the foregoing, but does not include source material. 565 For background, see Arjun Makhijani, Stephen I. Schwartz, and William J. Weida, “Nuclear Waste Management 

and Environmental Remediation,” in Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. 

Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 353–94. 566 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water 

Development, Energy and Water Development Appropriations for 1996, 104th Cong., 1st sess., January 31, 1995 

(statement of John T. Conway, “Possible Restructuring of the U.S. Department of Energy”), 917, 919–30. 
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At the time these issues were first raised . . . a year-and-a-half ago, it is fair to say 

that the Department did not agree that these problems were severe or urgent, some 

of them anyway . . . Agreement that the problem is bad is getting better, but actual 

action on it is still leaving a lot to be desired. 

I think there has been a tendency on some people’s parts in DOE to think that 

storage is a simple thing, that you produced the plutonium, you separated it from 

the spent fuel, you have made components out of it. Those were difficult things 

and storage is a simple thing, maybe not even requiring much thought.567

Conway was also unimpressed with the urgency that DOE initially displayed in addressing the 

problems of stabilizing and storing radioactive waste. Speaking of tank sampling and waste 

characterization efforts at Hanford, he said, 

At the rate they were going, it would have been 100 years before they would have 

characterized what was in the tanks, and you have to do that before we can even 

get to the point of how we are going to treat the waste.568

The Board’s alarm about the unstabilized legacy materials, particularly plutonium wastes, 

and its desire to convey its concern to DOE prompted the Board to order the first in its series of 

technical reports, a series consisting of three dozen reports by 2009. Board staff released the indepth report, Plutonium Storage Safety at Major Department of Energy Facilities, in April 1994. 

The report, whose principal authors were Davis Hurt and the Board’s technical director, Dr. 

George W. (Woody) Cunningham, described technical issues and safety vulnerabilities 

associated with the special nuclear material and the radioactive production residues and waste 

existing in drums, tanks, process lines, and storage facilities throughout DOE’s nuclear 

complex.569 The report also discussed standards for stabilizing and storing plutonium materials. 

On its release, the report elicited more than 500 requests for copies, suggesting the magnitude of 

public, if not DOE, concern with the radioactive remnants of weapons production. 

The Board judged that the pace of DOE’s planned actions for dealing with the materials 

problem did not reflect its urgency. Drawing on its staff report and other investigations, the 

Board formulated one of its most important formal recommendations, Recommendation 94–1, 

Improved Schedule for Remediation in the Defense Nuclear Complex. Issued on May 26, 1994, 

567 Public Meetings and Hearings, 1995, Before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, vol. I of II 

(Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 1995), 17–19. 568 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1995, 937. 569 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Plutonium Storage Safety at Major Department of Energy Facilities, 

DNFSB/TECH–1 (Washington, DC, April 14, 1994), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_19940414.html. 
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94–1 was the Board’s first set of recommendations concerning the overall problem of surplus 

nuclear materials and residual waste. The recommendation urged DOE to accelerate the 

remediation of surplus fissionable and other radioactive material, calling upon it to establish a 

program to characterize, stabilize, and provide for its safe longer-term interim storage⎯storage 

of some 50 years. At issue were thousands of kilograms of unstable residues⎯plutonium in 

troublesome forms, solid and liquid, and some 2,100 metric tons of corroding spent fuel stored in 

basins at various sites, especially the basins at Hanford, but also the Savannah River Site and the 

Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. 

In Recommendation 94–1, the Board identified what it considered to be the highestpriority health and safety risks posed by the legacy of radioactive materials, listing the top 

stabilization and storage concerns for stepped-up action according to a prioritization scheme 

based on risk characteristics. As Conway said of 94–1 and its risk-based prioritization, 

We have in our Recommendation 94–1 identified what this Board believes to be 

the most hazardous from the point of present danger to the workers at the plants 

because much of the material is in an unstable form.570

In Recommendation 94–1, the Board specifically advised: “that an integrated program plan be 

formulated on a high priority basis, to convert within two to three years the materials,” 

⎯especially plutonium metal that is in contact with, or in proximity to, plastic⎯“to forms or 

conditions suitable for safe interim storage.” The Board also called upon DOE to expedite efforts 

to remove and properly store degrading spent fuel from their storage pools. The recommendation 

added that DOE’s plan “will require attention to limiting worker exposure and minimizing 

generation of additional waste and emission of effluents to the environment.” It stated further 

that the plan “should include a provision that, within a reasonable period of time (such as eight 

years), all storage of plutonium metal and oxide should be in conformance with the DOE 

standard on storage of plutonium.” In addition, 94–1 recommended the establishment of a 

research program reliant on the national laboratories “to address alternate processes to be used in 

safe conversion of various types of special nuclear materials to optimal forms for safe interim 

storage and longer term disposition.”571 Finally, 94–1 stated that DOE’s plan for stabilization of 

570 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 95. 571 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 105. 
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special nuclear material should be founded on systems engineering, drawing on the integrated 

use of facilities and capabilities at all of DOE’s sites. 

In responding to 94–1, DOE committed to a schedule of actions to accomplish the 

stabilization and safe packaging of a broad spectrum of radioactive and chemically unstable 

residues and transuranic materials.572 On receiving DOE’s plan in 1995, the Board devoted 

considerable time that year to follow-up activities, including four public meetings. These 

meetings involved briefings to the Board at its headquarters conducted by its technical staff on 

plutonium storage issues and on spent nuclear fuel problems, a briefing at Rocky Flats on 

historical accidents involving plutonium and the storage of plutonium metals, oxides, and 

liquids, and a briefing at Savannah River on the safe handling of spent nuclear fuel. The briefings 

addressed the magnitude of the materials problem, the reason it had reached its acute level, and 

the prospect for further deterioration absent immediate corrective action. The briefings also 

addressed possible technical solutions to the preparation of materials, the preparation of storage 

containers, plans for the surveillance of stored materials, and, for the longer term, plans to 

upgrade or construct facilities to process materials for long-term interim or permanent storage, 

e.g., through vitrification. 

In the briefings, a number of presenters explained that the materials problem became 

severe when the sudden cutoff of weapons production nearly at its peak had frozen a great deal 

of material in the manufacturing pipeline or, in the case of spent fuels, left it in basins longer 

than planned. When weapons production was intensive, the plutonium-rich materials in the 

production lines were, as Cunningham put it, “recovered on a short turn-around time so that the 

plutonium would be available for weapons production.”573 However, the production cutoff ended 

this recycling through the production facilities. At the same time, because the cutoff was 

expected to be short term, the in-process material was left in a state not suitable for storage of 

any duration. As Hurt said, 

They buttoned up the plutonium as best they could in a very hasty fashion not 

realizing of course . . . that over five years later these materials would still be in 

the same places. Plutonium was left in forms that were not stable, not intended for 

long-term storage. Packaging was ad hoc, not carefully recorded . . . and not 

suitable to multi-year storage.574

572 The secretary of energy accepted Recommendation 94–1 in late-August 1994, and DOE submitted an acceptable 

Implementation Plan in February 1995. 

573 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 12. 574 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 17–19. 
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For spent fuels, as the Board’s staff report stated, a similar change in normal handling 

practices occurred when production abruptly stopped, with similarly negative consequences for 

safety, 

When weapons production was at its peak, in-basin residence time of irradiated 

fuel elements was relatively short—only long enough to permit the short-lived 

volatile and gaseous fission products to decay and radiation levels to drop to the 

point that the fuel elements could be handled with less danger to the workers and 

less radiation damage to processing chemicals . . . . 

When production was stopped in the late 1980s, the spent fuel elements remaining 

in the fuel storage basins were simply left in place. Longer in-basin residence 

times . . . promote greater penetration by basin water and resultant corrosion.575

Board technical staff members detailed the near-term safety consequences of these changes in 

materials handling for the Board in early 1995, with Hurt speaking on plutonium residues and J. 

Kent Fortenberry speaking on spent fuel vulnerabilities. 

Hurt, the lead author on the Board’s technical report, stated that the material of concern 

included “20,000 or so kilograms of separated unencapsulated plutonium, observing, “It 

surprises a lot of people that there is so much material in the pipeline⎯so much material that 

was removed from the irradiated fuel, but not yet fabricated into weapon components.” He added 

that he was speaking mostly about Rocky Flats, 

We believe that Rocky Flats has the worst problems . . . by a large margin. Rocky 

Flats has the most plutonium. They have the most types of problems. They have 

the most serious problems, we believe, in terms of risk to life and limb of workers 

as a minimum. They also have we think the least capability for dealing with those 

problems in the near future. 

In outlining the risks that these materials posed, he began with the worst-case scenario⎯the type 

of incident that had occurred as a result of major fires in the past⎯a scenario involving off-site 

releases of radioactive contamination, 

The thing we fear the most is a massive fire that breaches the containment of the 

building either by burning the thing down or completely knocking out the 

ventilation system.576

Short of large-scale off-site releases, the materials posed numerous other risks, as 

documented in DOE occurrence reports. Often the packaging⎯much of it involving 

575 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Review of the Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel Project, DNFSB/TECH–17 

(Washington, DC, October 1997), 2-1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/hanford/tr_199710_hd.pdf. 
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plastic⎯was “now decomposing and producing hydrogen,” which built up pressure inside drums 

and other storage containers. Improperly stored plutonium was known for “catching on fire, 

setting other things on fire, off-gassing . . . even causing small chemical explosions, explosions 

of flammable gasses.”577 Hurt mentioned, “Containers that rupture, containers that have fires in 

them and are found burned out afterwards, even flashing and sparking as containers are opened.” 

He added, “These kinds of incidents are becoming more common,” and pointed to a recent 

incident “where a drum of plutonium-bearing waste exploded, scattered debris around, and 

contaminated the two workers standing nearby.”578 Other on-site risks included criticality 

accidents and worker exposure from leaks, as Hurt noted, 

A sizeable amount of this material is concentrations that could go critical . . . . 

Criticality safety is the most serious concern just because a criticality accident 

would probably be fatal in a plant like that. There was a near accident two or three 

months ago [that] illustrates Mr. Crawford’s point about . . . poorly trained 

operators. 

[An operator] was draining solution. . . . Luckily there wasn’t quite enough 

solution in the line . . . but he was filling bottles with solution that was in the 

criticality danger range and he was putting these bottles side by side in the glove 

box. That is what I would say is a near miss. 

The lines are mostly overhead [with] people walking back and forth under the 

lines . . . . Leaks and line ruptures are frequent events. Plutonium solution gets 

dripped and sprayed around. They haven’t sampled most of this material since 

1989. 

The tanks are in an area that is operated manually. People turn valves and read 

sight glasses with their faces right up against these tanks.579

Serious hazards of a somewhat different variety attended spent nuclear fuel storage, as 

described by Kent Fortenberry, the Board’s technical staff lead on the K-East Basin at Hanford. 

Fortenberry listed, 

Chronic leakage, seepage, seismic vulnerability which can lead to more 

catastrophic leakage, and also lead to structural damage of the fuel and, possible 

criticality conditions as, for instance, superstructure falls into these basins.580

576 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 22. 577 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 20. 578 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 24. 579 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 51–52. 580 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 120. 
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He added, remarking on the remediation difficulties posed by these conditions, “As the fuel 

continues to degrade and deteriorate, it becomes more difficult to handle. In some cases, it 

becomes difficult to stabilize.”581 The failure to stabilize severely corroding fuel elements posed 

risks not only to workers involved in surveillance and cleanup, but also to the environment. In 

the case of Hanford’s K-East and K-West basins, which received all the spent fuel from 

Hanford’s N-reactor, leakage could threaten the Columbia River, only a few hundred yards 

away.582 Such leakage, already detected for a time from K-East, could become catastrophic if the 

structural integrity of the basins were severely compromised, e.g., by an earthquake, not an 

implausible event at Hanford. 

This litany of hazards stood to grow continually worse, as all associated with the Board 

emphasized. Cunningham summarized the situation, 

As a result of stopping production, DOE is now faced with handling material of 

unknown characteristics that is improperly packaged and that can only degrade 

and become a worse problem the longer there is inaction by DOE.583

Board member Dr. Herbert J. C. Kouts concurred, adding that the continuing loss of technical 

personnel compounded the urgency of corrective action on nuclear materials hazards, 

The longer this takes before it is done, the greater the problem that will occur, not 

only because of greater deterioration of facilities, but because of greater loss of 

information among the people who are going to have to do the work. 

We know of numerous cases of body burden from plutonium by people who have 

been affected by accidents . . . by containers that have ruptured, by gloves that 

have ruptured in glove box operations, by minor fires . . . . the longer the time 

passes before things are done, the greater the problem is going to be.584

Given the severity of the materials problem and deteriorating storage conditions, the 

Board saw delay as a safety issue of concern and gave high priority to pressing DOE to meet its 

obligations under its implementation plan for 94–1. The Board acknowledged improvement in 

DOE’s commitment to corrective actions, but still deplored the slow pace with which DOE 

accomplished the remediation of various nuclear materials hazards. Kouts commented on this 

slow pace, mentioning how progress was hampered by sheer built-in difficulties of the tasks, 

581 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 120–21. See also Gerber, 246. 582 On the K-East and K-West basins, see Gerber 244, 246–47. 583 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 12–13. 584 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 300. 
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including the necessity for the workers always to take time-consuming radiation protection 

measures, 

We have noticed . . . when we have gone through the facilities . . . very extensive 

operations . . . on radiation protection that consume a lot of time and we have 

been told that the normal useful amount of time they get out of the shift worker in 

these facilities is something like three hours per shift.585

Another serious obstacle to rapid progress⎯one expected to hamper the removal of fuel 

elements from basins⎯was sludge at the bottom of the basins.586 As Conway said, speaking of 

his encounter with the problem at Hanford in 1993, 

Once you start moving fuel, you stir up the bottom, and it gets very cloudy. The 

amount of sludge and dirt in the bottom of these basins was worse than I had ever 

seen any other place. In fact, the first time I went into that basin with another 

Board member, I had never been in a more dirty place . . . . I had never been in a 

place before where I had to take off every stitch of clothing I had on before I went 

in because I couldn’t wear anything out that I wore in there.587

Notwithstanding such inherent hindrances to materials stabilization, the Board viewed the 

technical challenges involved as generally surmountable and pressed DOE for progress on its 

especially critical commitments. Notable among these commitments was the removal of the 

deteriorating spent fuel from Hanford’s K-East Basin, in Conway’s words, “one of the worst 

tanks at any site.”588 Board pressure was the catalyst that prompted DOE to develop the Spent 

Nuclear Fuel Project, a key element of the implementation plan for Recommendation 94–1. The 

project was a comprehensive plan for the expeditious removal of the deteriorating spent nuclear 

fuel stored in the K-reactor basins, the stabilization of the fuel by suitable processes, and its 

placement in dry interim storage on-site pending its ultimate disposition. The Spent Nuclear Fuel 

Project was predicated on an aggressive schedule, in keeping with the urgency it deserved⎯fuel 

retrieval between 1997 and 1999. As the Board later said of the project in a follow-on 

585 Public Meetings, 1995, vol. I of II, 55. 586 On the challenge of sludge, see Gerber, 247–48. 587 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and 

Investigations. Department of Energy’s Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel Project, 105th Congress, 2d sess., May 12, 

1998, 111. 

588 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1995, 937. 
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recommendation to 94–1⎯Recommendation 2000–1, Prioritization for Stabilizing Nuclear 

Materials⎯“Progress toward remediation seemed adequate for a time.”589

In the same source, Recommendation 2000–1, the Board also gave a generally positive 

assessment of some stabilization initiatives apart from the Spent Nuclear Fuel Project. In the 

Board’s judgment, “A great deal [was] accomplished in meeting the safety objectives set forth in 

Recommendation 94–1, particularly with regard to those materials that constituted the most 

imminent hazards.” The Board listed numerous corrective actions that DOE had implemented 

successfully. In connection with storage, DOE had mitigated the most immediate and greatest 

hazards, such as the packaging of plutonium metals and oxides in contact with plastic that had 

the potential to generate hydrogen gas. DOE made progress in removing plutonium from 

potentially dispersible solutions and storing it as more stable metal or oxides. Relocated 

materials were repackaged in more robust and better researched storage containers, mitigating 

issues of leakage and easing surveillance risks. Additionally, DOE made progress on cleaning 

out highly contaminated buildings.590

The Board recognized DOE’s work on the handling of conditions and situations the 

Board had identified as imminent risks. The Board acknowledged notable progress on near-term 

corrective actions for “high-risk items,” and some easing of the immediate concerns that had 

prompted the issuance of Recommendation 94–1. As Dr. A.J. Eggenberger recalled when he was 

serving as the Board’s acting chairman, 

We asked . . . that actions be taken to stabilize those materials which caused the 

most risk to the people and to the workers . . . .They did that up to a point. They 

did the high-risk items.591

Eggenberger added the proviso, however, that DOE showed weakness in its ability to prioritize 

corrective actions beyond the short-term. The Board anticipated this problem even as it issued 

94–1, citing among other causes for the problem the sheer enormity of the remediation task 

facing DOE. At one point, the GAO mentioned 7,000 facilities, which included only those 

destined for decommissioning and decontamination upon the completion of shutdown activities 

589 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 2000–1, Prioritization for Stabilizing Nuclear 

Materials (Washington, DC, January 14, 2000), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_2000_ 

01.pdf. See also Gerber, 241. 590 DNFSB, Recommendation 2000–1, Prioritization for Stabilizing Nuclear Materials. 591 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and 

Investigations, A Review of Ongoing Management Concerns at Los Alamos National Laboratory, 109th Cong., 1st 

sess., May 5, 2005, 46. 
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over the next 30 years.592 The monumental stabilization task confronting DOE put a premium on 

establishing priorities among the risks to address. The task also demanded⎯for sustained 

momentum⎯longer-term planning about the operational capabilities that needed to be preserved, 

upgraded, or newly provided in order to accomplish stabilization. Finally, the task required the 

integration of activities and resources within sites and across sites. In emphasizing the need in 

DOE for a longer and wider view, the Board often held up one particular example as a serious 

planning mistake⎯the decommissioning of the PUREX plant at Hanford in 1990. This closure 

had long-lasting and broad ripple effects, because it deprived Hanford of the capability of 

chemically processing its irradiated uranium fuel on-site. The spent fuel “was left stranded” in 

the seismically vulnerable and leak prone K-East and K-West storage basins. 

The planning failure represented by the PUREX closure was the kind of mistake that the 

Board targeted in its inclusion in 94–1 of a particular subrecommendation, the advice on 

adopting a systems engineering approach. The Board anticipated that the major stumbling block 

and challenge for DOE in carrying through on the commitments made under 94–1 would lie in 

sustaining the effort and accomplishing actions that required longer-term planning. Expecting 

this challenge, the Board advocated a systems approach, a point that Conway highlighted in a 

1996 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, 

Recommendation 94–1 stated that DOE’s plan for stabilization of special nuclear 

material should be founded on systems engineering, drawing on the integrated use 

of facilities and capabilities at all of DOE’s sites.593

Elaborating, he said, “We have thousands of facilities out there,” 

Eventually, you have to decide, as for the systems approach, what we are going to 

do with that particular facility or material you get out. It is a major problem . . . . 

So, it is a matter of selecting on a priority basis. The Board can suggest you do it 

on a priority basis—what is the most hazardous right now? 

. . . We have to take a look at each and every one of the sites and set priorities. I 

start first with the priority of the current danger, and that is the stability of some 

of the material that is out there. This is something one of our recommendations 

addresses, 94–1, that the Department of Energy determine at each of its locations 

what is the most dangerous materials right now that we have to stabilize . . . Then 

we have to . . . set a priority at each site . . . through a systems approach of what 

592 U.S. General Accounting Office, Department of Energy: Cleaning Up Inactive Facilities Will Be Difficult,

GAO/RCED–93–149 (Washington, DC, June 1993). 

593 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 105. 
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we . . . clean up. Then each site having done that, there has to be some way that 

headquarters can look at each of the various sites and then set priorities among the 

sites. But that has to be done by people who are technically competent to do this. 

It has to be done in [that] way that no matter what the political flack may be.594 

Conway was asked by a Senator on the committee, “Now, is that being done? . . . . Is the statute 

recommending that that is the direction we need to go in?” Conway replied, 

The answer is, no, it is not being done properly as of now. We are still in the stage 

of trying to set priorities from the point of individual sites and particularly with 

regard to priorities of their most dangerous materials and situations out there 

now.595

594 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 108. 595 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1996, 95–96. 
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CHAPTER 6: INTEGRATION: THE BOARD’S WATCHWORD FOR THE 

LONGER TERM 

After the fifth year of operations, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB or 

the Board) shifted gears in its oversight activities for the second time, albeit with a less clearly 

demarcated adjustment than the reorientation at the end of the Cold War. The Board’s second 

shift of focus involved a greater emphasis on assisting the Department of Energy (DOE) to 

improve the integration and longer-term coherence of its safety-related efforts in the DOE 

nuclear complex. As the Board stated in 2003 in its Thirteenth Annual Report to Congress, 

A review . . . shows that in the early years, the Board focused on ensuring that 

safety standards and DOE’s technical competence were adequate, while at the 

same time trying to ensure that operational safety issues were dealt with 

expeditiously. Once adequate safety standards were in place, the Board focused 

more explicitly on DOE’s safety management activities, on continuing 

improvement in conduct of operations, and on ensuring the integration of safety 

principles into design, construction, and decommissioning activities.596

The Board’s second shift of focus followed its fifth-year self-assessment of its accomplishments 

and shortfalls in improving nuclear safety, and reflected the Board’s judgment about how to 

make further progress in its safety mission. 

The Board conducted a fifth-year self-assessment in fulfillment of a statutory obligation 

laid out in the legislation that created the Board. Congress required the Board to include in its 

fifth annual report “an assessment of the degree to which the overall administration of the 

Board’s activities are believed to meet the objectives of Congress in establishing the Board,” as 

well as the Board’s “recommendations for continuation, termination, or modification of the 

Board’s functions and programs . . . .”597 In responding to the requirement to weigh the Board’s 

effectiveness, the Board mentioned considerable success in gaining DOE’s cooperation and in 

furthering its resolution of safety issues, particularly narrower, site-specific issues. In the fifth 

year review and other self-assessments, the Board also affirmed its success in getting DOE to 

take corrective action on the many imminent risks exposed or aggravated throughout the 

596 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Thirteenth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 

2003), 1–3, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 597 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Fifth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 1995), 

n.p., http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. In 1994, in preparation for the fifth-year selfassessment, the Board held nine public hearings to solicit the views of interested persons on the Board’s 

effectiveness and possible changes to the Board. Eight of the hearings were held near DOE defense nuclear 

facilities. 
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complex after the shutdown of weapons production. The main frustration that the Board 

identified around the time of the fifth-year review, however, was the slowness with which DOE 

implemented the commitments it made in response to Board recommendations, particularly the 

commitments concerning the Board’s two most crucial complex-wide recommendations, the 

recommendations on standards and on the technical personnel problem⎯Recommendation 90–2, 

Design, Construction, Operation and Decommissioning Standards at Certain Priority DOE 

Facilities, and Recommendation 93–3, Improving DOE Technical Capability in Defense Nuclear 

Facilities Programs. Speaking of the problem of the timeliness of DOE’s issue resolution, the 

Board said, 

The primary difficulty the Board has encountered in the first five years is not with 

obtaining requested safety information, identifying significant safety problems 

requiring DOE attention, developing recommendations, or having the Secretary of 

Energy accept them. Those functions of the Board have been successfully 

executed in accordance with Congressional objectives. The problem centers on 

subsequent inaction and failure to implement recommendations and corrective 

measures in a timely manner.598

In considering this problem of the inadequate pace of DOE’s corrective actions, the 

Board’s diagnosis was not that the Board lacked the requisite statutory powers to enforce action 

or was otherwise misconceived. When called upon, as in the fifth-year review, to address its 

powers, the Board remained a steadfast defender of existing oversight arrangements and of the 

adequacy of its “action-forcing” authority. Rather than through statutory changes, the Board saw 

promise for improved timeliness and completeness of DOE’s corrective actions through the 

increased integration of DOE’s safety-related activities, and the more consistent application of 

the principles of systems engineering and other tools by which the huge array of safety-related 

tasks facing DOE could be prioritized and more efficiently structured. 

The Board’s strategy to assist DOE further did not entail a retreat from the Board’s 

ongoing efforts to urge the resolution of previously identified safety issues and the acceleration 

of earlier initiatives. The Board continued to press DOE for improvement on the disparate 

corrective actions thus far agreed upon, especially in the problematic areas of personnel and 

standards. However, the Board also sought to assist DOE in establishing frameworks⎯structured 

ways of proceeding⎯in which to recast piecemeal actions as part of more comprehensive efforts 

and longer-term strategies to ensure safety in the weapons complex. One key Board initiative 
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along these lines was the Board’s promotion of a concept and approach, Integrated Safety 

Management (ISM), for integrating actions to mitigate different kinds of hazards⎯nuclear, 

chemical, and physical⎯affecting different sectors⎯the public, workers, and the 

environment⎯in a more comprehensive picture. 

INTEGRATED SAFETY MANAGEMENT (ISM): ESTABLISHMENT, FOLLOW-UP 

Integration became the Board’s watchword for how to achieve more timely safety issue 

resolutions and more thorough safety improvements complex-wide when the Board issued 

Recommendation 95–2, Safety Management, in 1995, “one of the most encompassing” of the 

Board’s recommendations.599 As the Board later described the recommendation, it “encouraged 

DOE to build on the successes gained” in implementing two key recommendations issued earlier, 

Recommendation 90–2, on standards, and Recommendation 93–3, on the technical personnel 

problem.600 Building on these successes, DOE was urged to “develop safety management 

programs for its defense nuclear facilities that integrated public protection, worker safety, and 

environmental protection into the work process.”601 In the words of Board member Joseph J. 

DiNunno, 

The major thrust of this recommendation was to bring the many safety-related 

directives, implementation efforts, and related new initiatives into a more 

cohesive, integrated, and effective safety management program, with clearer lines 

of responsibility and authority defined for its execution.602

ISM evolved from Recommendation 95–2, from DOE’s 1996 implementation plan for 

95–2, and from a technical report authored by DiNunno, DNFSB/TECH–16, Integrated Safety 

Management, which amplified the recommendation with a detailed discussion of what could be 

accomplished through ISM. ISM was a safety management program that provided a structured 

598 DNFSB, Fifth Annual Report to Congress, 69. 599 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 95–2, Safety Management (Washington, DC, October 

11, 1995), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_1995_02.html. The recommendation 

superseded Recommendations 90–2 and 92–5. 

600 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board Regarding Regulation of DOE’s Defense Nuclear Facilities (Washington, DC, November 1998), 10, 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc_199811.html. 

601 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and Power, 

Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the Department of Energy, 106th Congress, 2d sess., March 22, 2000, 

17, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_house_hearings&docid=f:64031.pdf. Also, 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/ts_20000322_multi.pdf. 
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way to make safety planning an integral part of the planning and execution of work activities at 

all levels. DiNunno, who authored the technical report and was instrumental in the development 

of ISM, also described it as a means to circumvent the “stovepipes” that had developed 

historically to handle various aspects of safety in the weapons complex.603 Instead of multiple, 

unintegrated programs⎯e.g., separate protective programs for the public, for workers, and for 

the environment⎯ISM represented an attempt to provide a single safety management program. 

Through ISM, a structured, comprehensive approach to performing work safely, the Board 

encouraged DOE to identify good practices developed for each of the sectors to be protected—

the public, workers, and the environment—as well as the major types of hazards—nuclear and 

non-nuclear—and to effect these practices as an integrated system in which safety controls were 

incorporated in advance in every activity.604

The basic tenets of ISM, as stated in DOE’s 1996 Implementation Plan and captured in 

DOE Policy 450.4, Safety Management System Policy, included five core safety management 

functions.605 Often cited by Board members, these commonsense but crucial functions were to: 

• define the scope of work, 

• analyze the hazards, 

• develop and implement hazard controls, 

• perform work within controls, and 

• provide feedback and continuous improvement. 

ISM also institutionalized guiding management principles that constituted the basis for a safetyconscious and efficient organization, including: 

• line management responsibility for safety, 

• competence commensurate with responsibility, and 

• identification of safety standards and requirements appropriate to the task 

at hand. 

In a March 2000 congressional hearing, during which Board Chairman John T. Conway 

described progress in the implementation of ISM by contractors, he characterized features that 

would mark the system’s implementation: 

602 Joseph J. DiNunno, Integrated Safety Management, DNFSB/TECH–16 (Washington, DC: Defense Nuclear 

Facilities Safety Board, June 1997), iii, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/tr_199706.pdf. 603 DiNunno, Integrated Safety Management, 3/15. 604 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009 (Washington, DC, November 17, 2003), 

8, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rcsp_2003.pdf. 
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• site-wide nuclear safety requirements, mutually agreed upon by DOE and 

contractor(s) as applicable to the work performed, 

• establishment by the contractors of manuals of practices reflecting the 

requirements established, 

• safety planning as an integral part of work planning, 

• safety and hazards analysis with safety measures tailored to the hazards of the 

operations involved, 

• qualification and training of personnel commensurate with safety 

responsibilities assigned, and 

• assessments and feedback for improvements performed.606

During the tenure of Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary, DOE committed to establishing 

the ISM system for an initial group of 10 operational defense nuclear facilities.607 Her successor, 

Secretary Federico Peña, made the implementation of the concept a requirement for all of DOE’s 

highly hazardous activities, nuclear and non-nuclear, in the complex.608 In 1998 Secretary Bill 

Richardson voiced strong support for ISM, calling in 1999 for its implementation at every DOE 

facility in the DOE nuclear complex by September 2000.609 The commitment to ISM was to be 

met at each site through the implementation of an Integrated Safety Management System, which 

would include functional area safety management programs such as radiation control, hazard 

analysis, configuration management, electrical safety, training, and others. The programs were 

typically to be set forth in the contractors’ manuals of practice. 

The Board closely tracked the field implementation of ISM, holding some 10 public 

meetings between 1997 and 2001 to address DOE’s progress and to solicit the feedback that was 

crucial to continuous improvement in both safety and efficiency. In the March 2000 hearing, 

Conway offered his view of the Board’s accomplishments in assisting DOE in its safety 

practices, pointing in the main to achievements related to the implementation of ISM. 

605 Interview, John E. Mansfield, Board vice chairman (since 2007; Board member, 1997–present), Washington, DC, 

August 25, 2008. See also Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Ninth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, 

DC, February 1999), 2-3, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 606 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 18. 

607 On Integrated Safety Management, see the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety and Security 

(HSS) Integrated Safety Management (ISM) Web Site: http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ism/. DOE’s Office 

of Health, Safety and Security was created in the summer of 2006. 608 DNFSB, Ninth Annual Report to Congress, 2-3. Peña, the eighth secretary of energy, who served from March 12, 

1997 to June 30, 1998, also issued DOE Policy 450.6, Secretarial Policy Statement: Environment, Safety and 

Health. 609 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Tenth Annual Report (Washington, DC, February 2000), 2-2, 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 
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In our Tenth Annual Report to Congress issued in February 2000, the Board noted 

significant progress by the DOE in upgrading its safety management program and 

practices at defense nuclear facilities . . . . Using its action forcing powers, the 

Board has been able to help reorient DOE’s safety program and to set it on a 

course that: 

• Places more reliance on standards that define good practices and less 

reliance upon expert-based safety management; 

• Makes work planning and safety planning an integrated process; 

• Treats public, worker, and environmental protection as an integrated 

process; 

• Treats radioactive and nonradioactive hazards in an integrated fashion in 

establishing controls; and 

• Tailors safety measures to the hazards involved.610

One concrete indicator of the progress made in implementing ISM was the number of 

authorization agreements executed between DOE and its contractors specifying the contractor’s 

proposed means for conducting work safely. The Board introduced the concept of authorization 

agreements⎯similar to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses for commercial nuclear 

facilities⎯in a technical report authored by DiNunno in 1995, Fundamentals for Understanding 

Standards-Based Management of Department of Energy Defense Nuclear Facilities.611 Such 

agreements, as viewed by Board member John E. Mansfield, were designed to counter an old 

problem, namely, “while DOE had good standards, they were not written into contracts as 

contractually binding requirements.” 612 Authorization agreements included the contractor’s 

commitments, which were contractually binding, to conduct specified work activities in 

accordance with specific terms and conditions. The Board’s Ninth Annual Report to Congress

described the benefits of such agreements or sets of control measures, stating, 

Authorization agreements (similar to the licenses of commercial nuclear facilities) 

greatly facilitate the identification, implementation, and maintenance of safety 

controls needed to prevent an accidental release of radioactive materials in or 

from the work place, or mitigate the consequences of an accident if one should 

occur.613

610 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 27. 

611 Joseph J. DiNunno, “Fundamentals for Understanding Standards-Based Safety Management of DOE Defense 

Nuclear Facilities,” DNFSB/TECH–5 (paper prepared for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Public 

Meeting On Standards-Based Safety Management, Washington, DC, May 31, 1995), http://www.hss.doe.gov/

deprep/archive/techrpts/bm95u13b.htm. 

612 Interview, Mansfield. 613 DNFSB, Ninth Annual Report, 2–10. 
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By late 1999, as an outcome of ISM activity, more than 100 Authorization Agreements were in 

place in the weapons complex, serving as a substantive measure of successful ISM 

implementation.614

ISM implementation remained an ongoing focus of monitoring by the Board, which 

exerted additional pressure when it observed flagging efforts by DOE. In a typical intervention, 

the Board, for example, formally notified the DOE acting assistant secretary for environmental 

management in September 2004 of its concern that the “Integrated Safety Management (ISM) 

System for the Hanford tank farms [was] failing to control work activities adequately.” The 

Board attributed several recent safety-related events at Hanford to a decrease in the effectiveness 

of the existing Hanford tank farm ISM System, observing, 

This concern has been engendered by a series of occurrences, incidents, near 

misses, and other operational events indicating serious weaknesses in work 

planning, conduct of operations, and responses to abnormal events or unexpected 

conditions. A prime example is the recent event where controls on worker 

exposure failed and a worker received an excessive and unexpected extremity 

exposure. . . . It would be an oversimplification to assign a single cause (e.g., 

accelerated cleanup) to these occurrences in light of their variety. However, the 

number of serious events at the tank farms is not to be expected at a project with a 

mature and effective ISM System . . . lasting success in implementing an effective 

ISM System at the tank farms has not been apparent.615

In response to the perception that ISM implementation was lagging in some places, the Board 

issued Recommendation 2004–1, Oversight of Complex, High-Hazard Nuclear Operations, 

whose thrust in part was to reinvigorate DOE’s ISM implementation efforts.616 Board member R. 

Bruce Matthews, DiNunno’s successor, also authored a follow-on report to DiNunno’s technical 

report on ISM, entitling the new report Integrated Safety Management: The Foundation of a 

Successful Safety Culture, DNFSB/TECH–36.617 The Board remained convinced of ISM’s 

614 DNFSB, Tenth Annual Report, 2–8. 615 Letter to Paul M. Golan, Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy, 

September 8, 2004, from John T. Conway, Chairman, DNFSB, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/correspondence/

hanford/cor_20040908_hd.pdf. 

616 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Fifteenth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 

2005), 5-2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/ar_2005.pdf. 617 Matthews, a Ph.D. materials scientist joined the Board in 2003. He had 30 years of experience in nuclear 

technologies, specializing in special nuclear materials, weapons plutonium, and nuclear reactor fuels. He also had 

experience managing nuclear facilities, notably, at Los Alamos National Laboratory. See U.S Department of Energy, 

Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “R. Bruce Matthews: Biography,” http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/ 

members/matthew.htm. 
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importance, as was reaffirmed in 2009 by Board Chairman Dr. A. J. Eggenberger. At a 

congressional hearing, Eggenberger stated, 

Shortcomings in safety and efficiency in the operation of . . . defense nuclear 

facilities can almost always be related to a failure to apply Integrated Safety 

Management.618

REVISITING CONGRESS’S REGULATORY COMPROMISE: 1995–2000 

As the Board devoted major energies to the oversight of ISM implementation, the Board 

effectively demonstrated its confidence that such implementation would go a long way to 

alleviating the persistent complex-wide safety deficiencies that the Board identified when it took 

stock of its effectiveness in its fifth-year self-assessment. However, the pace of change and the 

emergence of additional problems in the complex, especially with the cost and continual 

slippages in the cleanup program frustrated many executive-branch and legislative staff, 

prompting renewed calls for stronger external oversight of these programs. By the mid-1990s, 

the Board was compelled to address a variety of proposals that envisioned a very different means 

to remedy DOE’s safety and environmental deficiencies, namely, external regulation of the DOE 

defense nuclear complex. 

DOE’s continuing problems⎯including its slow responses to Board recommendations⎯

revived discussion in both the legislative and executive branches about the best approach to 

regulating the DOE nuclear weapons complex. Congress had anticipated that this question would 

be revisited when it formulated the regulatory compromise embodied in the Board’s authorizing 

statute. As mentioned, this statute required the Board to provide its views on, among other 

things, whether its statutory powers were sufficiently robust, as part of its fifth annual report to 

Congress. Although the Board consistently affirmed its preference for the current 

recommendation process over more formal regulatory mechanisms, others took DOE’s 

difficulties and dilatory responses to the Board as evidence supporting the need for legal and/or 

organizational changes to the oversight regime in the weapons complex. Specifically, a number 

of proposals were floated and studies conducted that were predicated on the idea that DOE 

618 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water 

Development, 111th Cong., 1st sess, Nuclear Weapons Complex, March 17, 2009, 3 (statement of Dr. A.J. 

Eggenberger, “Weapons Complex Nuclear Safety Issues”). http://appropriations.house.gov/Witness_testimony/

EW/A_J_Eggenberger_03_17_09.pdf. 
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needed to be subject to stronger external regulation, whether by the Board with enhanced powers 

or some other federal entity. 

Proposed Regulatory Alternatives 

The first among various initiatives to put DOE under additional or stronger external 

regulation and even to abolish DOE was a legislative proposal floated during the 103rd Congress 

(1993–94), H.R. 3920, Federal Nuclear Facilities Licensing and Regulation Act.619 The bill was 

introduced in February 1994 by Representative George Miller (D–CA), chairman of the House 

Committee on Natural Resources, and three co-sponsors. The bill called for NRC licensing for 

all new DOE nuclear weapons and research facilities.620 In addition, the bill proposed a federal 

study commission of 13 members, including the chairs of both the Board and the NRC to 

determine the need on a case-by-case basis for independent, external regulation and licensing of 

existing DOE facilities.621 In several hearings on the bill held in March 1994 by the House 

Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Dr. John Ahearne, a former 

NRC chair, then at Duke University, argued that the NRC should regulate DOE defense nuclear 

facilities.622 However, neither the NRC nor the Board voiced support for H.R. 3920. In the 1994 

hearings, Conway, speaking for the Board, expressed skepticism about the potential effectiveness 

of a federal study commission, contributing to the bill’s failure.623 The Board was more harshly 

dismissive of the entire bill in retrospect. 

No companion bill was introduced in the Senate and no other Committee of the 

Congress including those that had substantive responsibility for DOE defense 

activities, e.g., Committees on Armed Services and Energy and Natural 

Resources, considered the bill sufficiently important for consideration. Similar to 

619 Glenn Russell George, Negotiated Safety: “Intragovernmental Risk Regulation in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons 

Complex” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, May 1995), 171 (accessed via Proquest). Overlapping with the first two 

years of the Clinton administration, the 103rd Congress ran from January 5, 1993, to January 3, 1995. 620Federal Nuclear Facilities Licensing and Resolution Act, H.R. 3920, 103d Cong. (1994), http://bulk.resource.org/ 

gpo.gov/bills/103/h3920ih.txt. 621 U.S. General Accounting Office, Department of Energy: Clear Strategy on Externa1 Regulation Needed for 

Worker and Nuclear Facility Safety, GAO/RCED–98–163 (Washington, DC, May 21, 1998), 5, http://www.gao. 

gov/archive/1998/rc98163.pdf. 

622 DNFSB, Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 3. See also U.S. 

Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral 

Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities Licensing and Regulation Act, 103rd Cong., 2d sess., March 1 and 8, 1994, 

226–51. See also Bert Chapman, “The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s First Decade,” Journal of 

Government Information 27 (2000), 363–64, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib research/70. 623 House, Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities 

Licensing and Regulation Act, 237–39. 
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thousands of other bills introduced in the Congress that are not acted upon, this 

bill was never voted on or even reported out of Committee or Subcommittee.624

The Board was later similarly critical of another draft bill, H.R. 3907, External Regulation of the 

Department of Energy Act, introduced in the 106th Congress on March 14, 2000, by 

Representative Thomas Bliley (R–VA) and several co-sponsors.625 The bill would establish 

external regulation of DOE defense nuclear facilities by the NRC, abolishing the Board and 

making its staff available to the NRC, effective October 1, 2001.626

After the 1994 failure of H.R. 3920, considerations of changes to the regulatory 

arrangements for defense nuclear facilities moved for a time to the executive branch of 

government. In January 1995, Secretary of Energy O’Leary convened a committee to examine 

the pros and cons of subjecting DOE nuclear facilities to further federal regulation.627 Called the 

Ahearne Committee after its chairman, John Ahearne, this committee issued a final report in 

December 1995 that advanced three major positions: 

• Essentially all aspects of safety at DOE’s nuclear facilities and sites should be 

externally regulated.

• Existing agencies rather than a new one should have this responsibility.

• Under any regulatory regime, DOE must maintain a strong internal safety 

management system.628

In stating the rationale for these positions, the Ahearne report put great emphasis on the potential 

for additional external regulation “to improve the public’s confidence in the safety of DOE’s 

operations” by enhancing “opportunities for effective involvement in the regulation of safety⎯as 

. . . with similar facilities in the private sector.”629 The report restated the arguments often heard 

at the time the Board was created about the incompatibility of DOE’s continuing self-regulation 

and public confidence,

The inherent conflict of interest between mission and self-regulation of safety at 

DOE, aggravated by a long legacy of secrecy, is at the root of many of the safety 

problems in the nuclear complex. External regulation would end that conflict . . . . 

Only independent, external regulation can ensure the stable regulatory framework 

624 DNFSB, Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 3. 625 External Regulation of the Department of Energy Act, H.R. 3907, 106th Cong. (2000). 626 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 1–2. 

627 DNFSB, Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 3. 628 Advisory Committee on External Regulation of Department of Energy Nuclear Safety, Improving Regulation of 

Safety at DOE Nuclear Facilities. Final Report (Washington, DC, December 1, 1995), 1–2, http://www.osti.gov/

bridge/servlets/purl/181136-25nT51/webviewable/181136.PDF. 

629 Advisory Committee on External Regulation, Improving Regulation of Safety at DOE Nuclear Facilities, 2–3.
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. . . that is required to ensure credibility. The Department has been unsuccessful in 

its attempts to achieve credibility under self-regulation . . . and . . . the credibility 

of its safety efforts remains low . . . . We believe that external regulation is 

essential to earning the public confidence the Department seeks and needs to free 

itself to carry out its important national missions.630

In stressing the need for external regulation to enhance public confidence, the report effectively 

found the Board wanting in its accomplishment of one of the major goals for its creation, 

namely, the goal of promoting sufficient openness about safety issues in the nuclear complex to 

restore public confidence. The report also disparaged the Board’s lack of formal enforcement 

authority and limited size and budget. At the same time, the report recognized that the Board’s 

strengths in scientific and technical personnel and in operational flexibility made it a candidate 

agency, along with NRC, to serve as an external regulator of DOE. The report was noncommittal as to which agency, the Board or NRC, should become the regulator, noting that both 

as currently constituted had shortcomings for the role. 

Neither NRC nor the DNFSB was designed to carry out the kinds of responsibilities 

required of a regulator of facility safety at the DOE nuclear complex. Both would have to 

undergo significant changes . . . . We present two options for facility operator⎯NRC 

with a more flexible approach and incorporating the resources of the DNFSB, or a 

restructured and enlarged DNFSB.631

In addition to an expanded mission for the NRC or the Board, the report envisaged the 

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as also regulating DOE nuclear 

facilities, specifically in the area of worker safety.632 The Environmental Protection Agency 

(EPA) would retain its role as the regulator of “environmental protection matters for all DOE 

nuclear facilities and sites under the environmental statutes,” operating along lines comparable to 

those prevailing in commercial nuclear facilities.633

DOE under Secretary of Energy O’Leary initially endorsed the recommendations of the 

Ahearne Committee report, deciding in December 1996 that NRC should become the principal 

external regulator of nuclear safety at DOE facilities, with a phase-in period of 10 years.634

During that period, the Board would continue oversight activities, gradually reducing the pace 

and scope of its oversight as the NRC became the external regulator. In 1997, after DOE 

630 Advisory Committee on External Regulation, Improving Regulation of Safety at DOE Nuclear Facilities, 2–3. 631 Advisory Committee on External Regulation, Improving Regulation of Safety at DOE Nuclear Facilities, 77. 632 GAO, Department of Energy: Clear Strategy on Externa1 Regulation Needed, 6. See also Chapman, 366. 633 Advisory Committee on External Regulation, Improving Regulation of Safety at DOE Nuclear Facilities, 3. 634 GAO, Department of Energy: Clear Strategy on Externa1 Regulation Needed, 2. 
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committed to seeking the necessary legislation for this regulation plan, NRC Chair Shirley 

Jackson endorsed the plan.635 O’Leary’s successor, Secretary Peña, chose to evaluate the 

feasibility of the plan through the creation of a joint, two-year DOE–NRC pilot project for 

simulated regulation, with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California as the 

project’s initial site and selected facilities at Savannah River and Oak Ridge as follow-on 

sites.636

These moves toward external regulation by the NRC met with a mixed response. The 

chair of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Representative Daniel 

Schaefer (R–CO), gave the idea full-throated support in a May 20, 1998 hearing. 

If the Department knew that a regulator with full enforcement authority was 

watching over its shoulders, many DOE sites would be managed more efficiently 

and safely. Had such a watchdog been required for DOE sites from the beginning 

I think we could have avoided many of the massive environmental problems that 

the DOE complex faces today.637

In the same month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) weighed in on the external regulation 

initiative, criticizing the choice of pilot project sites on the grounds that they were not 

representative of the full spectrum of safety problems to be encountered in the DOE nuclear 

complex. The sites contained “no nuclear reactors, weapons plants, or heavily contaminated 

facilities”⎯the very kinds of facilities that best exemplified the troubling safety issues that 

triggered the renewed exploration of external regulation in the first place.638 GAO’s 

unenthusiastic assessment contributed to already waning momentum of executive branch 

proposals for additional external regulation of DOE. 

In addition to proposals and protracted debates about an altered regulatory regime for 

DOE, the late 1990s saw the revival of Reagan-era debates about the very existence of DOE, 

which resulted in several legislative proposals to eliminate DOE altogether.639 Such proposals, 

which would also have precipitated sharp change for the Board, emerged in Congress in 1995, 

after the congressional majority passed into Republican hands. These proposals called for 

635 Interview, Kenneth M. Pusateri, Board, general manager (1989–2006), Washington, DC, January 3, 2008. 

Jackson’s successor at the NRC was less enthusiastic. 

636 GAO, Department of Energy: Clear Strategy on Externa1 Regulation Needed, 8. 637 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and Power, 

External Regulation of Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 105th Cong., 2d sess., May 20, 1998, 1. 638 GAO, Department of Energy: Clear Strategy on Externa1 Regulation Needed, 2. 
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transferring some programs of the dismantled DOE to other federal agencies, while privatizing 

other programs and putting them under the NRC.640 One bill, the Department of Energy 

Abolition Act, S. 1678, was floated in 1996 by Senator Rod Grams (R–MN), and another with a 

similar thrust and title, H.R. 1577, was introduced in 1997 in the House of Representatives.641

Under the unsuccessful bills, the functions of the Board were slated for transferal to the 

Department of Defense. 

Defenses of the Regulatory Compromise that Created the Board 

The various proposals for changes to the oversight and management arrangements in the 

DOE weapons complex were not supported by the Board, as Conway pointed out with a touch of 

wryness in a congressional hearing. In testimony about the latest, March 2000 legislative 

proposal to eliminate the Board in favor of NRC regulation (H.R. 3907), he likened the Board’s 

situation as a small organization to that of the Marines, which was also often on the verge of 

being folded into a larger entity. 

My pleasure in being with you here this morning is somewhat tempered with the 

fact that one of the bills you propose to make into law would do away with the 

organization I represent. . . . .We, the members of the Board, have put together an 

elite group of technical experts. . . . I and our staff⎯I feel that we are somewhat 

like the Marine Corps. We have an elite group. Periodically there are discussions 

or recommendations to put the Marines into the Department of the Army, and for 

the last 4 or 5 years we have heard various suggestions of taking our staff and 

putting them into the NRC.642

At the same time that Conway critically assessed the various proposed regulatory and 

bureaucratic changes, he offered the view that there was no more legitimate or credible voice 

than the Board to speak to such changes. 

While many reports have been written about external regulation, pilots conducted 

at non-defense facilities, and opinions offered on this subject, I must emphasize 

that the Board is the only external, independent organization that has actually 

conducted full-time technical oversight of public and worker health and safety at 

639 Terrence R. Fehner and Jack M. Holl, Department of Energy, 1977–1994: A Summary History (Washington, DC: 

U.S. Department of Energy, November 1994), 31, 35–36, 51, http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/10106088-

mgIkuD/webviewable/10106088.PDF. 

640 Interview, Pusateri. 641 Department of Energy Abolishment Act, S. 1678, 104th Cong., (1996); and Department of Energy Abolishment 

Act, H.R. 1577, 105th Cong. (1997). 642 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 25–26. 
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DOE defense nuclear facilities. Consequently, the Board frequently has been 

called upon by both the legislative and executive branches to share its collective 

knowledge gained from 10 years of oversight experience in DOE’s defense 

nuclear facilities.643

On one of the many occasions when the Board was asked to give its views on regulatory and 

oversight options, the Board provided them in the form of an extensive written report, as 

mandated by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998. Per the 

mandate, the Board provided to Congress in November 1998 its Report to Congress on the Role 

of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Regarding Regulation of DOE’s Defense Nuclear 

Facilities. As Conway summarized the report’s findings, the Board “found no creditable 

arguments, either on the grounds of improved safety or cost effectiveness, to subject the defense 

nuclear facilities to additional external regulation.” 644

Whenever responding to queries about proposed regulatory changes, the Board always 

restated its fundamental support for the regulatory compromise that was struck in 1989 in the 

Board’s enabling legislation. From the Board’s point of view, much of the agitation for changes 

rested on fundamental misperceptions of the Board’s actual powers, as well as of the actual state 

of regulation in DOE facilities. In the Board’s view, the proposed legislative changes also 

misdiagnosed the sources of DOE’s problems, and thus were likely to do more harm than good. 

With respect to the state of regulation, Board members often pointed out that proposals 

for regulatory change, such as those in the Ahearne Committee report, were predicated on a 

dated view of the actual level or pervasiveness of regulation to which DOE facilities were 

subject. In the Board’s view, the proponents of additional external regulation exaggerated the 

degree to which DOE still “self-regulated” the safety of its facilities. DiNunno, for example, who 

had represented the Board on the Ahearne committee but dissented from its conclusions, noted 

that DOE remained “self-regulating” only to a limited degree.645 Historically, DOE had been 

granted autonomy to decide the trade-offs that had to be made between its paramount national 

security mission and its secondary mission, the mitigation of radiological risk to the public.646

643 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 28. 

644 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 28. 

645 Interview, Pusateri. See also, “Appendix 2: Statement by Joseph J. DiNunno Relative to the Report of the 

Advisory Committee on External Regulation,” A2/1-2, in DNFSB, Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. 646 GAO, Department of Energy: Clear Strategy on Externa1 Regulation Needed, 3. 
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However, since the 1980s, the areas in which DOE retained the freedom to regulate itself had 

shrunk significantly. For risks less central to the national security mission than radiological 

risks⎯e.g., occupational safety hazards and the risk of environmental contamination, particularly 

from non-radioactive hazardous waste⎯DOE had come under increasing formal external 

regulation.647 As DiNunno said,

It is important to understand that the often expressed statement that DOE 

regulates itself is misleading. DOE self-regulates today only in a limited area of 

nuclear materials. Regulation of the hazardous and toxic materials, control of 

some releases of radioactivity to the environment and disposal of mixed and 

radioactive wastes are externally regulated . . . . DOE today is not free to operate 

in the way that historically caused the contamination of sites now requiring major 

cleanup and environmental restoration.648

Expanding on the same idea, Conway frequently pointed out that DOE nuclear facilities 

were subject to an array of safety-related laws and regulatory agencies. In the 1994 hearings on 

H.R. 3920, for example, he mentioned that DOE nuclear facilities were subject “to federal 

environmental laws administered by EPA, . . . to State environmental requirements . . . to 

Department of Transportation regulations on the transport of nuclear materials, to the Mine 

Safety and Health Administration for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) facility, and to NRC 

licensing for certain nuclear waste facilities.”649 Moreover, as Conway said, in a certain sense 

DOE itself already functioned as an outside regulator vis à vis its contractors. 

One must keep in mind that the actual work carried out by the Government in its 

nuclear weapons activities is done by contractor employees, not by federal 

employees of the DOE. It is DOE’s responsibility to assure that the work is done 

safely, efficiently and with full compliance with the environmental laws . . . . 

[F]or all intents and purposes . . . DOE “regulates” the individual contractors 

doing the work. DOE has the authority and power to force a site, a facility or 

particular job to be curtailed or be shut down. Do we need to add additional 

government employees of another government agency such as the NRC to assure 

that DOE government employees are properly enforcing government laws, safety 

rules and regulations on contractor management and workers? If so, at what 

additional cost?650

647 George, 56–57, 229. 648 Joseph J. DiNunno, “External Regulation of DOE Nuclear Safety: A Different Point of View” (paper prepared 

for presentation to local section, American Nuclear Society, Washington, DC, February 27, 1996), http://www. 

dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/com_19960227.html. 

649 House, Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities 

Licensing and Regulation Act, 237–38. 650 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 28. 
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Arguing that the pervasiveness of regulation in DOE nuclear facilities should not be 

underestimated, the Board also regularly argued that the Board’s powers in conducting oversight 

likewise should not be underestimated. Advocates of external regulation typically understated the 

powers of the Board, repeating the notion that they were “merely advisory.” However, the Board 

held that the authority inhering in the recommendation process and other Board powers was 

substantial.651 The Board members asserted that the Board’s authority, first described as 

“decision-forcing” by the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit, was not only adequate to its 

oversight role, but better suited than more coercive or intrusive mechanisms would be. 

Eggenberger restated this position in the third year of Board operations, when he emphasized the 

value and appropriateness of the cooperative interaction with DOE that had developed for 

resolving complex technical problems. 

In many ways, I believe the recommendations that we make are 

stronger⎯stronger⎯than what one could do in a regulatory mode. This is 

because, number one, we are working directly with the Secretary of Energy 

[Watkins] and he is serious about safety. . . . He has cooperated with us 

completely in all endeavors. He has instructed his personnel to do so . . . .We have 

briefings with them. They brief us. They discuss issues that we ask them to 

discuss. We sometimes have a heated scientific discussion. But they have 

cooperated, and in my opinion, it is working well.652

Finding that the Board’s manner of proceeding had demonstrated its efficacy, the Board 

members also retained their long-standing wariness of full formal regulation, fearing, as Conway 

put it, “the potentially litigious and confrontational processes that frequently characterize 

adjudicatory proceedings under regulatory regimes.653 DiNunno seconded the point in arguing 

that the proposals of the Ahearne Committee “Taken as a whole . . . represent a regulatory model 

that will exacerbate DOE’s problems, not solve them.”654 He added, 

The safety problems of DOE require technical solutions⎯stabilization of residual 

wastes, clean up of contaminated buildings and sites, safe dismantlement of 

nuclear weapons, and safe stewardship of strategic materials. The solution offered 

is a cumbersome, complex, legal structure with dramatically increased potential 

651 House, Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Federal Nuclear Facilities 

Licensing and Regulation Act, 240. 652 Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1993, 244. 

653 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 28. 

654 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations 

for Fiscal Year 1997 and the Future Years Defense Program, 104th Cong., 2d sess., March 6, 13, 20, 25, 29, 1996. 

33. 
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for litigious proceedings that could impede DOE’s mission and add unneeded cost 

to the taxpayer.655

Apart from the potential drawbacks of a legalistic framework, the Board members failed 

to see how additional regulation would get to the root of DOE’s problems, foremost among 

which, in their view, remained the technical personnel problem. The Board members continued 

to identify this problem as the most fundamental obstacle to expeditious safety improvement in 

the complex. They often reiterated the point that enhanced safety in DOE nuclear facilities 

depended far less on the powers of the Board or specific regulatory arrangements than on the 

cadre of technical personnel in DOE. They repeatedly underscored the need for a level of 

technical competence in DOE that would allow it to be “a demanding customer” of its 

contractors.656 Such competence was necessary for both enhanced safety and public confidence. 

Finding no certain benefits in reformed regulatory structures and some probable 

drawbacks, the Board members regularly played their trump card in the external regulation 

debate⎯the issue of comparative cost.657 The Board argued that its oversight approach was 

demonstrably effective⎯producing safety improvements⎯at much lower cost than various 

proposed regulatory alternatives. Speaking about the Board’s comparative cost effectiveness in a 

March 1997 hearing, Conway cited estimates that the NRC would require 1,100–1,600 additional 

staff and $150–$200 million annually to regulate DOE’s facilities.658 By contrast, the Board 

operated in the late 1990s at a cost of about $17 million per year.659 Testifying in 2000, Conway 

said,

We believe that in an era of shrinking dollars to perform DOE’s major missions—

weapons maintenance/ stewardship and cleanup—it would not be prudent to 

transfer safety-related responsibilities into a more costly regulatory structure for 

questionable fringe benefits.660

In arguing in these cost/benefit terms, the Board had the support of a crucial and steady 

ally in Congress, the Senate Armed Services Committee. Although some of the original 

655 Joseph J. DiNunno, “External Regulation of DOE Nuclear Safety: A Different Point of View.” 656 Interview, Pusateri. 657 DNFSB, Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 9–14. 658Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 

1997, 31. 659 The Board’s initial start-up appropriation⎯for FY 1989⎯had been $7 million. Two decades later, with the 

growth of the Board and added oversight responsibilities, the Board’s budgetary authorizations were in the range of 

$25 million annually. 
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membership on this committee responsible for creating the Board had changed since the late 

1980s, the committee remained favorably disposed to the Board⎯the most favorably disposed 

among the committees with oversight responsibility for the Board.661 Supporting the Board’s 

cost/benefit arguments, the Senate Armed Services Committee always mentioned cost efficiency 

as one reason to continue current oversight arrangements. The committee also expressed 

wariness about the potential for external regulation to lead to undue interference with the defense 

mission of the nuclear weapons complex. In the committee’s FY 1997 budget authorization 

report, for example, the committee criticized the Ahearne committee report, stating, 

[It] ignores the priorities and paramount objective of the Atomic Energy Act and . 

. . does not grasp the danger inherent in a weakened strategic deterrent. The 

committee has seen no compelling data or argument to . . . subject national 

security programs to a new, independent, external regulatory system. In addition, 

there appear to be two distinct disadvantages to external regulation . . .: (1) it 

could increase the potential effect of intervenors, lawyers, and the members of the 

judiciary, associated with the regulatory process, in imposing burdens that would 

have an adverse effect on the Department’s defense and national security 

missions; and (2) it could dramatically increase operating costs. Since the creation 

of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) in 1988, the board has 

gained the bipartisan support and confidence of the committee. The committee is 

satisfied with the current relationship between the board and the Secretary of 

Energy.662

The same committee’s budget authorization report for FY 1999 was similarly negative about 

external regulation and positive about the Board. 

The committee is not convinced that external regulation of new or existing DOE 

defense nuclear facilities will increase safety, decrease cost, or improve 

operational efficiency at such facilities . . . . The committee is concerned that the 

implementation of an additional external regulation approach could draw scarce 

resources away from high priority, compliance driven clean-up actions and 

critical national security activities, with little added benefit.663

The report added the Board “continues to provide exceptional and effective external oversight 

with a budget that equals about one-tenth of one percent of total Atomic Energy Defense 

funding.” 664

660 House, Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Legislation to Improve Safety and Security in the 

Department of Energy, 29. 

661 Interview, Pusateri. 662S. Rep. No. 104–267 [to accompany S. 1745], at n.p. (1996), http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&sid= 

cp104xbGcm&refer=&r_n=sr267.104&db_id=104&item=&sel=TOC_797070&. 

663 S. Rep. No. 105–189, at 431 (1998). 664 S. Rep. No. 105–189, at 431 (1998). 
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By 2000, in view of the strong votes of confidence for the Board from the Senate Armed 

Services Committee and steadfast support from other key players, the advocates of external 

regulation and privatization backed off from efforts to advance additional external regulation 

regimes upon DOE. In turn, assured of the indefinite extension of its statutory mandate, the 

Board was able to devote its full attention to its oversight of the DOE nuclear weapons 

complex.665

THE BOARD’S OPERATIONS: GROWTH, REFINEMENT, FORMALIZATION 

During and after the period in which regulatory alternatives were under discussion, the 

Board itself saw some changes, some having to do with its methods of operation and some with 

its personnel. 

Personnel: Stability at the Top, Expertise Throughout 

In the realm of personnel, the Board was and remained a rather stable operation, 

characterized by low turnover in both Board membership and the three categories of 

staff⎯technical, legal, and administrative. Three of the Board’s five inaugural members, 

Conway, Eggenberger, and Kouts, were reconfirmed and remained with the Board a decade after 

its establishment. The first new member of the Board, Joseph J. DiNunno, served for a decade 

prior to his retirement in June 2002.666 John Mansfield, the second new member, appointed in 

1997, remained on the Board in 2009. Only two of the later appointees were no longer on the 

Board in 2009, Jessie Hill Roberson and R. Bruce Matthews. Roberson, who was appointed on 

665 Interview, Pusateri. As Congress backed off from proposals to change arrangements for external oversight in the 

weapons complex, an organizational change in DOE did go forward, reflecting the perception of continuing 

management and security weaknesses in DOE. In 1999 Congress altered the organization of DOE by establishing 

the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as a separately organized, semi-autonomous agency within 

DOE. See U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Safety Administration Web site, http://www.nnsa.energy. 

gov/about/index.htm. NNSA was charged with the management and operation of the nation’s nuclear weapons, 

nonproliferation, and naval reactors programs. In relation to nuclear weapons, DOE’s NNSA was charged with 

managing the facilities and activities that implemented the Stockpile Stewardship Program, including surveillance, 

maintenance, refurbishment, production, and dismantlement of nuclear weapons, as well as research and 

development and certification efforts. The facilities for which the NNSA was responsible included the three nuclear 

weapons laboratories, the Nevada Test Site, and four weapons handling plants—the Pantex Plant in Texas, the Y–12 

National Security Complex in Tennessee, the Kansas City Plant in Missouri, and elements of the Savannah River 

Site in South Carolina. 

666 See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “Biography: Mr. Joseph John DiNunno,” 

http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/jjdinn.htm. 
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January 16, 2000, was subsequently appointed to be the DOE assistant secretary for 

environmental management.667 The Board members serving in the Board’s twentieth year had 

seen tenures ranging from two decades for Eggenberger, more than one decade for Mansfield, 

roughly a half-decade for Joseph F. Bader, and three years for Larry W. Brown and Peter S. 

Winokur, as noted in Table 1. 

Table 1. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Membership, 1989–2009 

John T. Conway 

(Former Chairman)

10/18/89–04/02/05 

A.J. Eggenberger 

(Former Chairman) 

10/18/89–07/31/09 

Vice Chairman until 

July 2005. 

Herbert J.C. Kouts 

10/18/89– 01/14/00

John W. Crawford 

Jr. 

10/18/89–11/22/96

Edson G. Case 

10/18/89–09/16/91

Peter S. Winokur 

10/23/06–present

Jessie Hill 

Roberson 

01/16/00– 07/18/01 

John E. Mansfield 

10/31/97–present 

Vice Chairman since 

2007. 

Joseph J. DiNunno 

08/13/92–06/01/02

Joseph F. Bader 

11/30/04–present -- R. Bruce Matthews 04/22/03–12/31/05

-- Larry W. Brown 

09/29/06–present 

The new Board members were all “respected experts in the field of nuclear safety,” like 

the original members and as required by the Board’s enabling statute. DiNunno had served for 

nearly two decades in the Navy Department, including under Rickover in the Naval Reactors 

Program, after which he spent 13 years with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), eventually 

heading the agency’s first Office of Environmental Affairs. He also had extensive experience in 

private industry in a variety of nuclear safety and environmental roles.668 Mansfield, a Ph.D. 

physicist and the Board’s vice chairman since 2007, had a broad background of federal service in 

both the executive and legislative branches, as well private-sector experience.669 He served on 

the staffs of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and held senior positions at the 

Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Nuclear Agency, and the Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency (DARPA). He had expertise in risk assessement, operations analysis, nuclear 

 

667 See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “Biography: Jessie Hill Roberson,” 

http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/roberson.htm. 

668 See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “Biography: Mr. Joseph John DiNunno,” 

http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/jjdinn.htm. 

669 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Eighth Annual Report (Washington, DC, February 1998), 1–11, and 

Appendix B, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 
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weapons technology, defense policy analysis, and the management of technology support to 

national defense programs. Roberson, a specialist in systems engineering, had extensive privatesector experience in reactor operations.670 She served for a decade with DOE in technical and 

managerial positions at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site and Savannah River, 

where her focus included environmental cleanup, waste management, safeguards, and security, 

as well as nuclear reactors and weapons. Matthews, a Ph.D. in materials science, had 30 years of 

scientific and engineering experience in nuclear technologies with a primary focus on nuclear 

materials for nuclear weapons and reactors.671 As Division Director at Los Alamos National 

Laboratory, Matthews managed nuclear facilities with responsibility for DOE programs, 

operations, construction, safety and security. Bader, an expert in mechanical and nuclear 

engineering, had extensive knowledge of design, construction management, and operations of 

R&D facilities, materials production, and power plants. He held executive and senior 

management positions in the nuclear weapons complex and nuclear power sectors, and 

conducted numerous program/project reviews. Larry W. Brown served in the U.S. Navy for more 

than 30 years, including as commander of two non-nuclear navy destroyers.672 After practicing 

law on leaving the navy, he served at DOE as a senior policy adviser on nuclear, spent fuel, and 

nonproliferation/security issues. Peter S. Winokur, a Ph.D. physicist, with 37 years of scientific 

and engineering experience, specialized in radiation effects science, technology, and hardiness 

assurance in support of military and space systems.673 One of the most highy cited researchers in 

engineering, he served as a senior policy analyst for the National Nuclear Security 

Administration, a unit of DOE established in 2000, served as a senior staffer in Congress on 

energy issues, and held senior postions at Sandia National Laboratory. 

The consistently exceptional technical and management qualifications that the Board 

members brought, combined with their low turnover, contributed to strong and continuous 

management at the Board. The continuity of management was reinforced by the nature of the 

Board members’ appointments. Appointed for fixed five-year terms, the Board members were 

670 See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “Jessie Hill Roberson: Biography,” 

http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/roberson.htm. 

671 See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “R. Bruce Matthews: Biography,” 

http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/matthew.htm. 

672 See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “Larry Warren Brown, Captain, United 

States Navy (ret.): Biography,” http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/brown.htm. 673 See U.S Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security, “Peter S. Winokur, Ph.D.: Biography,” 

http://www.hss.doe.gov/deprep/dnfsb/members/winokur.htm. 
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statutorily able to “serve after the expiration of that member’s term until a successor has taken 

office.”674 The Board’s continuity of management contributed to its ability to conduct oversight 

with a consistent but flexible plan of action. 

Among the Board’s management achievements was the creation of an exceptionally 

qualified staff through the pursuit of a focused human capital development program. The total 

number of employees, for budgetary reasons, fell short of the Board’s full statutory authorization 

of 150 full-time employees, hovering instead at a strength of about 100 staff members. Thanks to 

the Board’s excepted service hiring and compensation authorities, and “years of careful 

recruiting and selection,” these staff members included about 60 technical experts of “the highest 

caliber.”675 This cadre of scientists and engineers served both in the field at various DOE sites 

and in the Washington, DC, office.676 As Board reports to Congress noted, “Essentially all of the 

technical staff have technical masters degrees, and approximately 28 percent have doctoral 

degrees,” and they commonly had practical experience in the U.S. Navy’s Naval Nuclear 

Propulsion Program, the nuclear weapons field, and/or the commercial nuclear power 

industry.677 The technical staffers brought, as the Board stated, 

[E]xtensive backgrounds in technical disciplines such as nuclear-chemical 

processing, conduct of operations, general nuclear safety analysis, conventional 

and nuclear explosive technology and safety, nuclear weapons safety, storage of 

nuclear materials and nuclear criticality safety, and waste management.678

They augmented their qualifications, at Board urging, through the serious pursuit of professional 

development activities. To attract younger staff members, the Board also had a three-year 

Professional Development Program designed to bring “entry-level technical and scientific talent 

into professional positions within the Board.” The Board said of the program, 

Through a technical mentor, individuals are provided a series of individually 

tailored developmental assignments, formal academic schooling, and a 1-year 

hands-on field assignment.679

A.J. Eggenberger, Board chairman as of 2005, described the intern program’s intent, 

674 Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 USC 2011 et seq.), Section 311(d)(3). 675 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 12–13. 676 The Board has established site offices at the Hanford Site, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Pantex 

Plant, the Y–12 National Security Complex, the Savannah River Site, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 677 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 12–13; DNFSB, Ninth Annual Report to Congress, February 1999, 5-1. 678 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 12–13. 679 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 13. 
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[T]his is the investment the Board makes in developing our young engineers. It 

acts as an incentive for attracting young technical talent and it sustains the 

technical excellence of our staff.680

To maximize the effectiveness of its carefully selected staff members, the Board used a 

matrix form of organization to group them, which allowed the Board “to quickly reassign 

technical resources as needed to review emerging health and safety issues.”681 The Board 

organized its technical staff by strategic oversight areas of concentration, creating interdependent 

technical groups, “staffed with technical specialists having both the education and work 

experience commensurate with the designated oversight assignments.” This organization fostered 

constant information sharing across areas of concentration, giving the Board the needed 

flexibility to respond to changes in DOE’s priority concerns, plans, and schedules by redeploying 

staff resources within and among focus areas. The Board explained the premium it placed on 

flexibility, stating, 

The pace and focus of the Board’s health and safety oversight work are 

controlled, in large part, by DOE’s schedule for major actions in the defense 

nuclear complex. Thus, changes in DOE’s schedules and priorities based on 

circumstances within and beyond DOE’s control may require a corresponding 

change in the Board’s oversight plans.682

Formalization of Board Activities 

The explicit definition of the Board’s primary areas of concentration and the 

corresponding organizational alignment of its staff were a formalization of the Board’s division 

of work driven by the Government Performance and Results (GPRA) Act of 1993. The act 

required each federal agency to develop a five-year strategic plan that articulated its mission and 

goals, as well as proposed methods for achieving its goals. As required by the act, the Board 

issued its first Strategic Plan in 1997, along with its first annual performance plan, also 

required.683 The Strategic Plan outlined general goals and objectives that addressed multi-year 

680 A. J. Eggenberger, “Technical Excellence,” Presentation, at the DOE Nuclear Executive Leadership Training, 

September 22, 2005, https://www.hss.energy.gov/deprep/2005/FB05S22A.HTM. 

681 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 12. 682 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 19. Because the work of the Board depended on the priorities of DOE 

and, more broadly, on U.S. policy on the nuclear deterrent, the Board, in formulating its strategic plans, stated 

several assumptions on which the plans were predicated, namely, that the United States would maintain its 1991 halt 

of new nuclear weapons production, and the 1992 halt of nuclear testing. 

683 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Strategic Plan: FY 1997–2002 (Washington, DC, 1997), http://www. 

hss.doe.gov/deprep/1997/bm97s30b.htm. 
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efforts and encompassed “a broad spectrum of technical areas relevant to the safety of DOE’s 

defense nuclear mission.”684 The Board used its Strategic Plan to establish a framework for 

facilitating management decisions. In the plan, the Board recast and grouped the wide array of 

technical areas in which it was already performing safety oversight into strategic areas of 

concentration. For each strategic area, the Board’s planning efforts yielded an associated set of 

annual performance objectives, action plans, and measurements that could “demonstrate progress 

toward achieving the Board’s strategic goals.”685

The first of the Board’s Strategic Plans, issued “after consultation with the Office of 

Management and Budget, Congressional staff members, and the public,” described the nature of 

the Board’s work within three strategic areas of concentration.686 These three focus areas, as 

stated in the Board’s Strategic Plan for FY 1997–2002, were: 

I. Complex-Wide Health and Safety Issues 

II. Management and Stewardship of the Nation’s Stockpile and Nuclear Weapons 

Components 

III. Hazardous Remnants of Weapons Production.687

In the first strategic area, the Board planned for continuing oversight on, among other things, 

DOE’s implementation of Integrated Safety Management, the development and implementation 

of standards, requirements, and safety programs, the competence of technical personnel, and the 

review of DOE design and construction projects. In the second strategic area, the Board planned 

for continuing efforts to support the safe execution of DOE’s work in the nuclear weapons 

stockpile, as well as associated research and development activities. In the third area, the Board 

planned to continue its intensive involvement in monitoring waste characterization, stabilization, 

and storage operations, and in urging DOE to accelerate the disposition of inventories of 

hazardous nuclear materials and the decommissioning of surplus facilities. As the Board pursued 

its safety activities, closely tying them to the goals and objectives embodied in its plans, it 

reported its accomplishments and associated problems extensively in its annual reports and other 

communications with Congress. At the same time, based on the lessons learned in its planning 

initiatives, the Board refined its planning efforts, seeking “a streamlined approach that allows the 

684 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 18. 685 Transmittal letter to Jacob J. Lew, Director, Office of Management and Budget, from John T. Conway, October 

30, 2000, for Fiscal Year 2002 Performance Plan, October 2000. 686 Transmittal letter to Lew, from Conway, October 30, 2000. 
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Board to use its resources effectively,” and to adapt and move resources to meet new oversight 

demands.688

As of 2003, in the Strategic Plan for Fiscal Year 2003–2008, the Board focused its 

technical nuclear safety oversight on four interdependent, strategic areas of concentration, adding 

one area, “Nuclear Facilities Design and Infrastructure,” to the three originally set forth in the 

Board’s 1997 strategic plan. As reformulated in the plan, the areas were: 

• Nuclear Weapons Operations; 

• Nuclear Material Processing and Stabilization; 

• Nuclear Facilities Design and Infrastructure; 

• Nuclear Safety Programs and Analysis.689

In effect, the Board elevated one of the objectives previously encompassed under the strategic 

area of “Complex-Wide Issues” to a new, fourth strategic area, “Nuclear Facilities Design and 

Infrastructure.”690 This creation of a new strategic area raised the profile of the Board’s review 

of DOE’s design and construction of new defense nuclear facilities and major modifications to 

existing facilities. The Board’s legislative mandate had always included the review of DOE’s 

design and construction projects. Although the Board was not empowered to stop facility 

construction, it was charged with determining that nuclear safety aspects of the design were 

adequate to protect health and safety. From the beginning of operations in 1989, the Board had 

worked with DOE to carry out this mandate, reviewing numerous DOE design and construction 

projects. However, the elevation of these oversight activities to a strategic focus reflected a major 

increase in work for the Board in the area of design/construction reviews, beginning in the early 

2000s.691

687 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 1997–2002, 8. 688 Interview, Pusateri. See also Transmittal letter to Lew, from Conway, October 30, 2000. 689 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009. 690 Beginning with the Fourteenth Annual Report, February 2004, the Board used the fourth category in its 

organization of its annual reports to Congress. 

691 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 1997–2002, 7. Decisions about future weapons and the construction or upgrade of 

facilities to produce them were pertinent to the safety-related activities of the Board. For a time during the 

administration of George W. Bush, significant contingents in both the legislative and executive branches backed 

proposals to build a new generation of nuclear weapons, most notably the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), 

and to revamp a consolidated nuclear weapons infrastructure to produce them. For proponents, this renovation was a 

better approach to ensuring the reliability of the smaller U.S. nuclear deterrent than investing in high-cost life 

extensions for aging weapons. In 2006 NNSA produced a multi-year plan to build new or upgraded facilities at each 

of its eight nuclear weapons-related sites⎯Complex 2030: A Preferred Infrastructure Planning Scenario for the 

Nuclear Weapons Complex. After 2007, Congress deleted all funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead. See 

Michael Coleman, “Wilson: Pearce Was ‘Stupid’ To Introduce Bill,” Albuquerque Journal, May 25, 2008 (accessed 

via Proquest). 
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BOARD OVERSIGHT IN THE AREA OF DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION 

The Board’s inclusion of the category “Nuclear Facilities Design and Infrastructure “in 

its list of strategic areas of concentration was associated with a substantial increase in Board 

resources devoted to the area. Although the Board’s oversight work in the other strategic areas 

continued undiminished, design and construction reviews in the early 2000s constituted an area 

of marked growth for the Board.692 The increased workload associated with design/construction 

oversight reflected in part the fact that detailed design and construction reviews were extremely 

resource- and labor-intensive and time-consuming. At the same time, such reviews were 

considered vital to ensuring that safety was built into facility design, given the extreme expense 

of construction-stage retrofits in building projects. Another reason for the growth in this category 

of work for the Board was the growth in the number and scale of DOE’s design and construction 

projects. Numerous projects to support the ongoing mission of the DOE nuclear complex and 

cleanup of sites were in various stages of development in 2001, reflecting the need for new 

capability to process legacy special nuclear materials, and the need to replace aging facilities 

required to maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile. 

Writing in 2002, the Board said of this expanding DOE design and construction, “In 

recent years, there has been an increase in the number of new DOE projects, with 20 to 30 

projects in the design and construction phase,” requiring Board reviews.693 Some examples of 

the projects involving Board oversight at the time included, 

• the Tritium Extraction Facility, then under construction at the Savannah River Site, to 

process irradiated targets; 

• the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, four major nuclear facilities in the design and 

construction phase, to pre-treat and vitrify the high-level waste from the Hanford waste 

storage tanks; 

• the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, in the design phase at the Y–12 National 

Security Complex, to provide long term consolidated storage for all highly enriched 

uranium materials at the site; 

692 A. J. Eggenberger, “Regulatory Challenges and Plans for the Year Ahead” (presentation to Energy Facility 

Contractors Group, Washington, DC, March 19–20, 2008), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/testimonies/all/sp_

20080320.pdf. 

693 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 8. 
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• the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility, in the design stage at the Savannah River 

Site, to convert surplus weapons grade plutonium metal into oxide for subsequent feed to 

the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility.694

Other significant projects involving substantial Board oversight in the course of the 2000s 

included, 

• the Salt Waste Processing Facility, in the design phase at Savannah River Site, to 

remove cesium, strontium, and actinides from high-level waste for vitrification in 

glass logs; 

• the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project, in the design phase 

at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to replace the current aging and 

deteriorating facility with a modern facility; 

• the Uranium Processing Facility, in the design phase at Y–12 National Security 

Complex, to replace aging facilities and consolidate current capability to process 

uranium materials at the site; 

• the New Solid Transuranic Waste Facility, in the design stage at Los Alamos, to 

store, characterize, repackage, and ship solid transuranic waste.695

Estimates of the total cost of the projects in which the Board became involved in the 2000s were 

more than $20 billion.696 This involvement in design/construction reviews placed heavy 

demands on the technical oversight resources of the Board, in particular, as the Board stated in a 

budget request, “resources in specialty skill areas such as seismic engineering of structures, 

geotechnical reviews, concrete chemistry, systems engineering, and hazard analysis.”697

As the Board stepped up its design/construction oversight, it stated a number of the 

operative assumptions with which it approached the activity, including the premise that “These 

facilities must be designed and constructed in a manner that will support safe and efficient 

operations for 20 to 50 years.” Such a facility life span, as the Board noted, 

in turn requires a robust design process to ensure that appropriate health and 

safety controls are identified and properly implemented early in the process. ISM 

provides the framework for this process.698

694 DNFSB, Strategic Plan: FY 2003–2009, 8. 695 House, Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Nuclear Weapons Complex, statement 

by Eggenberger, March 17, 2009, 4. 

696 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, FY 2009 Budget Request to the Congress (Washington, DC, February 

2008), http://www.dnfsb.gov/about/budget.php. 

697 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, FY 2008 Budget Request to the Congress (Washington, DC, February 5, 

2007), 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/about/budget.php. 698 DNFSB, Thirteenth Annual Report to Congress, February 2003. 
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The Board’s expectation is that the design and construction phases will identify 

the set of risks for each project and demonstrate clear and deliberate 

implementation of ISM principles and core functions.699

Major Board Efforts in the Design Review Area 

In the Board’s increased oversight of design/construction activities, the most prominent 

example involved the four-facility Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at the 

Hanford Site, the largest ongoing environmental cleanup project in the world, projected to cost in 

excess of $12 billion.700 The WTP, managed by the DOE unit, the Office of River Protection, is 

a huge vitrification complex that would receive and process the 53 million gallons of high-level 

nuclear waste from the Hanford tank farm.701 Construction of the complex began in July 2002 

and was slated to take some 15 years.702

The Board began to dedicate substantial technical resources to the project in late 2001, 

with oversight of the plant’s design, including reviews of earthquake design documentation for 

the structure.703 Beginning in mid-2002 and for the next two years, the Board repeatedly raised 

concerns to DOE regarding the seismic safety of the plant’s design. The Board questioned the 

site data and seismic ground motion criteria used to design the WTP facility foundations, 

699 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, FY 2010 Budget Request to the Congress (Washington, DC, May 2009), 

http://www.dnfsb.gov/aboaut/budget.php. 

700 Interview, Dr. A. J. Eggenberger, July 9, 2008. For non-DOE, non-DNFSB background on Hanford’s Waste 

Treatment Plant, see Michele Stenehjem Gerber, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear 

Site (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 253–58. 701 Oregon, Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Division, Hanford Cleanup: The First 15 Years (Salem, OR, 

October 2004), http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/docs/15year.pdf. As this report stated on page 120, in 

July 2002, “Construction of Hanford’s high-level waste vitrification facilities began, as structural concrete [was] 

poured as part of the 5-foot thick, steel-reinforced foundations and basement walls for one of two waste processing 

buildings. The project will require 58,000 tons of steel, 160 miles of piping and 1,260 miles of electrical cable. Two 

cement processing plants have been installed to produce the concrete that will be needed over the next five years.” 

702 Interview, Eggenberger. Between 2003 and 2006 the project made progress in the cleanup of the Hanford tank 

wastes. The transfer of the radioactive wastes from the single-shelled tanks to the double-shelled storage tanks was 

finally completed. This waste awaited processing into glass in the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. 

703 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water 

Development, Energy and Water Development Appropriations for 2007, 109th Cong., 2d sess., April 6, 2006 

(testimony of Dr. A. J. Eggenberger), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/hanford/ts_20060406_hd.pdf. Planning for 

vitrification facilities for the Hanford wastes began in the early 1990s, and went through several major shifts of 

direction. In 1995 DOE began a program to privatize the processing of high-level radioactive waste at Hanford, 

forming a unit to establish design requirements for the plant. Then called the Tank Waste Remediation System 

(TWRS), the plant was to be DOE contractor-owned and contractor-operated with licensing by the NRC. In 2000 the 

contractor declined to continue the TWRS program due to financial issues. DOE took over the project and 

abandoned the privatization approach for TWRS in favor of a more traditional government-owned, contractoroperated approach. 
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pointing out that they were insufficiently conservative and produced underestimates of seismic 

loads. As Eggenberger testified about the Board’s review of seismic issues, 

The review was based on our technical people looking at the assumptions and 

calculations that had been previously made and the geology and seismology that 

we know now about the Pacific northwest area and . . . the faulting in that 

particular area. Based on that a set of questions were asked that could and can 

influence the seismic design basis. Those were asked, and these meetings were 

not sessions between our staff and DOE staff that lasted for an hour or so. They 

would last for days, and they would talk about these in extreme detail.704

In addition, the Board cautioned DOE that the aggressive, “fast-track” construction 

schedule, in which construction proceeded before the design was finalized, posed a serious risk 

that safety deficiencies in the design could require costly reengineering later. To avert this 

potential need for retrofits to ensure seismic safety, the Board advised DOE to adopt 

conservative design margins. By 2005, after considerable discussion between DOE and the 

Board, they continued to differ on seismic risk analyses and design criteria. With questions about 

seismic safety unresolved, DOE was compelled to suspend construction work on portions of the 

waste-processing facilities in March 2005, in order to double the seismic design standard.705

Eventually, DOE developed revised estimates of ground motion, which the Board judged to be 

an adequately conservative basis to validate the existing design and construction of the plant. 

After further delay caused by congressional funding reductions through 2006, the construction 

stoppage affecting the pretreatment and the high-level waste facilities ended. 

As the Board sought resolution of ground motion and seismic design issues in the 

structures of the WTP project, it also reviewed numerous other safety-related aspects of WTP’s 

design and construction: electrical system design, instrumentation and control, ventilation 

systems, process safety, fire protection, hydrogen control, concrete quality, and standards issues. 

In connection with the hydrogen hazards and their possible impact on pipes, for example, the 

Board questioned the hydrogen generation rate estimates used to design hydrogen mitigation 

systems to prevent hydrogen-related accidents.706 The Board’s concerns prompted the contractor, 

Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI), to conduct studies and to revise its design basis generation rate 

704 House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Energy and Water Development 

Appropriations for 2007. 705 Gerber, 255. 706 Letter to Dr. Ines R. Triay, Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, U.S. Department of 

Energy, from A. J. Eggenberger, Chairman, January 8, 2009, http://www.hss.energy.gov/deprep/2009/

FB09J08A.DOC 
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equation and its final estimate of the quantity of hydrogen that would be generated during WTP 

operations. The Board, always vigilant about the imperative to protect against fire, also 

challenged some of DOE’s decisions regarding the application of fire-resistant coatings to 

structural steel, in response to which DOE also eventually modified aspects of its fireproofing 

project.707 After the resolution of these and other concerns, the Board continued its monitoring of 

technical design/construction issues at the site, through the Board’s resident site representatives, 

through regular discussions with DOE, and through site visits, e.g., a visit in January 2007 during 

which BNI and DOE’s Office of River Protection briefed the three visiting Board members and 

Board staff. 

Besides oversight activities at Hanford’s WTP, another major Board effort in the review 

of facility design concerned the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) 

Project, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).708 This new facility, still in the design stage, 

was slated to replace the capability for operations then carried out in the five-decade-old 

Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility to be closed in 2010. The Board viewed this 

replacement plan as a much-needed step⎯a prime case of the need to end reliance on unsound 

facilities. In the Board’s view, the old “building’s seismic fragility posed a continuing risk to the 

public and workers.”709 With respect to the planned replacement facility, the Board underscored 

the need to establish conservative design criteria for several of the project’s safety-related 

systems, most notably, the ventilation and fire protection/suppression systems, as well as nuclear 

material container design. Under the Board’s Recommendation 2004–2, Active Confinement 

Systems, the Board directed DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration to evaluate the 

ventilation system’s design for the replacement facility to determine the adequacy of the 

project’s strategy for confining hazardous materials.710 However, the evaluation was delayed, 

707 On January 29, 2008, the Board issued Recommendation 2008–1, Safety Classification of Fire Protection 

Systems (Washington, DC, January 2008), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendatoins/all/rec_2008_01.pdf. 

This Recommendation called for standards for the design and operation of fire protection systems, a primary means 

of protection from radiological hazards at DOE’s defense nuclear facilities. 708 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, FY 2008 Performance and Accountability Report (Washington, DC, 

November 15, 2008), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rcpr_2008.pdf. 709 House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Nuclear Weapons Complex, statement 

by Eggenberger, March 17, 2009. 

710 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 2004–2, Active Confinement Systems (Washington, 

DC, December 7, 2004), http://www.dnfsb/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_2004_02.pdf. See also Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Confinement of Radioactive Materials at Defense Nuclear Facilities, 

DNFSB/TECH–34 (Washington, DC, October 2004), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/technical_reports/all/tr_

200410.pdf. 
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putting the project at risk for the late discovery of safety design deficiencies. In 2005, the Board 

identified weaknesses with the project’s confinement strategy and deficiencies in the 

identification of safety-related controls. The Board expressed general concern in a February 2007 

report on the project’s safety basis documents. In late 2008, Congress intervened in the situation, 

enacting a limitation on funding for the project pending actions by the Board and NNSA. The 

Board and NNSA were each required to submit certifications to the congressional defense 

committees that the design concerns raised by the Board had been resolved. The issues whose 

resolution required certification included the design of the facility's safety class systems, 

including confinement system design, and seismic safety.711

The Push for Earlier Incorporation of Nuclear Safety in Design 

In the course of performing its safety design reviews, the Board became a driver of 

improvements in DOE’s processes for incorporating safety into the design of facilities. The 

Board’s experiences with two major projects in particular⎯Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant 

and Los Alamos’s Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement project⎯brought forcefully 

home that the late identification of safety-related design flaws was a recurring DOE problem.712

As the Board stated in its FY 2008 budget request, 

The Board has recognized during the past several years that DOE has not been 

conservatively designing safety into new defense nuclear facilities early in project 

life.713

Lessons learned from these two high-priority projects and others highlighted the negative 

consequences of delays in the resolution of safety concerns. Such delays produced overruns in 

total project costs and schedule slippages while corrections were made. Recognizing the cost and 

schedule risks of delayed issue resolution, the Board emphasized the need for early attention to 

identifying safety issues on both its part and that of DOE. As Eggenberger said in 2009, 

For the past several years, the Board has driven an initiative to ensure that DOE 

and NNSA design project teams focus on early recognition and rapid resolution of 

safety issues . . . . 

711 House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Nuclear Weapons Complex, statement 

by Eggenberger, March 17, 2009, 4. The limit on funding was stipulated in Section 3112 of the National Defense 

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, Pub. L. No. 110–417. 

712 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Eighteenth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 

2008), 4-2, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. 713DNFSB, FY 2008 Budget Request to the Congress, 53. 
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Performing thorough reviews of safety issues earlier in the design process allows 

issues to be resolved efficiently and in a timely manner, and minimizes adverse 

impacts to project cost and schedule. This approach is essential to the success of 

major design and construction projects. . . . 

The importance of this initiative . . . cannot be overstated. This approach is the 

best way to avoid costly late resolution of major design issues or surprises late in 

the development of a new facility.714

Aiming to shift the identification of major hazards and safety-related design requirements 

to earlier in the design process, the Board and DOE began evaluating elements of DOE’s design 

and construction process to identify actions that could ensure the expeditious resolution of safety 

concerns and the early incorporation of appropriate safety features into design. 

Public Meetings and New Guidance on Integrating Safety into Design 

The joint improvement efforts of the Board and DOE began in late 2005, when the Board 

held the first of a series of public meeting to explore DOE’s policy direction on safety-in-design, 

and to delve into the DOE design process. At the initial public meeting, held on December 7, 

2005, the deputy secretary of energy “acknowledged that safety was not being integrated 

consistently into the early stages of the design of new defense nuclear facilities,” and committed 

to addressing the Board’s fundamental concerns with that earlier integration.715 Public hearings 

held in July 2006 and March 2007 on incorporating safety-in-design addressed early 

identification of issues, communication of Board issues to DOE, issue management, and early 

resolution and closure of design-related safety issues. Assessing the hearings’ usefulness, the 

Board said, 

These public hearings have aided the Board in measuring the success of DOE's 

actions regarding their safety-in-design initiative and allowed examination of how 

DOE develops safety-related design requirements for its new projects. The Board 

plans to observe DOE’s implementation of its safety-in-design initiative and 

revised directives.716

Through the public meetings, the Board provided impetus for DOE’s new Integration 

Safety-in-Design initiative. This new guidance included the revision of the existing DOE Order 

714 House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Nuclear Weapons Complex, statement 

by Eggenberger, March 17, 2009, 4–5. 

715 Eggenberger, “Regulatory Challenges and Plans for the Year Ahead,” 5. See also DNFSB, FY 2008 Budget 

Request to the Congress, 6–8. 
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for project management requirements for new design and construction, and commitments to 

revise the associated DOE Manual.717 These revisions mandated the integration of safety into the 

design of new defense nuclear facilities at the earliest stages of project management.718 The 

Board was also actively involved in the development of a new DOE standard, issued in March 

2008, DOE–STD–1189, Integration of Safety into the Design Process. To demonstrate the 

application of the concepts in the revised Order 413.3A and the new standard, the Board and 

DOE selected two ongoing design and construction projects⎯the Uranium Processing Facility 

project and the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit project at the Idaho National Laboratory. The 

Board also collected information in a public hearing regarding the implementation of the revised 

order and the new standard.719

Congressional Action on Safety in Design 

In addition to Board actions to drive DOE initiatives on the earlier integration of safety in 

design, Congress took action in late 2006, giving further impetus to these ongoing improvement 

efforts. As Eggenberger stated in 2008, the cost overruns and chronic schedule slippages in WTP 

led some in Congress to perceive “that slow resolution of safety-related issues was the primary 

cause,” and that the Board’s influence was not being heeded in DOE.720 Troubled by the failure 

of DOE to act in a timely manner on technical issues raised by the Board, Congress proposed 

“that the Board and the Department would benefit from a more structured process for issue 

resolution that would allow issues to be raised, evaluated, and adjudicated at logical points in the 

design and construction process.”721 Lawmakers also required the Board to provide several kinds 

716 DNFSB, Eighteenth Annual Report to Congress, 4-2. 717 DOE Order 413.3, Program and Project Management for the Acquisition of Capital Assets. That order, now 

DOE Order 413.3A, was the DOE directive on project management requirements for new design and construction 

projects. The revision of DOE Order 413.3 was augmented by the related revisions of the associated DOE Manual 

413.3-1, Project Management for the Acquisition of Capital Assets. 718 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Quarterly Report to Congress, February 15, 2007, http://www.dnfsb. 

gov/pub_docs/reports_to_congress/all/rc_20070215_qr.pdf. 

719 DNFSB, Eighteenth Annual Report to Congress, 4-2. 720 Eggenberger, personal communication. See also Eggenberger, “Regulatory Challenges and Plans for the Year 

Ahead,” 5. 

721 H.R. Rep. No. 109–702, at 976 (2006) (Conf.Rep.). See also Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 

Seventeenth Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC, February 2007), 45, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/

reports_to_congress/all/rc.php. Issued on September 29, 2006 and approved by both houses of Congress, House 

Conference Report 109–702 on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122), Section 

3201, indicated the concern of lawmakers regarding the resolution of technical issues raised by the Board, and called 

for reports to Congress. 
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of reports to Congress. Congress instructed DOE and the Board to report jointly to the 

congressional defense committees “on their efforts to improve the timeliness of issue resolution, 

including recommendations, if any, for legislation that would strengthen and improve technical 

oversight of DOE’s nuclear design and operational activities.”722 Pending the submission of this 

jointly prepared DOE–Board report, Congress directed the Board to submit quarterly reports on 

the “status of significant unresolved technical differences between the Board and the Department 

of Energy (DOE) on issues concerning the design and construction of defense nuclear facilities,” 

and whether or not they were getting resolved.723 On July 19, 2007, the Board and DOE issued 

their joint report detailing many of the actions undertaken to accelerate identification and 

resolution of safety issues. This report also described “more effective processes or protocols for 

the communication to DOE of issues identified by the Board and for the tracking and 

management of these issues,” and stated “The Board and DOE are working together to 

accomplish these objectives.”724

After the Board had discharged this reporting obligation to Congress with the issuance of 

seven reports, the Board indicated that it would continue the practice in the interest of continued 

improvement in design/construction oversight, as Eggenberger noted in 2009. 

While the direction no longer requires the Board to continue providing quarterly 

reports, we believe these reports serve as an appropriate mechanism to keep all 

parties informed of the Board’s concerns with new designs for DOE defense 

nuclear facilities. The Board has also been encouraged by the feedback received 

from the Congressional committees and intends to continue providing these 

reports to Congress and DOE.725

The energy with which the Board sought continued improvement in the 

design/construction process reflected an overarching concern on the part of the Board about a 

basic threat to safety. Articulated in 2009 by Eggenberger, this was the threat of continuing 

reliance in the DOE nuclear weapons complex on aging and unsound facilities, many from the 

Manhattan Project era. Schedule slippages in replacement projects were a concern for the Board, 

not just because they increased costs, but also because they necessitated further use of “facilities 

722 H.R. Rep. No. 109–702, at 976 (2006). 723 Transmittal letter forwarding DNFSB, Eighteenth Annual Report to Congress. 724 Transmittal letter forwarding DNFSB, Eighteenth Annual Report to Congress. 725 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Nuclear Weapons Complex, statement 

by Eggenberger, March 17, 2009, 5. 
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no longer suitable for prolonged use.” As Eggenberger said, speaking of DOE’s National 

Nuclear Security Administration facilities, 

NNSA continues to rely on aging facilities to carry out hazardous production 

missions in support of the nation’s nuclear deterrent while planned replacement 

facilities suffer extended design and construction delays. 

He acknowledged DOE/NNSA’s “interim actions to improve the safety posture in the existing 

facilities,” for example, “consolidating operations in the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research 

building into wings of the structure that do not lie directly above a seismic fault.” However, he 

added, 

[T]hese are stop-gap measures. These facilities are structurally unsound, are 

unsuitable for use any longer than absolutely necessary, and will have to be shut 

down, perhaps before the replacement facilities are ready. 

Unfortunately, planned replacement facilities have been delayed beyond original 

projections and face continued scrutiny regarding cost, scope, and programmatic 

need. NNSA must continue to drive safety improvements at the existing facilities 

while, in parallel, building replacement facilities quickly or finding alternative, 

safer means of accomplishing mission related work.726

DOE/NNSA’s “challenging task of operating aging facilities at a high tempo while designing, 

constructing, and making the transition to modern replacement facilities” ensured that the Board 

would continue to face growing challenges and expend increased efforts in the performance of its 

task of safety oversight of DOE/NNSA’s activities. 

THE BOARD GOING FORWARD 

The Board’s shift in recent years to greater emphasis on design/construction reviews, and 

its emphasis within that area of concentration on improving the processes for the early 

incorporation of safety in design serve as one example of the many adjustments made by the 

Board in its oversight operations in response to DOE’s evolving mission and programs in the 

nuclear weapons complex. The Board always focused its oversight resources on the greatest 

potential sources of risk and the most pressing hazards in the complex, and it was adept at 

accommodating itself, as a small agency with a flexible management structure, to the shifts in 

DOE plans and priorities. As the mission of the complex changed in the early 1990s from the 

726 House, Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Nuclear Weapons Complex, March 

17, 2009. 
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production of nuclear weapons and materials to the maintenance of the nuclear deterrent and 

cleanup operations, the oversight demands on the Board also shifted, while simultaneously 

expanding. Oversight demands on the Board grew over the two decades of its existence, both 

because of the expansion by law of the Board’s jurisdiction to include weapons responsibilities, 

and because of DOE’s stepped-up activities requiring oversight. In its first decade of operations, 

the Board saw pressing and expanded responsibilities in the area of the stabilization and storage 

of nuclear materials, as well as in the area of maintaining the nuclear stockpile. The second 

decade brought further increases in oversight demands as the Board reviewed more DOE design 

and construction projects and new programs. 

As the Board successfully met the challenges of increased oversight demands, Congress 

reaffirmed its view of the Board as an effective and cost-effective mechanism to accomplish vital 

safety oversight. Key congressional oversight committees expressed with satisfaction that the 

Board had more than met the expectations with which it was established in 1988, improving the 

state of nuclear safety at modest cost and, at the same time, promoting the appropriate balance 

between the national security mission of the nuclear weapons complex and safety. 

Acknowledging the “Board’s unique capabilities,” Congress placed ever-greater reliance on the 

Board. As the Board noted in its FY 2010 budget request, “The Board’s Congressional oversight 

and appropriations committees . . . have called upon the Board to apply its health and safety 

expertise at higher and higher levels.” The Board added, 

The committees have continued to demand that the Board increase both the scope 

and pace of its independent health and safety oversight reviews at all DOE 

defense nuclear facilities, with special attention on new facilities in various design 

and construction stages, while continuing to ensure that storage facilities are 

properly and competently maintained.727

In drawing up its FY 2010 budget request, the Board did not foresee that the 

augmentation of its oversight responsibilities would slacken. Indeed, the workload was projected 

to continue growing with expanding DOE design and construction, particularly the planned 

ramp-up of activities at Hanford. In addition, projections of the remediation activities involving 

nuclear wastes and residues called for continuing oversight of nuclear materials handling, 

including improved packaging to protect workers, storage, and long-term disposition for decades 

727 DNFSB, FY 2010 Budget Request to the Congress, 1. 
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to come.728 Even under the most optimistic scenarios, the remediation of the Hanford tank 

wastes alone would continue until well beyond the middle of the 21st century.729 The 

maintenance of the existing stockpile of nuclear weapons also would continue for the foreseeable 

future, calling for scrupulous safety oversight of the potentially hazardous operations of both 

weapons “life-extension” and weapons dismantlement. In addition, the Board’s long-standing 

concern with standards would come to the fore again in connection with DOE’s plans in the 

upcoming years to conduct a directive-by-directive review and revision of key nuclear safety 

directives. As Eggenberger stated in a June 2009 letter, the Board planned to maintain “an 

intense level of oversight over the revision of the directives system and the vitality of the 

directives being revised to ensure that the margin of safety embodied in DOE’s directives is 

maintained or increased.”730 Finally, on themes the Board had struck from the earliest days of its 

operations, it planned to continue urging DOE to maintain strong, central authorities for internal 

safety oversight, and to develop an aggressive, proactive staffing plan. 

728 See Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Recommendation 2005–1, Nuclear Material Packaging

(Washington, DC, March 10, 2005), http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/recommendations/all/rec_2005_01.pdf. 729 U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, 1996 Baseline Environmental Management 

Report: Executive Summary (Washington, DC, July 1996), http://www.em.doe.gov/bemr/pages/bemr96.aspx. 

According to this 1996 study, 

The expected end dates for the five highest-cost sites are as follows: Hanford Site (2070), Idaho 

National Engineering Laboratory (2045), Oak Ridge Reservation (2070), Rocky Flats 

Environmental Technology Site (2055), and Savannah River Site (2050). Surveillance and 

monitoring activities will continue beyond these dates. All sites will be complete by 2070. 730 Letter from Chairman Eggenberger to the Under Secretary of Energy, the Honorable Kristina Johnson, re: 

“Views of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on the State of Nuclear Safety at the Department of Energy’s 

Defense Nuclear Facilities,” June 10, 2009, http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/correspondence/all/cor_20090610.pdf. 
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2007. 109th Cong., 2d sess., April 6, 2006. 
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U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on 

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1, 6, 28, 30, 1992. 

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Project. 105th Congress, 2d sess., May 12, 1998. 
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U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. Committee on Energy and Commerce. Subcommittee 

on Energy Conservation and Power. Nuclear Reactor Safety. 99th Cong., 2d sess., May 

22, July 16, 1986. 

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on Energy and Power. Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities: Hearings on H.R. 783, H.R. 

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on Energy and Power. Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities. 101st Cong., 1st sess., February 

22, 1989. 

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on Oversight and Investigations. Contracting Problems at DOE’s Fernald Site. 103rd

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on Oversight and Investigations. Health and Safety at the Department of Energy’s 

Nuclear Weapons Facilities. 101st Cong., 1st sess., Comm. Print 101–H, June 1989. 

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on Oversight and Investigations. A Review of GAO’s Findings and Recommendations 

Regarding the Department of Energy’s Efforts to Consolidate Surplus Plutonium 

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on Oversight and Investigations. A Review of Ongoing Management Concerns at Los 

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Energy and Mineral Resources. Federal Nuclear Facilities Licensing and Regulation Act. 

103rd Cong., 2d sess., March 1, 8, 1994. 

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Subcommittee on Energy Research and Production and Subcommittee on Investigations 
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and Oversight. The Impact of Mercury Releases at the Oak Ridge Complex. 98th Cong., 

1st sess., July 1983. 

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of Nuclear Weapons Production. OTA–O–484. Washington, DC, February 1991. 

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Health and Safety at the Nuclear Weapons Complex. OTA–BP–O–85. Washington, DC,

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Appropriations for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993. 102d Cong., 1st sess., April 23, May 9, 

17, 22, 23, June 5, 12, 13, 19, 20, 1991. 

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Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1993 and the Future Years Defense Program. 102d 

Cong., 2d sess., March 18, 24, 27, April 9, 28, May 20, June 3, 11, 1992. 

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Department of Defense Authorization for 

Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1995 and the Future Years Defense Program. 103rd

Cong., 2d sess., February 8, March 2, 3, 8, 9, 1, 5, 23, April 20, 1994. 

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Department of Defense Authorization for 

Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1996 and the Future Years Defense Program. 104th

Cong., 1st sess., March 28, April 25, May 2, 16, 18, 1995. 

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Department of Defense Authorization for 

Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1997 and the Future Years Defense Program. 104th

Cong., 2d sess., March 6, 13, 20, 25, 29, 1996. 

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Nominations Before the Senate Armed 

Services Committee, First Session, 101st Congress. March 14, 16, April 5, 18–19, May 3, 
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4, 16, 18, June 22, July 31, August 3, September 7, 8, 20, October 6, 17, November 7, 9, 

20, 1989. 

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Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2000 and the 

Future Years Defense Program. 106th Cong., 1st sess., Part. 7, February 24, 26, March 11, 

22, April 14, 1999 (statement of John C. Browne Director Los Alamos National 

Laboratory, February 26, 1999). http://www.senate.gov/-armed-services/statemnt~ 

l999/990226jb.pdf. 

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and 

Nuclear Deterrence. Plans, Progress, and Experience to Date of the Defense Nuclear 

Facilities Safety Board. 101st Cong., 2d sess., March 28, 1990. 

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and 

Nuclear Deterrence. Safety Oversight for Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities. 100th

Cong., 1st sess., October 22, 26, 27, 30, November 3, 1987. 

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Abolishment Act. Hearings on S. 1678. 104th Cong., 2d sess., September 4, 1996. 

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Department of Energy High-Level Radioactive Waste Facilities. 101st Cong., 2d sess., 

July 31, 1990. 

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Nuclear Weapons Industry and Their Implications for Today. 101st Cong., 1st sess. 

Comm. Print, December 1989. 

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Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities. 100th Cong., 1st sess., March 17, 1987. 

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Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services. Safety and Reliability of the U.S. Nuclear 

Deterrent. 105th Cong. 1st sess., October 27, 1997. 

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Relating to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board: Calendar Year 1995. DOE/S–

0115. Washington, DC, March 1996. 

U.S. Department of Energy. Annual Report to Congress, Department of Energy Activities 

Relating to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board: Calendar Year 2003. 

Washington, DC, February 2004. 
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U.S. Department of Energy. A Report on a Safety Assessment of Department of Energy Nuclear 

Reactor: Report of the Crawford Committee. DOE/US–0005. Washington, DC, March 

1981. 

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Storage Safety Issues at Department of Energy Facilities. Washington, DC, 1994. 

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Electric Power Industry, 2000: An Update. DOE/EIA–0562(00). Washington, DC, 

October 2000. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/chg_stru_update/toc.html. 

U.S. Department of Energy. Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Weapons Stewardship Presents 

New Challenges for National Labs.” Los Alamos, NM, 1996. 

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Management: History. Washington, DC, August 8, 2008. http://www.em.doe.gov/pages/ 

History.aspx. 

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Environmental Management. Linking Legacies: 

Connecting the Cold War Nuclear Weapons Production Processes to Their 

Environmental Consequences. Washington, DC, January 1997. http://www.em.doe.gov/ 

Publications/linklegacy.aspx. 

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Environmental Management. 1996 Baseline 

Environmental Management Report: Executive Summary. Washington, DC, July 1996. 

http://www.em.doe.gov/bemr/pages/bemr96.aspx. 

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Inspector General. Office of Audit Services. The U.S. 

Department of Energy’s Efforts to Preserve the Knowledge Base Needed to Operate a 

Downsized Nuclear Weapons Complex. DOE/IG–0428. Washington, DC, October 1998. 

http://www.ig.energy.gov/documents/CalendarYear1998/ig-0428.pdf. 

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U.S. Department of Energy’s Occupational Safety and Health Program for its 

Government-Owned Contractor-Operated Facilities. Washington, DC, 1990. 

U.S. Department of State. Bureau of Arms Control. “The Stockpile Stewardship Program.” 

http://www.state.gov/www.global/arms/factsheets/wmd/nuclear/ctbt/fs_991008_ 

stockpile.html. 

U.S. General Accounting Office. Department of Energy: Cleaning Up Inactive Facilities Will Be 

Difficult. GAO/RCED–93–149. Washington, DC, June 1993. 

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Needed for Worker and Nuclear Facility Safety. GAO/RCED–98–163. Washington, DC, 

May 1998. http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/rc98163.pdf. 
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U.S. General Accounting Office. DOE’s Safety and Health Oversight Program at Nuclear 

Faciliites Could Be Strengthened. RCED–84–50. Washington, DC, November 1983. 

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Energy’s Implementation of 1985 Initiatives. RCED–96–68FS. Washington, DC, March 

1986. 

U.S. General Accounting Office. Nuclear Safety: The Defense Facilities Nuclear Safety Board’s 

First Year of Operation. GAO/RCED–91–54. Washington, DC, February 1991. 

http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat7/143684.pdf. 

U.S. General Accounting Office. Nuclear Safety: Safety Analysis Reviews for DOE’s Defense 

Facilities Can Be Improved. GAO/RCED–86–175. Washington, DC, June 1986. 

http://archive.gao.gov/d4t4/130260.pdf. 

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and Difficult Task. GAO/RCED–92–73. Washington, DC, May 1992. http://archive.gao. 

gov/d32t10/146694.pdf. 

U.S. General Accounting Office. Nuclear Waste: Impact of Savannah River Plant’s Radioactive 

Waste Management Practices. GAO/RCED–86–143. Washington, DC, July 1986. 

http://archive.gao.gov/d4t4/130648.pdf. 

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Waste Management Practices. RCED–87–30. Washington, DC, November 1986. 

http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat23/131661.pdf. 

U.S. Government Accountability Office. Nuclear Weapons: Annual Assessment of the Safety, 

Performance, and Reliability of the Nation’s Stockpile. GAO-07-243R. Washington, DC, 

February 2007. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07243r.pdf. 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NRC Comments on Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board November 1998 Report to Congress on the Role of the Defense Nuclear Facilities 

Safety Board Regarding Regulation of the Department of Energy’s Defense Nuclear 

Facilities. Washington, DC, January 15, 1999. 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NRC: Our History. February 3, 2009. http://www.nrc. 

gov/about-nrc/history.html#aec. 

U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Appendix: Budget of the United States Government 

Fiscal Year 2000. Washington, DC, 1999. 

Walker, J. Samuel. Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1963–

1971. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. 
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Walker, J. Samuel. Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth 

Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 

Walker, J. Samuel. A Short History of Nuclear Regulation, 1946–1999. Washington, DC: U.S. 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, January 2000. 

Walker, J. Samuel. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 2004. 

Wald, Matthew L. “10 Years After Three Mile Island.” New York Times, March 23, 1989. 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DF1738F930A15750C0A 

96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print. 

Wald, Matthew L. “Energy Dept. Shift in Safety Faulted.” New York Times, May 2, 1993. 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE0DE1E38F931A35756C0A 

965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. 

Wald, Matthew L. “Weapon Reactors Faulted on Safety.” New York Times, October 29, 1987. 

Weisman, Jonathan. “True Impact of GOP Congress Reaches Well Beyond Bills.” 

Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 54, no. 36 (September 7, 1996): 2515–20. 

In addition to the sources noted above, the author consulted the volumes of bound 

transcripts of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Public Meetings and Hearings, U.S. 

Department of Energy (DOE) annual reports to Congress describing Department of Energy 

activities in response to formal recommendations and other interactions with the Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, as well as congressional committee reports, Congressional 

Record debates, and other documents that constitute the legislative history of Pub.L. No. 100–

456, the Board’s enabling statute. Also used in the preparation of this report were the U.S. Code, 

and the Code of Federal Regulations. Online versions of the U.S Code and the Code of Federal 

Regulations are available on the Web site of the Cornell University Law School at 

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/#TITLES. 

The range of information available on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Web 

site (http://www.dnfsb.gov/) is broad and includes, but is not limited to, Annual and Special 

Reports to Congress (1991–Present), Correspondence (2000–Present), Public Hearings (2003–

Present), Strategic Plans and Performance Reports to Congress (1999–Present), Weekly Site 

Representative Reports (1996–Present), and all Recommendations. The Web site also provides a 

biweekly listing of all public documents received from the Department of Energy as part of the 

Board’s oversight responsibility. Those documents are made available to the public through 

procedures detailed on the Web site. Other useful Web sites include the U.S. Department of 

Energy, Office of Health, Safety, and Security (HSS), Integrated Safety Management (ISM) 

(http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ism/), Office of Environmental Management 

(http://www.em.doe.gov/), and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (http://www.nrc.gov/). 
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APPENDIX 1: Board Enabling Legislation 
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ENABLING STATUTE OF THE 

DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD 

42 U.S.C. § 2286 et seq. 

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION 

ACT, FISCAL YEAR 1989 

(Pub. L. No. 100-456, September 29, 1988), 

AS AMENDED BY NATIONAL DEFENSE 

AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEAR 1991 

(Pub. L. No. 101-510, November 5, 1990), 

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FISCAL YEARS 1992 AND 1993 

(Pub. L. No. 102-190, December 5, 1991), 

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 1992 

(Pub. L. No. 102-486, October 24, 1992), 

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FISCAL YEAR 1994 

(Pub. L. No. 103-160, November 30, 1993), 

FEDERAL REPORTS ELIMINATION ACT OF 1998 

(Pub. L. No. 105-362, November 10, 1998), 

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FISCAL YEAR 2001 

(Pub. L. No. 106-398, October 30, 2000), AND 

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FISCAL YEAR 2003 

(Pub. L. No. 107-314, December 2, 2002) 

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FISCAL YEAR 2004 

(Pub. L. No. 108-136, November 7, 2003) 

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FISCAL YEAR 2009 

(Pub. L. No. 110-417, October 14, 2008) 

As of 10/14/2008 
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TITLE 42. THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE 

CHAPTER 23. DEVELOPMENT AND CONTROL OF ATOMIC ENERGY 

SUBCHAPTER XVII.A. 

DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD 

42 U.S.C. § 2286 

§ 2286. Establishment of Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 311] 

(a) Establishment. 

 There is hereby established an independent establishment in the executive branch, to be 

known as the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board" (hereafter in this subchapter referred to 

as the "Board"). 

(b) Membership. 

(1) The Board shall be composed of five members appointed from civilian life by the 

President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, from among United States citizens 

who are respected experts in the field of nuclear safety with a demonstrated competence and 

knowledge relevant to the independent investigative and oversight functions of the Board. Not 

more than three members of the Board shall be of the same political party. 

(2) Any vacancy in the membership of the Board shall be filled in the same manner in 

which the original appointment was made. 

(3) No member of the Board may be an employee of, or have any significant financial 

relationship with, the Department of Energy or any contractor of the Department of Energy. 

(4) Not later than 180 days after September 29, 1988, the President shall submit to the 

Senate nominations for appointment to the Board. In the event that the President is unable to 

submit the nominations within such 180-day period, the President shall submit to the 

Committees on Armed Services and on Appropriations of the Senate and to the Speaker of the 

House of Representatives a report describing the reasons for such inability and a plan for 

submitting the nominations within the next 90 days. If the President is unable to submit the 

nominations within that 90-day period, the President shall again submit to such committees and 

the Speaker such a report and plan. The President shall continue to submit to such committees 

and the Speaker such a report and plan every 90 days until the nominations are submitted. 

(c) Chairman and Vice Chairman. 

(1) The President shall designate a Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Board from 

among members of the Board. 

(2) The Chairman shall be the chief executive officer of the Board and, subject to such 

policies as the Board may establish, shall exercise the functions of the Board with respect to— 
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 (A) the appointment and supervision of employees of the Board; 

 (B) the organization of any administrative units established by the Board; and 

 (C) the use and expenditure of funds. 

(3) The Chairman may delegate any of the functions under this paragraph to any other 

member or to any appropriate officer of the Board. 

(4) The Vice Chairman shall act as Chairman in the event of the absence or incapacity of 

the Chairman or in case of a vacancy in the office of Chairman. 

(d) Terms. 

(1) Except as provided under paragraph (2), the members of the Board shall serve for 

terms of five years. Members of the Board may be reappointed. 

(2) Of the members first appointed— 

 (A) one shall be appointed for a term of one year; 

 (B) one shall be appointed for a term of two years; 

 (C) one shall be appointed for a term of three years; 

 (D) one shall be appointed for a term of four years; and 

 (E) one shall be appointed for a term of five years, as designated by the President 

at the time of appointment. 

(3) Any member appointed to fill a vacancy occurring before the expiration of the term 

of office for which such member's predecessor was appointed shall be appointed only for the 

remainder of such term. A member may serve after the expiration of that member's term until a 

successor has taken office. 

(e) Quorum. 

 Three members of the Board shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number may hold 

hearings. 

§ 2286a. Functions of the Board. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 312] 

(a) In general. 

 The Board shall perform the following functions: 
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 (1) Review and evaluation of standards. 

 The Board shall review and evaluate the content and implementation of the standards 

relating to the design, construction, operation, and decommissioning of defense nuclear facilities 

of the Department of Energy (including all applicable Department of Energy orders, regulations, 

and requirements) at each Department of Energy defense nuclear facility. The Board shall 

recommend to the Secretary of Energy those specific measures that should be adopted to ensure 

that public health and safety are adequately protected. The Board shall include in its 

recommendations necessary changes in the content and implementation of such standards, as 

well as matters on which additional data or additional research is needed. 

 (2) Investigations. 

 (A) The Board shall investigate any event or practice at a Department of Energy 

defense nuclear facility which the Board determines has adversely affected, or may 

adversely affect, public health and safety. 

 (B) The purpose of any Board investigation under subparagraph (A) shall be— 

 (i) to determine whether the Secretary of Energy is adequately 

implementing the standards described in paragraph (1) of the Department of 

Energy (including all applicable Department of Energy orders, regulations, and 

requirements) at the facility; 

 (ii) to ascertain information concerning the circumstances of such event 

or practice and its implications for such standards; 

 (iii) to determine whether such event or practice is related to other events 

or practices at other Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities; and 

 (iv) to provide to the Secretary of Energy such recommendations for 

changes in such standards or the implementation of such standards (including 

Department of Energy orders, regulations, and requirements) and such 

recommendations relating to data or research needs as may be prudent or 

necessary. 

 (3) Analysis of design and operational data. 

 The Board shall have access to and may systematically analyze design and operational 

data, including safety analysis reports, from any Department of Energy defense nuclear facility. 

 (4) Review of facility design and construction. 

 The Board shall review the design of a new Department of Energy defense nuclear 

facility before construction of such facility begins and shall recommend to the Secretary, within 

a reasonable time, such modifications of the design as the Board considers necessary to ensure 
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adequate protection of public health and safety. During the construction of any such facility, the 

Board shall periodically review and monitor the construction and shall submit to the Secretary, 

within a reasonable time, such recommendations relating to the construction of that facility as the 

Board considers necessary to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety. An action of 

the Board, or a failure to act, under this paragraph may not delay or prevent the Secretary of 

Energy from carrying out the construction of such a facility. 

 (5) Recommendations. 

 The Board shall make such recommendations to the Secretary of Energy with respect to 

Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities, including operations of such facilities, 

standards, and research needs, as the Board determines are necessary to ensure adequate 

protection of public health and safety. In making its recommendations, the Board shall consider 

the technical and economic feasibility of implementing the recommended measures. 

(b) Excluded functions.731

 The functions of the Board under this subchapter do not include functions relating to the 

safety of atomic weapons. However, the Board shall have access to any information on atomic 

weapons that is within the Department of Energy and is necessary to carry out the functions of 

the Board. 

§ 2286b. Powers of Board. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 313] 

(a) Hearings. 

(1) The Board or a member authorized by the Board may, for the purpose of carrying out 

this subchapter, hold such hearings and sit and act at such times and places, and require, by 

subpoena or otherwise, the attendance and testimony of such witnesses and the production of 

such evidence as the Board or an authorized member may find advisable. 

 (2)(A) Subpoenas may be issued only under the signature of the Chairman or any 

member of the Board designated by him and shall be served by any person designated by 

the Chairman, any member, or any person as otherwise provided by law. The attendance 

of witnesses and the production of evidence may be required from any place in the 

United States at any designated place of hearing in the United States. 

 (B) Any member of the Board may administer oaths or affirmations to witnesses 

appearing before the Board. 

 (C) If a person issued a subpoena under paragraph (1) refuses to obey such 

subpoena or is guilty of contumacy, any court of the United States within the judicial 

district within which the hearing is conducted or within the judicial district within which 

such person is found or resides or transacts business may (upon application by the Board) 

731 Added by § 3202 (b)(2)(B) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993 (Pub. L. 

102-190). 
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order such person to appear before the Board to produce evidence or to give testimony 

relating to the matter under investigation. Any failure to obey such order of the court may 

be punished by such court as a contempt of the court. 

 (D) The subpoenas of the Board shall be served in the manner provided for 

subpoenas issued by a United States district court under the Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure for the United States district courts. 

 (E) All process of any court to which application may be made under this section 

may be served in the judicial district in which the person required to be served resides or 

may be found. 

(b) Staff. 

(1) The Board may, for the purpose of performing its responsibilities under this 

subchapter— 

 (A) hire such staff as it considers necessary to perform the functions of the 

Board, including such scientific and technical personnel as the Board may determine 

necessary, but not more than the equivalent of 150732 full-time employees; and 

(B) procure the temporary and intermittent services of experts and consultants to 

the extent authorized by section 3109(b) of title 5 [United States Code] at rates the Board 

determines to be reasonable. 

(2) The authority and requirements provided in section 2201(d) of this title [§ 161 d. of 

the Atomic Energy Act] with respect to officers and employees of the Commission shall apply 

with respect to scientific and technical personnel hired under paragraph (1)(A).733

(c) Regulations. 

 The Board may prescribe regulations to carry out the responsibilities of the Board under 

this subchapter. 

(d) Reporting requirements. 

 The Board may establish reporting requirements for the Secretary of Energy which shall 

be binding upon the Secretary. The information which the Board may require the Secretary of 

Energy to report under this subsection may include any information designated as classified 

information, or any information designated as safeguards information and protected from 

disclosure under section 2167 or 2168 of this title [§ 147 or 148 of the Atomic Energy Act]. 

732 Amended by § 3202 (a)(1) of the National Defense Authorization Act of 1992 and 1993 (Pub. L. 102-190). 

733 Added by the National Defense Authorization Act of 1991 (Pub. L. 101-510). 
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(e) Use of Government facilities, etc. 

 The Board may, for the purpose of carrying out its responsibilities under this subchapter, 

use any facility, contractor, or employee of any other department or agency of the Federal 

Government with the consent of and under appropriate support arrangements with the head of 

such department or agency and, in the case of a contractor, with the consent of the contractor. 

(f) Assistance from certain agencies of the Federal Government. 

 With the consent of and under appropriate support arrangements with the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission, the Board may obtain the advice and recommendations of the staff of 

the Commission on matters relating to the Board's responsibilities and may obtain the advice and 

recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards on such matters. 

(g) Assistance from organizations outside the Federal Government. 

 Notwithstanding any other provision of law relating to the use of competitive procedures, 

the Board may enter into an agreement with the National Research Council of the National 

Academy of Sciences or any other appropriate group or organization of experts outside the 

Federal Government chosen by the Board to assist the Board in carrying out its responsibilities 

under this subchapter. 

(h) Resident inspectors. 

 The Board may assign staff to be stationed at any Department of Energy defense nuclear 

facility to carry out the functions of the Board. 

(i) Special studies. 

 The Board may conduct special studies pertaining to adequate protection of public health 

and safety at any Department of Energy defense nuclear facility. 

(j) Evaluation of information. 

 The Board may evaluate information received from the scientific and industrial 

communities, and from the interested public, with respect to— 

(1) events or practices at any Department of Energy defense nuclear facility; or 

(2) suggestions for specific measures to improve the content of standards described in 

section 2286a(1) of this title [§ 312(1) of the Atomic Energy Act], the implementation of 

such standards, or research relating to such standards at Department of Energy defense 

nuclear facilities. 
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§ 2286c. Responsibilities of the Secretary of Energy. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 314]

(a) Cooperation. 

 The Secretary of Energy shall fully cooperate with the Board and provide the Board with 

ready access to such facilities, personnel, and information as the Board considers necessary to 

carry out its responsibilities under this subchapter. Each contractor operating a Department of 

Energy defense nuclear facility under a contract awarded by the Secretary shall, to the extent 

provided in such contract or otherwise with the contractor's consent, fully cooperate with the 

Board and provide the Board with ready access to such facilities, personnel, and information of 

the contractor as the Board considers necessary to carry out its responsibilities under this 

subchapter. 

(b) Access to information. 

 The Secretary of Energy may deny access to information provided to the Board to any 

person who— 

(1) has not been granted an appropriate security clearance or access authorization by the 

Secretary of Energy; or 

(2) does not need such access in connection with the duties of such person. 

§ 2286d. Board Recommendations. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 315] 

(a) Public availability and comment. 

 Subject to subsections (g) and (h) and after receipt by the Secretary of Energy of any 

recommendations from the Board under section 2286a of this title [§ 312 of the Atomic Energy 

Act], the Board promptly shall make such recommendations available to the public in the 

Department of Energy's regional public reading rooms and shall publish in the Federal Register 

such recommendations and a request for the submission to the Board of public comments on 

such recommendations. Interested persons shall have 30 days after the date of the publication of 

such notice in which to submit comments, data, views, or arguments to the Board concerning the 

recommendations. 

(b) Response by Secretary. 

(1) The Secretary of Energy shall transmit to the Board, in writing, a statement on 

whether the Secretary accepts or rejects, in whole or in part, the recommendations submitted to 

him by the Board under section 2286a of this title [§ 312 of the Atomic Energy Act], a 

description of the actions to be taken in response to the recommendations, and his views on such 

recommendations. The Secretary of Energy shall transmit his response to the Board within 45 

days after the date of the publication, under subsection (a), of the notice with respect to such 

recommendations or within such additional period, not to exceed 45 days, as the Board may 

grant. 
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(2) At the same time as the Secretary of Energy transmits his response to the Board 

under paragraph (1), the Secretary, subject to subsection (h), shall publish such response, 

together with a request for public comment on his response, in the Federal Register. 

(3) Interested persons shall have 30 days after the date of the publication of the Secretary 

of Energy's response in which to submit comments, data, views, or arguments to the Board 

concerning the Secretary's response. 

(4) The Board may hold hearings for the purpose of obtaining public comments on its 

recommendations and the Secretary of Energy's response. 

(c) Provision of information to Secretary. 

 The Board shall furnish the Secretary of Energy with copies of all comments, data, views, 

and arguments submitted to it under subsection (a) or (b) of this section. 

(d) Final decision. 

 If the Secretary of Energy, in a response under subsection (b)(1), rejects (in whole or 

part) any recommendation made by the Board under section 2286a of this title [§ 312 of the 

Atomic Energy Act], the Board shall either reaffirm its original recommendation or make a 

revised recommendation and shall notify the Secretary of its action. Within 30 days after 

receiving the notice of the Board's action under this subsection, the Secretary shall consider the 

Board's action and make a final decision on whether to implement all or part of the Board's 

recommendations. Subject to subsection (h), the Secretary shall publish the final decision and the 

reasoning for such decision in the Federal Register and shall transmit to the Committees on 

Armed Services and on Appropriations of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of 

Representatives a written report containing that decision and reasoning. 

(e) Implementation plan. 

 The Secretary of Energy shall prepare a plan for the implementation of each Board 

recommendation, or part of a recommendation, that is accepted by the Secretary in his final 

decision. The Secretary shall transmit the implementation plan to the Board within 90 days after 

the date of the publication of the Secretary's final decision on such recommendation in the 

Federal Register. The Secretary may have an additional 45 days to transmit the plan if the 

Secretary submits to the Board and to the Committees on Armed Services and on Appropriations 

of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives a notification setting forth the 

reasons for the delay and describing the actions the Secretary is taking to prepare an 

implementation plan under this subsection. The Secretary may implement any such 

recommendation (or part of any such recommendation) before, on, or after the date on which the 

Secretary transmits the implementation plan to the Board under this subsection. 
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(f) Implementation. 

(1) Subject to paragraph (2), not later than one year after the date on which the Secretary 

of Energy transmits an implementation plan with respect to a recommendation (or part thereof) 

under subsection (e), the Secretary shall carry out and complete the implementation plan. If 

complete implementation of the plan takes more than 1 year, the Secretary of Energy shall 

submit a report to the Committees on Armed Services and on Appropriations of the Senate and to 

the Speaker of the House of Representatives setting forth the reasons for the delay and when 

implementation will be completed. 

(2) If the Secretary of Energy determines that the implementation of a Board 

recommendation (or part thereof) is impracticable because of budgetary considerations, or that 

the implementation would affect the Secretary's ability to meet the annual nuclear weapons 

stockpile requirements established pursuant to section 2121 of this title [§ 91 of the Atomic 

Energy Act], the Secretary shall submit to the President, to the Committees on Armed Services 

and on Appropriations of the Senate, and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives a report 

containing the recommendation and the Secretary's determination. 

(g) Imminent or severe threat. 

(1) In any case in which the Board determines that a recommendation submitted to the 

Secretary of Energy under section 2286a of this title [§ 312 of the Atomic Energy Act] relates to 

an imminent or severe threat to public health and safety, the Board and the Secretary of Energy 

shall proceed under this subsection in lieu of subsections (a) through (d) of this section. 

(2) At the same time that the Board transmits a recommendation relating to an imminent 

or severe threat to the Secretary of Energy, the Board shall also transmit the recommendation to 

the President and for information purposes to the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Energy 

shall submit his recommendation to the President. The President shall review the Secretary of 

Energy's recommendation and shall make the decision concerning acceptance or rejection of the 

Board's recommendation. 

(3) After receipt by the President of the recommendation from the Board under this 

subsection, the Board promptly shall make such recommendation available to the public and 

shall transmit such recommendation to the Committees on Armed Services and on 

Appropriations of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The President 

shall promptly notify such committees and the Speaker of his decision and the reasons for that 

decision. 

(h) Limitation. 

 Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, the requirements to make 

information available to the public under this section— 

(1) shall not apply in the case of information that is classified; and 
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(2) shall be subject to the orders and regulations issued by the Secretary of Energy under 

sections 2167 and 2168 of this title [§§ 147 and 148 of the Atomic Energy Act] to prohibit 

dissemination of certain information. 

§ 2286e. Reports. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 316] 

(a) Board report. 

(1) The Board shall submit to the Committees on Armed Services and on Appropriations 

of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives each year, at the same time that 

the President submits the budget to Congress pursuant to section 1105(a) of Title 31 [United 

States Code], a written report concerning its activities under this subchapter, including all 

recommendations made by the Board, during the year preceding the year in which the report is 

submitted. The Board may also issue periodic unclassified reports on matters within the Board's 

responsibilities. 

(2) The annual report under paragraph (1) shall include an assessment of— 

(A) the improvements in the safety of Department of Energy defense nuclear 

facilities during the period covered by the report; 

(B) the improvements in the safety of Department of Energy defense nuclear 

facilities resulting from actions taken by the Board or taken on the basis of the activities 

of the Board; and 

(C) the outstanding safety problems, if any, of Department of Energy defense 

nuclear facilities. 

(b) DOE report. 

 The Secretary of Energy shall submit to the Committees on Armed Services and on 

Appropriations of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives each year, at the 

same time that the President submits the budget to Congress pursuant to section 1105(a) of Title 

31 [United States Code], a written report concerning the activities of the Department of Energy 

under this subchapter during the year preceding the year in which the report is submitted. 

(c) Requirements for first annual report. 

(1) Before submission of the first annual report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board under section 316(a) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (as added by subsection (a)), the 

Board shall conduct a study on whether nuclear facilities of the Department of Energy that are 

excluded from the definition of "Department of Energy defense nuclear facility" in section 

318(1)(C) of such Act (hereafter in this subsection referred to as "non-defense nuclear facilities") 

should be subject to independent external oversight. The Board shall include in such first annual 

report the results of such study and the recommendation of the Board on whether non-defense 

nuclear facilities should be subject to independent external oversight. 
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(2) If the Board recommends in the report that non-defense nuclear facilities should be 

subject to such oversight, the report shall include a discussion of alternative mechanisms for 

implementing such oversight, including mechanisms such as a separate executive agency and 

oversight as a part of the Board's responsibilities. The discussion of alternative mechanisms of 

oversight also shall include considerations of budgetary costs, protection of the security of 

sensitive nuclear weapons information, and the similarities and differences in the design, 

construction, operation, and decommissioning of defense and non-defense nuclear facilities of 

the Department of Energy. 

(d) Requirements for fifth annual report. 

 The fifth annual report submitted by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board under 

section 316(a) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (as added by subsection (a)) shall include— 

(1) an assessment of the degree to which the overall administration of the Board's 

activities are believed to meet the objectives of Congress in establishing the Board; 

(2) recommendations for continuation, termination, or modification of the Board's 

functions and programs, including recommendations for transition to some other independent 

oversight arrangement if it is advisable; and 

(3) recommendations for appropriate transition requirements in the event that 

modifications are recommended. 

§ 2286f. Judicial Review. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 317]

 Chapter 7 of Title 5 [5 U.S.C. §§ 701 et seq.] shall apply to the activities of the Board 

under this subchapter. 

§ 2286g. “Department of Energy Defense Nuclear Facility” Defined. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 

318] 

 As used in this subchapter, the term "Department of Energy defense nuclear facility" 

means any of the following: 

(1) A production facility or utilization facility (as defined in section 2014 of this title 

[§ 11 of the Atomic Energy Act]) that is under the control or jurisdiction of the Secretary of 

Energy and that is operated for national security purposes, but the term does not include— 

 (A) any facility or activity covered by Executive Order No. 12344, dated 

February 1, 1982 [42 U.S.C. § 7158 note], pertaining to the Naval nuclear propulsion 

program; 
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 (B) any facility or activity involved734 with the transportation of nuclear 

explosives or nuclear material; 

 (C) any facility that does not conduct atomic energy defense activities; or 

 (D) any facility owned by the United States Enrichment Corporation.735

(2) A nuclear waste storage facility under the control or jurisdiction of the Secretary of 

Energy, but the term does not include a facility developed pursuant to the Nuclear Waste Policy 

Act of 1982 (42 U.S.C. 10101 et seq.) and licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

§ 2286h. Contract Authority Subject to Appropriations. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 319]

 The authority of the Board to enter into contracts under this subchapter is effective only 

to the extent that appropriations (including transfers of appropriations) are provided in advance 

for such purpose. 

§ 2286h-1. Transmittal of Certain Information to Congress. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 320] 

 Whenever the Board submits or transmits to the President or the Director of the Office of 

Management and Budget any legislative recommendation, or any statement or information in 

preparation of a report to be submitted to the Congress pursuant to section 2286e(a) of this title 

[§ 316(a) of the Atomic Energy Act], the Board shall submit at the same time a copy thereof to 

the Congress. 

§ 2286i. Annual Authorization of Appropriations. [Atomic Energy Act, Sec. 321] 

 Authorizations of appropriations for the Board for fiscal years beginning after fiscal year 

1989 shall be provided annually in authorization Acts. 

RELATED LEGISLATIVE PROVISIONS

§ 3135 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 1992 and 1993 (Public Law 102-190), 

as amended by § 401 of the Federal Reports Elimination Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-362): 

§ 3135. RESUMPTION OF PLUTONIUM OPERATIONS IN BUILDINGS AT ROCKY 

FLATS. 

(a) RESUMPTION OF PLUTONIUM OPERATIONS. 

 The Secretary of Energy may not resume plutonium operations in a plutonium operations 

 

734 Pantex and NTS were added to the Board's jurisdiction by the National Defense Authorization Act of 1992 and 

1993 (Pub.L. 102-190) which struck the following language: "with the assembly or testing of nuclear explosives or." 

735 Added by amendment through the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (Pub.L. 102-486, § 902(a)(7)).
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building at the Rocky Flats Plant, Golden, Colorado, until the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board determines, to the satisfaction of the Board, that the Secretary's response to the Board's 

recommendations numbered 90-2, 90-5, and 91-1 adequately protects public health and safety 

with respect to the operation of such building. 

(b) RESUMPTION OF PRODUCTION OF PLUTONIUM WARHEAD COMPONENTS. 

 The production of plutonium warhead components for any particular type of warhead 

may not be resumed at the Rocky Flats Plant until the later of— 

(1) April 1, 1992; or 

(2) 30 days after the date on which the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Energy 

certify to Congress that the production of that type of warhead is necessary in the interest of the 

national security of the United States. 

(c) DEFINITION. 

 For purposes of this section, the term "plutonium operations building" means the building 

numbered 371, 559, 707, 771, 776, 777, or 779 at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, 

Golden, Colorado, or any other building at such Plant in which plutonium operations are 

conducted. 

§ 3137 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Public Law 106-

398), as amended by § 3115 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 

(Public Law 108-136): 

§ 3137. CONTINUATION OF PROCESSING, TREATMENT, AND DISPOSITION OF 

LEGACY NUCLEAR MATERIALS. 

(a) CONTINUATION. 

 The Secretary of Energy shall continue operations and maintain a high state of readiness 

at the H-canyon facility at the Savannah River Site, Aiken, South Carolina, and shall provide 

technical staff necessary to operate and so maintain such facility. 

(b) LIMITATION ON USE OF FUNDS FOR DECOMMISSIONING OF F-CANYON 

FACILITY. 

 No amounts authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available for the 

Department of Energy by this or any other Act may be obligated or expended for purposes of 

commencing the decommissioning of the F-canyon facility at the Savannah River Site until the 

Secretary submit to the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate and the Committee on 

Armed Services of the House of Representatives, and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board jointly a report setting forth— 
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 (1) an assessment whether or not all materials present in the F-canyon facility as of 

the date of the report that required stabilization have been safely stabilized as of that date; 

 (2) an assessment whether or not the requirements applicable to the F-canyon facility 

to meet the future needs of the United States for fissile materials disposition can be met through 

full use of the H-canyon facility at the Savannah River Site; and 

 (3) if it appears that one or more of the requirements described in paragraph (2) 

cannot be met through full use of the H-canyon facility— 

(A) an identification by the Secretary of each such requirement that cannot be 

met through full use of the H-canyon facility; and 

(B) for each requirement so identified, the reasons why such requirement cannot 

be met through full use of the H-canyon facility and a description of the alternative 

capability for fissile materials disposition that is needed to meet such requirement.” 

 (C) REPEAL OF SUPERSEDED PLAN REQUIREMENT. 

 Subsection (C) of such section is repealed. 

§ 3183 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003 (Public Law 107-

314): 

§ 3183. STUDY OF FACILITIES FOR STORAGE OF PLUTONIUM AND PLUTONIUM 

MATERIALS AT SAVANNAH RIVER SITE. 

(a) STUDY. 

 The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board shall conduct a study of the adequacy of the 

K-Area Materials Storage facility (KAMS), and related support facilities such as Building 235-F, 

at the Savannah River Site, Aiken, South Carolina, for the storage of defense plutonium and 

defense plutonium materials in connection with the disposition program provided in section 

3182736 and in connection with the amended Record of Decision of the Department of Energy for 

fissile materials disposition. 

736 Subtitle E (including § 3182 ) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003 provides for the 

disposition of 34 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium pursuant to the 2000 United States and Russian 

Federation agreement. § 3182 of the Act requires the Department of Energy to submit to Congress a plan for the 

construction of the MOX facility at the Savannah River Site to process the 34 metric tons of weapons-usable 

plutonium. 
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(b) REPORT. 

 Not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act [enacted December 2, 

2002], the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board shall submit to Congress and the Secretary of 

Energy a report on the study conducted under subsection (a). 

(c) REPORT ELEMENTS. 

The report under subsection (b) shall— 

(1) address— 

 (A) the suitability of KAMS and related support facilities for monitoring and 

observing any defense plutonium or defense plutonium materials stored in KAMS; 

 (B) the adequacy of the provisions made by the Department for remote 

monitoring of such defense plutonium and defense plutonium materials by way of sensors 

and for handling of retrieval of such defense plutonium and defense plutonium materials; 

and 

 (C) the adequacy of KAMS should such defense plutonium and defense 

plutonium materials continue to be stored at KAMS after 2019; and 

(2) include such proposals as the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board considers 

appropriate to enhance the safety, reliability, and functionality of KAMS. 

(d) REPORTS ON ACTIONS ON PROPOSALS. 

 Not later than 6 months after the date on which the report under subsection (b) is 

submitted to Congress, and every year thereafter, the Secretary and the Board shall each submit 

to Congress a report on the actions taken by the Secretary in response to the proposals, if any, 

included in the report. 

§ 3112 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (Public Law 110-

417): 

§ 3112. LIMITATION ON FUNDING FOR PROJECT 04-D-125 CHEMISTRY AND 

METALLURGY RESEARCH REPLACEMENT FACILITY PROJECT, LOS ALAMOS 

NATIONAL LABORATORY, LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO. 

 Of the amounts appropriated pursuant to an authorization of appropriations in this Act or 

otherwise made available for fiscal year 2009 for Project 04-D-125 Chemistry and Metallurgy 

Research Replacement (in this section referred to as ‘‘CMRR’’) facility project, Los Alamos 

National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, not more than $50,200,000 may be made 

available until— 
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 (1) the Administrator for Nuclear Security and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board have each submitted a certification to the congressional defense committees stating that 

the concerns raised by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board regarding the design of 

CMRR safety class systems (including ventilation systems) and seismic issues have been 

resolved; and 

 (2) a period of 15 days has elapsed after both certifications under paragraph (1) have been 

submitted. 
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APPENDIX 2: Board Recommendations 

90-1, Restart of K, L, and P Reactors at DOE Savannah River Site 

90-2, DOE High Priority Defense Nuclear Facilities; Design, Construction, Operation and 

Decommissioning Standards 

90-3, Future Monitoring Programs at the Department of Energy's Hanford Site, WA 

90-4, Operational Readiness Review at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats Plant, CO 

90-5, Systematic Evaluation Program at Department of Energy's Rocky Flats Plant, CO 

90-6, Criticality Safety at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats Plant, CO 

90-7, Ferrocyanide Tank Safety at the Hanford Site 

91-1, Strengthening the Nuclear Safety Standards Program for DOE’s Defense Nuclear Facilities 

91-2, Closure of Safety Issues Prior to Restart of K-Reactor at the Savannah River Site 

91-3, DOE’s Comprehensive Readiness Review Prior to Initiation of the Test Phase at the Waste 

Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) 

91-4, DOE’s Operational Readiness Review Prior to Resumption of Plutonium Operations at the 

Rocky Flats Plant 

91-5, Power Limits for K-Reactor Operation at the Savannah River Site 

91-6, Radiation Protection for Workers and the General Public at DOE Defense Nuclear 

Facilities 

92-1, Operational Readiness of the HB-Line at the Savannah River Site 

92-2, DOE’s Facility Representative Program at Defense Nuclear Facilities 

92-3, Operational Readiness Reviews for the HB-Line at the Savannah River Site, SC 

92-4, Multi-Function Waste Tank Facility at the Hanford Site 

92-5, Discipline of Operation in a Changing Defense Nuclear Facilities Complex 

92-6, Operational Readiness Reviews 

92-7, Training and Qualification 

93-1, Standards Utilization in Defense Nuclear Facilities 

93-2, The Need for Critical Experiment Capability 

93-3, Improving DOE Technical Capability in Defense Nuclear Facilities Programs 

93-4, DOE’s Management and Direction of Environmental Restoration Management Contracts 

93-5, Hanford Waste Tanks Characterization Studies 

93-6, Maintaining Access to Nuclear Weapons Expertise in the Defense Nuclear Facilities 

Complex 

94-1, Improved Schedule for Remediation in the Defense Nuclear Facilities Complex 

94-2, Conformance with Safety Standards at DOE Low-Level Nuclear Waste and Disposal Sites 

94-3, Rocky Flats Seismic and Systems Safety 

94-4, Deficiencies in Criticality Safety at Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant 

94-5, Integration of DOE Safety Rules, Orders, and Other Requirements 

95-1, Improved Safety of Cylinders Containing Depleted Uranium 

95-2, Safety Management 
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96-1, In-Tank Precipitation System at the Savannah River Site 

97-1, Safe Storage of Uranium-233 

97-2, Continuation of Criticality Safety at Defense Nuclear Facilities in the Department of 

Energy 

98-1, Resolution of Safety Issues Identified by DOE Internal Oversight 

98-2, Safety Management at the Pantex Plant 

99-1, Safe Storage of Fissionable Material Called “Pits” 

2000-1, Prioritization for Stabilizing Nuclear Materials 

2000-2, Configuration Management, Vital Safety Systems 

2001-1, High-Level Waste Management at the Savannah River Site 

2002-1, Quality Assurance for Safety-Related Software 

2002-2, Weapons Laboratory Support of the Defense Nuclear Complex 

2002-3, Requirements for the Design, Implementation, and Maintenance of Administrative 

Controls 

2004-1, Oversight of Complex, High-Hazard Nuclear Operations 

2004-2, Active Confinement Systems 

2005-1, Nuclear Material Packaging 

2007-1, Safety-Related In Situ Nondestructive Assay of Radioactive Materials 

2008-1, Safety Classification of Fire Protection Systems 

2009-1, Risk Assessment Methodologies at Defense Nuclear Faclities 
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APPENDIX 3: Board Technical Reports 

Updated February 1, 2008 

Report 

Number 

Date Report Title Author(s) 

TECH-36 12/2005 Integrated Safety Management: The 

Foundation for a Successful Safety Culture 

Matthews 

TECH-35 12/2004 Safety Management of Complex, HighHazard Organizations Matthews 

TECH-34 10/2004 Confinement of Radioactive Materials at 

Defense Nuclear Facilities (Part of 

Recommendation 2004-2) 

Bamdad and Zavadoski 

TECH-33 11/2003 Control of Red Oil Explosions in Defense 

Nuclear Facilities 

Robinson, Gutowski, and 

Yeniscavich 

TECH-32 03/2002 Savannah River Site Canyon Utilization Eggenberger and Ogg 

TECH-31 03/2001 Engineering Quality Into Safety Systems DiNunno 

TECH-30 02/2001 Safety Review of the Hanford Spent Nuclear 

Fuel Project During the Design and 

Construction Phase 

Wille 

TECH-29 02/2001 Criticality Safety at DOE Defense Nuclear 

Facilities 

Burns, Ogg, and Bamdad 

TECH-28 10/2000 Safety Basis Expectations for Existing DOE 

Defense Nuclear Facilities and Activities 

Bamdad, McConnell, and 

Andrews 

TECH-27 06/2000 Fire Protection at Defense Nuclear Facilities Shields, Bamdad, and 

Gwal 

TECH-26 02/2000 Improving Operation and Performance of 

Confinement Ventilation systems at 

Hazardous Facilities of the DOE 

Zavadoski, and Thompson 

TECH-25 01/2000 Quality Assurance for Safety-Related 

Software at DOE Defense Nuclear Facilities 

Burns, Forsbacka, and 

Martin 

TECH-24 09/1999 Safety Handling of Insensitive High 

Explosive Weapon Subassemblies at the 

Pantex Plant 

Von Holle and Martin 

TECH-23 05/1999 HEPA Filters Used in the DOE’s Hazardous 

Facilities 

Zavadoski, and Thompson 

TECH-22 04/1999 Savannah River Site Spent Nuclear Fuel Fortenberry 

TECH-21 03/1999 Status of Emergency Management at Defense 

Nuclear Facilities of the DOE 

Thompson 
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Report 

Number 

Date Report Title Author(s) 

TECH-20 02/1999 Protection of Collocated Workers at the 

DOE’s Defense Nuclear Facilities and Sites 

Kouts 

TECH-19 04/1998 Authorization Agreements for Defense 

Nuclear Facilities and Activities 

Bamdad 

TECH-18 11/1997 Review of the Safety of Storing Plutonium 

Pits at the Pantex Plant (OUO) 

Keilers and Tontodonato 

TECH-17 10/1997 Review of the Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel 

Project 

Arcaro, Barton, Grover, 

Gwal, Hadjian, Moury, 

Ogg, Roarty, Stokes, 

Thompson, Wille, 

Yensicavich, and 

Zavadoski 

TECH-16 06/1997 Integrated Safety Management DiNunno 

TECH-15 03/1997 Operational Formality for DOE Nuclear 

Facilities and Activities 

Krahn and Moury 

TECH-14 

Rev. 2 

06/1007 Savannah River Site In-Tank Precipitation 

Facility Benzene Generation: Safety 

Implications 

Rovinson, Sanders, 

Miyoshi, Fortenberry, and 

Zavadoski 

TECH-14 02/1997 Savannah River Site In-Tank Precipitation 

Facility Benzene Generation: Safety 

Implications 

Robinson, Sanders, 

Miyoshi, Fortenberry, and 

Savadoski 

TECH-13 02/1997 Uranium-233 Storage Safety at DOE 

Facilities 

Andrews, Hunt, Krahn, 

and Sautman 

TECH-12 08/1996 Regulation and Oversight of 

Decommissioning Activities at DOE Defense 

Nuclear Facilities 

Andersen and MacEvoy 

TECH-11 NOT ISSUED 

TECH-10 03/1996 An Assessment Concerning Safety at 

Defense Nuclear Facilities – The DOE 

Technical Personnel Problem 

Crawford 

TECH-9 12/1995 Status of Highly Enriched Uranium 

Processing Capability at Building 9212 Oak 

Ridge Y-12 Plant 

Ogg, Andrews, and 

Robinson 

TECH-8 NOT ISSUED 

TECH-7 11/1995 Stabilization of Deteriorating Mark 16 and 

Mark 22 aluminum-Alloy Spent Nuclear Fuel 

at the Savannah River Site 

Fortenberry, Yeniscavich, 

Keilers, Robinson, Moore, 

Merritt, Stiles, and Hayes 
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Report 

Number 

Date Report Title Author(s) 

TECH-6 10/1995 Safety Management and Conduct of 

Operations at the DOE’s Defense Nuclear 

Facilities (Part of Recommendation 95-2) 

Kouts and DiNunno 

TECH-5 05/1995 Fundamentals for Understanding StandardsBased Safety Management of DOE Dense 

Nuclear Facilities (Part of Recommendation 

95-2) 

DiNunno 

TECH-4 05/1995 Integrity of Uranium Hexaflouride Cylinders 

(Part of Recommendation 95-1) 

Grover, Krahn, Martin, 

Miller, Tontodonato, and 

Yeniscavich 

TECH-3 03/1995 Overview of Ventilation Systems at Selected 

DOE Plutonium Processing and Handling 

Facilities 

Zavadoski 

TECH-2 09/1994 Low-Level Waste Disposal Policy for DOE 

Defense Nuclear Facilities 

Napolitano, Sautman, 

Helfrich, and Stokes 

TECH-1 04/1994 Plutonium Storage at Major DOE Facilities Hurt, De La Paz, 

Fortenberry, Tontodonato, 

and Von Holle 
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APPENDIX 4: Board Biographies 
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JOSEPH F. BADER

Mr. Joseph F. Bader, of the District of Columbia, has been appointed a Member of 

the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on November 29, 2004. Mr. Bader has 

held executive and senior management positions primarily in the nuclear weapons 

complex and nuclear power sectors for Hill International, Inc., Fluor Daniel, Inc., 

Exxon Nuclear and Westinghouse Electric Corporation. He has conducted 

numerous program/project reviews and has extensive knowledge of design, 

construction management and operations of R&D facilities, materials production, 

and power plants. 

Career Highlights 

Mr. Bader, serving as Vice President, Hill International, Inc., planned and managed a variety of 

programmatic and design reviews of complex DOE capital construction projects for the Office of 

Engineering and Construction Management. These independent reviews of DOE projects are mandated by 

Congress and were performed for the Office of Engineering and Construction Management. 

Mr. Bader, as Senior Project Director, Fluor Daniel, Inc., started up and managed Fluor Daniel's 

Washington program office to perform design and construction management services in support of the 

$2.5 billion program to build a “safer, more modern, and more environmentally benign” DOE Nuclear 

Weapons Complex. Mr. Bader and his multi-disciplined staff provided regulatory compliance, master 

scheduling, systems engineering and integration, design and construction issues identification, and 

management for eight projects over eight years. 

Subsequent to his assignment to lead the Weapons Complex Reconfiguration Washington office, Mr. 

Bader supported the $5.6 billion contract to manage and operate the DOE Hanford Reservation. He led a 

team of managers, professionals and workers in developing a seven-year strategic plan to double the 

percentage of the annual billion dollar budget applied to actual cleanup and closure activities at the DOE 

Hanford Site. A major focus was revising the philosophy and application of maintenance and operating 

procedures for the non-nuclear facilities and systems. He co-authored a Hanford site-wide “Critical SelfAssessment” of the contractors architectural, engineering, construction, construction management, 

operations, and maintenance performance. The Assessment was prepared for the Democratic Senator 

from Washington and the DOE in response to Congressional and State concern over the contractor’s 

performance. The final report included recommended actions to resolve performance problems uncovered 

in the review. 

Following the completion of an internal review for Fluor Daniel to determine the causes of the Duratek 

DuramelterTM pilot plant failure at Fernald, Mr. Bader prepared a technical risk-based plan for treatment 

of silo wastes to avoid future failures. Mr. Bader performed a corporate risk analysis to determine which 

of the several technically feasible paths for silo waste treatment involved the least risk to worker and 

public health and safety. 

As Vice President, Duratek Corporation, responsible for managing technology development and 

deployment, Mr. Bader addressed major issues from the processing of Department of Energy wastes to 

radioactive wastewater treatment technologies for reducing nuclear power plant waste volumes and thus 

operating costs. He introduced the use of vitrification for radioactive waste encapsulation to the 

company's products and services. He established joint ventures with Bechtel, Westinghouse and major 

overseas companies such as Siemens and JGC of Japan to deploy vitrification and other waste processing 

technology domestically. He oversaw design, installation, construction and startup of several systems 

resulting from these joint ventures. 
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As Senior Manager, Facilities and Licenses, for Urenco, Inc., Mr. Bader helped establish and manage a 

multi-national, United States based consortium to design and build a $750 million U.S. ultracentrifuge 

uranium enrichment plant based on European technology. Mr. Bader led the preparation of the technical, 

commercial, conceptual design and regulatory basis for the facility. A public acceptance and political 

acceptance program was developed and implemented. 

As Westinghouse Program Manager, Mr. Bader had programmatic oversight responsibilities of the 

100,000 kg/yr mixed oxide production facility. He participated in the final design decision, the 

development of safeguards and security requirements, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission and State of 

South Carolina compliance activities. He prepared and participated in the public and political acceptance 

activities in the State and in Washington, DC. 

Mr. Bader was responsible as Senior Engineer, Babcock and Wilcox, for the thermal/hydraulic design of 

the nuclear reactor cores for the German commercial nuclear ship, the Otto Hahn, the Japanese 

commercial nuclear ship, the Mutsu, and for the nuclear reactor power upgrade of the United States 

commercial nuclear ship, the N.S. Savannah. 

Education: M. S., Nuclear Engineering, University of Virginia, 1970 

B. S., Mechanical Engineering, Villanova University, 1962 

Professional American Society of Mechanical Engineers 

Memberships: American Nuclear Society 

Honors: Pi Tau Sigma 

Others: Providence Hospital Citizens Board 

Chairman, Audit Committee 

Member, Finance Committee 
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LARRY W. BROWN 

Larry W. Brown was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in September 2006 to be a 

member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for a term expiring October 

18, 2010. 

Prior to 2001, Mr. Brown served on active duty in the United States Navy, and on 

retirement in 1996 completed a law degree. He began his military service as a 

Seaman Recruit and retired as a United States Navy Captain after having served 

from 1963 to 1996 onboard ten ships, including nuclear submarines, destroyers, 

frigates, supply ships, and a nuclear aircraft carrier. Early in his career he qualified in nuclear plant 

operations on three naval nuclear reactors. 

His last two sea tours were as Commanding Officer of the Guided Missile Destroyer USS LUCE (1989-

91), and of the Guided Missile Frigate USS MAHLON S. TISDALE (1991-92), respectively. While 

serving as Commanding Officer, his ships earned many awards including the Chief of Naval Operations 

Safety Award and the Squadron nomination for the Pacific Fleet Lamps (Helicopter) Safety Award. He 

earned six personal awards while serving in the United States Navy, including the Legion of Merit for 

service on the staff of the Chief of Operations in 1996. 

Upon retirement he completed law school and subsequently worked as an attorney before joining the 

Administration in 2001. Mr. Brown was assigned to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and worked as 

the Senior Policy Advisor for nuclear, spent fuel and non-proliferation and nuclear security issues. In this 

role he provided recommendations on a broad cross-section of key issues to the Office of Nuclear Energy, 

the Office of Environmental Management, the Office of Non-proliferation and International Security, the 

Under Secretary, and the Deputy Secretary of Energy. 

As a DOE Senior Policy Advisor he coordinated efforts to capture value from the government’s uranium 

inventories, while encouraging private industry to modernize nuclear fuel cycle facilities in the United 

States. His efforts contributed to the resolution of private claims for prior transfers of 9,950 tons of 

contaminated natural uranium, decontamination of nearly 15,000 tons of technetium contaminated natural 

uranium, and recognition of the value of the government’s large inventory of high assay depleted 

uranium. At the end of his term at DOE, the stagnant U.S. uranium enrichment industry, which previously 

had no concrete plans for deployment of new enrichment technology, had begun two privately funded 

technology development and deployment initiatives. 

In 2005 the Deputy Secretary directed him to lead the DOE Task Force that developed the Global Nuclear 

Energy Partnership (GNEP), subsequently a Presidential initiative, with the objective of eliminating the 

major impediments to the expansion of commercial nuclear energy, including—on a global scale—

closing the nuclear fuel cycle, reducing commercial nuclear waste and stemming the illicit spread of 

sensitive nuclear technologies. In 2006 Mr. Brown was presented the Secretary of Energy’s Silver Award 

in special recognition of his work on the President’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. 

His last position at the Department of Energy before joining the Board was the Deputy Assistant 

Secretary for Corporate Business Operations in the Office of Nuclear Energy where he spearheaded the 

GNEP international initiative, which has since been embraced by all the world’s major nuclear power 

nations, and many others. 

Since reporting to the Board, Mr. Brown has visited all the defense nuclear sites multiple times, focusing 

attention on the facilities’ material condition, formality of operations, and safety issues associated with 

wet chemistry operations. In addition he has highlighted the importance of DOE establishing the robust 

radiological safety Research and Development program discussed in the Board’s recommendation 2004-
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1, and strengthening government contractor oversight principally through thoroughly qualified and 

adequately staffed Facility Representative (FACREP) programs at each defense nuclear site. 

Separate and apart from his duties as a Board Member, he has continued to participate in conferences 

discussing the future of commercial nuclear power, speaking principally on the issues of non-proliferation 

of sensitive technologies. In 2007 he spoke on the subject of non-proliferation at the GNR2 (Global 

Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing and Recycling) Conference, and at the Howard H. Baker Center for Public 

Policy conference on “The Role of Nuclear Power in Global and Domestic Energy Policy: Recent 

Developments and Future Expectations”, and for the third time he participated in the bi-annual US-Japan 

Workshop on Nuclear Energy. 

Education: 

J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 1998. He is licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of 

Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia. 

M.A., United States Naval War College, Newport, RI, 1993. (National Security and Strategic Studies) 

B.A., University of Colorado, 1972. (Physics) 
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EDSON G. CASE 

During his military and civilian careers, Edson Case has been in the forefront of the development and 

implementation of nuclear safety policy. 

Case graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 as an Ensign and spent the next 15 years 

as a Naval Officer. For several years during the 1950’s, Case worked directly for Admiral Hyman 

Rickover as a Project Officer in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion program. 

In his 30-year civilian career, Case was a senior staff member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission 

and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). For over 10 years at the NRC, he was Deputy Director 

and Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, responsible for all safety aspects of commercial 

nuclear power plants, including their location, design, construction, and operation. 

Case retired from the NRC in 1985 and until recently provided consulting services to the Commission. In 

August 1989, President George Bush nominated Edson Case to be a Member of the newly established 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. In his appearance before the Senate Committee on Armed 

Services, Case stated his belief in timely decision-making, firm yet fair decisions, and his strong support 

of a competent technical staff. Following confirmation by the United States Senate, Case was sworn-in as 

a Member of the Board in October 1989. 

In early 1991, following renomination by President Bush, the United States Senate confirmed Mr. Case as 

a Member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for a full five-year term. 

Case received degrees from the United States Naval Academy and the Massachusetts Institute of 

Technology. In 1982 he received the Meritorious Executive Award in the Senior Executive Service. 

Case and his wife, Rita, have six grown children. 

June 1991 
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JOHN T. CONWAY

John T. Conway, an engineer and attorney, is Chairman of the Defense Nuclear 

Facilities Safety Board. In October 1989, President Bush appointed him to a fiveyear term as Chairman of the newly established Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board to which he was reappointed by President Clinton to a second five-year 

term. His nuclear experience includes 12 years on the staff of the Joint Committee 

on Atomic Energy, U.S. Congress (six years as Staff Director), and 11 years as 

President/Chairman of the Board of the American Nuclear Energy Council. 

Following is a brief resume: 

Oct. 1989 - 2005 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Chairman 

1982 - 1989 Consolidated Edison Company, Executive Vice President 

1982 - 1989 American Nuclear Energy Council (ANEC), Chairman 

1978 - 1982 American Nuclear Energy Council (ANEC), 

President and Chief Executive Officer 

1968 - 1978 Consolidated Edison Company, Executive Assistant to Charles F. Luce, Chairman 

of the Board (1970-78, duties included Chairman, Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Committee) 

1956 - 1968 United States Congress, Staff, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (1958-62, 

Assistant Staff Director; 1962-68, Executive Director) 

1950 - 1956 Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Special Agent – served in 

Kentucky, New York, Washington, D.C. 

1949 - 1950 Meighan & Necarsulmer Law Firm, Associate 

Education Columbia University School of Law, LLB, 1949 (converted to Juris Doctor, 1969) 

Tufts University, BS Engineering, 1947 

Military Service U.S. Navy, active duty February 4, 1943 to September 1946; Saw service in North 

Atlantic, USPC78l, Discharged Lt. (j.g.) 

Professional 

 Memberships Admitted to New York Bar, 1949, and Supreme Court of the United States, 1953 

Awards Grand Council of Hispanic Societies in Public Service Humanitarian Award 

The James and Jane Hoey Award for Interracial Justice
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JOHN W. CRAWFORD, JR. 

Jack Crawford has spent almost his entire working career in the applications of military and civilian 

nuclear technology. He began his naval career during World War II serving in USS YORKTOWN at 

Midway and then in USS SANTEE, and USS BROOKLYN. Following duty as Submarine Repair 

Superintendent at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Crawford served in various assignments with the 

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in the Naval Reactors program. His responsibilities included 

providing guidance and direction to ensure that required safety, quality and reliability standards were 

incorporated in the planning and construction of naval nuclear power plants. In his final assignment in the 

program he was Deputy Manager under Admiral Rickover. 

Following retirement from the United States Navy with the rank of Captain, Crawford returned to the 

Atomic Energy Commission (subsequently the Department of Energy) to begin a career in civilian 

nuclear technology. He held increasingly responsible positions culminating in being appointed Principal 

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy. As Principal Deputy he carried out a comprehensive 

“post-TMI” assessment of the safety of DOE nuclear reactors, the widely publicized “Crawford Report.” 

He retired from the Department of Energy in 1981, having been awarded its Distinguished Service Medal. 

After graduation from Tilton School, Crawford attended Norwich University, was appointed to the United 

States Naval Academy from New Hampshire, and graduated with distinction in the class of 1942. He 

earned two Masters Degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Naval Construction and 

Engineering, 1946, and Physics, 1950) and completed the curriculum at the Federal Executive Institute in 

1968. 

Renominated by President George Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate for a full five-year 

term to serve as a Member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Crawford has brought to this 

position comprehensive knowledge and experience in the engineering and construction of nuclear reactors 

and over forty years of government service. 

Married to the former Elizabeth F. Edwards, Crawford and his wife have four grown children and reside 

in Maryland. 

July 1994 
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JOSEPH JOHN DiNUNNO

In May 1992, President George Bush nominated Joseph J. DiNunno to the Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Following confirmation by the United States 

Senate, Mr. DiNunno assumed his official duties on August 13, 1992. Mr. 

DiNunno was renominated by President William Clinton for an additional 5-year 

term. Confirmation by the Senate and reappointment were completed on April 22, 

1996. 

Mr. DiNunno brings to the Board more than five decades of diverse engineering 

and environmental experience, including 40 years in the nuclear field in senior 

positions within both the Federal Government and private industry. 

Mr. DiNunno began his professional career in 1942 as an electrical engineer with Westinghouse Electric 

Corporation. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Department of the Navy, and for the next 17 years assumed 

increasingly responsible positions with the Bureau of Ships, the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, and the 

Naval Reactors Branch of the Bureau of Ships/Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). His initial assignment 

at Naval Reactors was oversight of the development of advanced instrumentation and controls for naval 

nuclear reactors. Admiral Rickover subsequently assigned Mr. DiNunno as Project Officer for the nuclear 

power plant of the USS Long Beach. 

Upon transferring to AEC in 1959, Mr. DiNunno became a member of the regulatory staff that reviewed 

the safety aspects of the design, construction and operation of nuclear reactors, Space Nuclear Auxiliary 

Power systems and a variety of uranium and plutonium processing facilities. Among his assignments was 

the matrix management of subject matter experts in reactor pressure vessel design, instrumentation and 

control systems, emergency power systems, core designs and containment systems. Mr. DiNunno also 

coordinated the regulatory program of reactor safety research and directed the development of reactor 

siting and safety standards. In 1967 he was assigned to Paris as AEC’s Scientific Representative, where 

he served as technical liaison with atomic energy authorities in ten European countries, the Nuclear 

Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency. In 1969 Mr. DiNunno returned to AEC 

headquarters to head the agency’s first Office of Environmental Affairs. This office served as the 

principal AEC interface with local and national environmental groups concerned about the impact of 

nuclear power development on the environment and with the federal Council on Environmental Quality 

and other federal agencies in the development of plans for AEC implementation of the National 

Environmental Policy Act. 

From 1972 to 1983, Mr. DiNunno was employed by the NUS Corporation. As Vice President and General 

Manager of the Environmental Safeguards Division, and later Technical Director of the Environmental 

Systems Group, he was responsible for engineering and environmental services provided to both industry 

and the government. He managed and technically directed an interdisciplinary staff of meteorologists, 

hydrologists, geologists, ecologists, socio-economists, geographers, land use planners and nuclear 

engineers. The Environmental Systems Group included both an Ecological Science Laboratory and a 

Radiation Environmental Monitoring Laboratory. It provided support services to a broad range of clients 

in the areas of site selection, site qualification, environmental reports, air and waste water discharge 

permitting, and licensing as required to satisfy federal and state environmental protection requirements 

(National Environmental Policy Act, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection 

Agency, Department of Transportation). These services were performed on a wide variety of nuclear and 

nonnuclear projects, including environmental investigations of sites for both low- and high-level 

radioactive wastes. 

With the exception of 2 years of full-time employment with R. F. Weston (1986-88) in support of 

Department of Energy’s Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program, Mr. DiNunno continued his 
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professional career part-time (1983-92) as an independent consultant, providing environmental and 

nuclear safety advisory services to both industry and the government. His career included a number of 

years as a member of both the Space Applications Board of the National Research Council and the 

Citizens’ Advisory Panel on the Cleanup of Three Mile Island. 

Mr. DiNunno has written extensively on such issues as the safety of nuclear reactors and environmental 

considerations in power plant siting. He also has lectured on these topics at universities and industry 

seminars. 

Mr. DiNunno graduated in 1942 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania 

State University. In 1954 he earned a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the 

University of Maryland. In 1956-57, he received training in nuclear engineering at the Oak Ridge School 

of Reactor Technology. 

July 1996 
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A.J. EGGENBERGER 

An expert in nuclear safety and earthquake engineering, A. J. Eggenberger was 

appointed in August 1989 to be Vice Chairman of the newly established Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and continued to serve in this capacity until July 

2005, when he was appointed Chairman. At the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 

Board he has been directly involved in all aspects of the safety oversight of the 

Department of Energy’s nuclear facilities. This includes design, operational, 

decommissioning, and construction nuclear safety. 

Prior to this, Eggenberger was a senior official at the National Science Foundation serving as Program 

Director and Leader of the Earthquake Hazard Mitigation Program. In addition to his significant 

contribution at the Foundation, the Department of Energy recognized Eggenberger’s broad experience 

and knowledge by selecting him to be a member of the Committee on Seismic Isolation for the New 

Production Reactor Program and as a member of the Board of Governors for the Seismic Technology 

Program. 

Eggenberger’s expertise in the area of nuclear technology was acknowledged by the international 

community when officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, requested him 

to serve as an expert consultant with the Division of Nuclear Safety. For five years, until he assumed his 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board position, Eggenberger was able to share his considerable 

knowledge, providing expertise to the Agency and its member states on nuclear safety issues related to 

the siting and construction of nuclear facilities. 

Until joining the National Science Foundation in 1984, Eggenberger was an Associate Partner with 

D’Appolonia Consulting Engineers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was directly in charge of the 

Nuclear Facilities Group. Under his direct management the Group dealt with engineering issues ranging 

from mining, milling, fabrication, and reprocessing to disposal facilities in the U.S. and abroad. 

Eggenberger also has extensive participation in Naval Reactors prototype programs. 

Early in his career (1967 to 1972), Eggenberger was a Professor and Researcher at the University of 

South Carolina in Columbia. 

Eggenberger graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1961. He earned a 

Master of Science from The Ohio State University in 1963, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in 1967 

from Carnegie Mellon University.
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HERBERT JOHN CECIL KOUTS

Dr. Kouts is well known and highly respected in the scientific community. His renown in the nuclear area 

was acknowledged when he was nominated to be one of the charter Members of the Defense Nuclear 

Facilities Safety Board. Upon confirmation by the United States Senate, Kouts was sworn into office in 

October 1989. 

At the close of World War II, Kouts left active service with the rank of Major to continue his education. 

In 1950 he joined Brookhaven National Laboratory where he headed research groups in nuclear reactor 

shielding and reactor physics. In 1968 he founded the Technical Support Organization, a “think tank” for 

the Department of Energy in nuclear materials safeguards. 

In 1973 Kouts was selected as Director of Reactor Safety Research for the Atomic Energy Commission. 

From 1975 to 1976, he was Director of Nuclear Regulatory Research in the newly formed Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission. 

Returning to Brookhaven, Kouts headed the International Safeguards Project Office for two years. For 

over a decade he was the Chairman of the Department of Nuclear Energy, relinquishing the position in 

1988; however, he remained Senior Physicist at Brookhaven until officially taking up his present duties. 

Over the past 30 years, Kouts has received many awards for his distinguished and significant scientific 

contributions including the Atomic Energy Commission's E. O. Lawrence Award. He has been chosen to 

serve on numerous advisory committees and panels, among them the statutory Advisory Committee on 

Reactor Safeguards. He has been a member and chairman of the International Nuclear Safety Advisory 

Group to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency on nuclear safety matters. 

Currently he is a member of the Nuclear Power Advisory Group, advising the European Bank for 

Reconstruction and Development on activities of the Bank concerning nuclear plants in Eastern Europe, 

particularly the safety aspects. 

During his illustrious career, Kouts, a well-published scientist, has authored (and coauthored) several 

score of articles, speeches, and research papers. He has shared his experience and expertise in seeking to 

resolve difficult issues in nuclear materials research and development, international safeguards, and 

reactor safety. 

Dr. Kouts holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and a Master of Science in Physics from Louisiana 

State University. In 1952 he earned a Doctorate in Physics from Princeton University. 

July 1994 
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JOHN E. MANSFIELD

Dr. Mansfield is an accomplished theoretical physicist with an exceptionally broad 

range of experience, both within and outside government, in the management of 

technology support to national defense programs. From the base of his academic 

work in elementary particle theory, philosophy, and classical languages, Dr. 

Mansfield has expanded his interests and contributions to a wide variety of areas of 

physics, engineering, operations analysis, and political-military studies in support 

of the national defense and civil space programs. Following is a brief resume:

1997 – Present Member, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board 

Nominated by President Clinton, re-nominated by President Bush and confirmed in 

2003. Nominated as Vice Chairman by President Bush and confirmed in 2007 

1994 – 1997 Associate Administrator for Space Access and Technology, National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration, development of advanced technologies for space launch 

and satellite systems 

1989 – 1994 Professional Staff Member, Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 

strategic submarines, missiles, aircraft, and nuclear weapons 

1986 – 1989 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Director of Strategic Technology 

Office and Chief Scientist of DARPA, research on target recognition, precision 

weapons, and advanced technologies 

1984 – 1986 House Armed Services Committee, Professional Staff Member, nuclear weapons 

and testing, strategic systems, Air Force research and development 

1982 – 1984 Defense Nuclear Agency, Assistant to the Deputy Director (Science and 

Technology) for Theoretical Research, nuclear weapons effects, radiation 

simulators, underground tests, support to theater commanders, security and 

survivability of nuclear weapons 

1976 – 1982 Defense Intelligence Agency, Chief, Nuclear Energy and Applied Sciences 

Division, foreign nuclear weapons, reactors, and advanced technologies 

1971 – 1976 Science Applications, Inc., Staff Scientist, Principle Scientist, Program Manager, 

nuclear weapons effects, nuclear reactor safety 

1968 – 1970 University of Notre Dame, postdoctoral fellow, theoretical physics, elementary 

particles 

Education Ph.D., Harvard University, 1970: Theoretical Physics 

A.M., Harvard University, 1966: Physics 

Ph.L., St. Louis University, 1963: Philosophy 

M.S., St. Louis University, 1963: Mathematics 

A.B., University of Detroit, 1960: Classical Latin and Greek
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R. BRUCE MATTHEWS

Dr. Matthews has more than thirty years of scientific and engineering experience in 

nuclear technologies with a primary focus on special nuclear materials, weapons 

plutonium, and nuclear reactor fuels. In addition, Dr. Matthews has managed 

nuclear facilities including operations, construction, regulatory compliance, 

integrated safety management, and safeguards and security. Dr. Matthews received 

a BS in Metallurgy from Penn State, an MS in Materials Science from the 

University of Denver, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of 

Wales. 

Dr. Matthews was appointed by President George W. Bush on April 22, 2003, to be a Member of the 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which oversees the safe operation of the Nation’s nuclear 

weapon plants. 

Dr. Matthews spent eight years as a Research Scientist at Atomic Energy of Canada where he developed 

advanced nuclear fuels and structural materials. He subsequently spent two years as a Research Scientist 

at Pacific Northwest Labs working on proliferation resistant fuels for advanced nuclear power systems. 

Dr. Matthews worked as a line and program manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1980, and 

has been involved in DOE programs in stockpile stewardship, nuclear materials disposition, 

environmental management, and space and terrestrial nuclear power systems. Dr. Matthews was Director 

of the Nuclear Materials Technology Division from 1993 to 1999 and had overall responsibility for 

facility operations, base technologies, and program execution involving plutonium and other actinide 

materials at the Los Alamos’ TA–55 Plutonium Facility and the Chemistry Metallurgy Research 

Building. That position had two major aspects: (1) Managing the nuclear facilities infrastructure including 

nuclear facility construction projects, facilities operations, nuclear materials control and accountability, 

waste management, environmental compliance, industrial and radiation safety, training, quality assurance, 

and safeguards and security. (2) Managing technical and programmatic nuclear materials activities 

including DOE/Defense Program plutonium activities in stockpile manufacturing, surveillance and R&D; 

DOE/Environmental Management actinide materials projects in waste management, residue stabilization, 

and legacy materials cleanup; DOE/Nuclear Energy projects in Pu238 heat sources, advanced reactor fuels, 

and transmutation of nuclear wastes; and DOE/Materials Disposition projects in nuclear materials 

management, pit disassembly, mixed-oxide fuels, and long-term storage. 

In 2000 Dr. Matthews received a Senior Scientific Manager Return to Research grant at the University of 

California at Santa Barbara. Dr. Matthews is the author or co-author of more than eighty journal 

publications, conference proceedings and technical reports. He initiated the international Plutonium 

Futures Conference and is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society. 
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JESSIE HILL ROBERSON 

In September 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Ms. Jessie Hill Roberson, of Evergreen, 

Alabama, to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. After confirmation by the United States Senate, 

Ms. Roberson began her duties as a Board Member on January 18, 2000. 

She has more than 17 years of experience in the nuclear field, with in-depth experience in low 

level waste management, environmental restoration, reactor operations and project management. 

Prior to her appointment to the Board, Ms. Roberson served with the Department of Energy 

(DOE) in a variety of responsible and challenging positions. In 1996 she became the Manager of DOE’s 

Rocky Flats Field Office at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site in Colorado, with the 

responsibility for integration and performance of all environmental cleanup activities on the Site. She 

served with distinction in this position until December 1999. In her ten years with the Department of 

Energy, she has held numerous technical and managerial positions at DOE=s Rocky Flats Environmental 

Technology Site and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina, including environmental cleanup, 

waste management, safeguards and security, as well as nuclear reactors and weapons. 

Before joining the Department of Energy, she worked with Georgia Power Company as a system 

engineering specialist from 1987 to 1989. At Georgia Power, Ms. Roberson focused on maintenance, 

testing, upgrades and performance reliability of electrical and mechanical plant systems and equipment. 

She has extensive experience in nuclear reactor operations and successfully completed the testing 

requirements for reactor operations with E. I. DuPont in 1982. Later with DuPont she trained nuclear 

reactor operators and supervisors in both nuclear and field operations. Before leaving DuPont in 1987 Ms. 

Roberson worked as a nuclear reactor operations manager at several sites. 

From 1977 to 1980, Ms. Roberson completed work assignments as a student engineer for 

Westinghouse at the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and the Nuclear Center in 

Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Ms. Roberson received a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of 

Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

March 2000 
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PETER S. WINOKUR 

Dr. Peter S. Winokur of Maryland has been appointed a Member of the Defense 

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for a term expiring October 18, 2009. Dr. Winokur 

has 37 years of experience as a scientist and engineer in the field of radiation effects 

science, technology, and hardness assurance in support of military and space 

systems. A Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the 

American Physical Society, he was selected as one of the most highly cited 

researchers in Engineering by the Institute for Scientific Information, which lists 

the 250 most highly cited researchers in the world in given scientific fields. Following is a brief resume: 

2006 – Present Member, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board 

2005 – 2006 Senior Policy Analyst, Congressional Affairs, National Nuclear Security 

Administration. Liaison to Congress on a broad range of policy, legislative, and 

budget issues dealing with nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, energy, and 

research and development. 

2001 – 2004 IEEE Congressional Fellow, Office of Senator Harry Reid. As Energy and 

Transportation Advisor, crafted energy policy that included tax legislation for 

renewable energy, resulting in billions in economic development and the creation of 

tens of thousands of jobs. 

1989 – 2000 Manager, Radiation Technology and Assurance Department, Sandia National 

Laboratories. Led programs focused on radiation-effects science and technology, 

hardness assurance, and development of radiation-hardened microelectronics for 

military and space applications. 

1987 – 1989 Supervisor, Radiation Technology and Materials Division, Sandia National 

Laboratories. Radiation physics, materials, and modeling in support of advanced 

technologies with severe reliability and radiation hardness requirements. Initiated 

SEMATECH programs dealing with equipment and processes for improved yield 

and reliability. 

1983 – 1987 Member Technical Staff, Advanced Microelectronics Development Division, 

Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM. 

1979 – 1983 Senior Staff Physicist, Radiation Effects Branch 

Harry Diamond Laboratories, Adelphi, MD. 

1969 – 1979 Physicist, Radiation Effects Branch 

Harry Diamond Laboratories, Washington, DC. 

1968 – 1969 Scientist, Optical Character Reader Division 

Control Data Corporation, Rockville, MD. 

Dr. Winokur has won numerous awards including the 2000 IEEE Millennium Medal, IEEE Nuclear & 

Plasma Sciences Merit Award, R&D 100 Award, Industry Week’s Top 25 Technologies of Year, 

Discover Award, and prize-winning papers. He is the author of 140 publications in the open referred 

literature, including more than 30 invited papers, book chapters, and short courses. 

Education Ph.D., University of Maryland, 1974: Physics 

M.S., University of Maryland, 1971: Physics 

B.S., The Cooper Union, 1968: Physics 
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DNFSB Board Members taking the oath of office at the White House – October 25, 1989. 

 From left to right, John H. Sununu – White House Chief of Staff, John W. Crawford, Edson G. Case, 

 John T. Conway – Chairman, A.J. Eggenberger – Vice Chairman, Herbert J.C. Kouts 

 

 

 Senators John Glenn (2nd from left) and Strom Thurmond (2nd from right) with Board Members 

 at the White House oath of office ceremony – October 25, 1989. 
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 DNFSB Board Members conducting a site visit at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) located 

in Carlsbad, New Mexico – January 1990 From left to right, Herbert J.C. Kouts, John T. Conway - Chairman, 

Wendell Weart – Sandia lead engineer for WIPP, Edson G. Case, John W. Crawford, 

A.J. Eggenberger – Vice Chairman 

 DNFSB Board Members – December 1997. From left to right, John E. Mansfield, 

 Herbert J.C. Kouts, John T. Conway – Chairman, A.J. Eggenberger – Vice Chairman, 

 Joseph J. DiNunno 
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 DNFSB Board Members – August 2002. From left to right, Jessie Hill Roberson, 

 John T. Conway – Chairman, John E. Mansfield, A.J. Eggenberger – Vice Chairman, 

 Joseph J. DiNunno 

 DNFSB Board Members – March 2004. From left to right, John E. Mansfield, 

 John T. Conway – Chairman, A.J. Eggenberger – Vice Chairman, R. Bruce Matthews 
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 DNFSB Board Members – October 2007. From left to right, John E. Mansfield – Vice Chairman, 

 Larry W. Brown, A.J. Eggenberger – Chairman, Peter S. Winokur, Joseph F. Bader 

 DNFSB Site Representatives – August 1994. From left to right, Harry Waugh – Pantex, 

 Jim McConnell – Pantex, Dan Ogg – Hanford, Joe Sanders – Savannah River, 

 Bob Warther – Rocky Flats, Kent Fortenberry – Savannah River, Paul Gubanc – Hanford, 

 Mark Sautman – Rocky Flats
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 DNFSB Professional Development Program employees – November 1992. 

 From left to right, William (Ike) White, Derek Barboza, Joe Sanders, Jessica Booher, 

 Paul Ret, Victor Williams, Walter Moore, Russell Green, Herb Massie – Senior Technical 

 Mentor for the PDP Program 

 DNFSB Board Members conducting a public meeting and hearing in Los Alamos, 

 New Mexico to assess the current safety posture at Los Alamos National Laboratory – 

 December 5, 2007. 
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 For key to staff photo,see numbered list below. 

Key to Board Staff Photograph on the steps of the Canadian Embassy, November 1996 

1. Cindy Fleenor 36. David Hayes 

2. Dudley Thompson 37. Monique Helfrich 

3. Rich Tontodonato 38. Ron Barton 

4. Jim Troan 39. Connie Hundemer 

5. Bill Von Holle 40. Joel Blackman 

6. Ike White 41. Colleen Snyder 

7. Don Wille 42. Lora Steed 

8. Dermot Winters 43. Dan Burnfield 

9. Bill Yeniscavich 44. Alice Waagner 

10. Roger Zavadoski 45. Lester Clemons 

11. Larry Zull 46. Sheree Ward 

12. Dave Drop 47. Ray Daniels 

13. Donita Vines 48. Joyce Davis 

14. Sue Megary 49. Todd Davis 

15. Mike Merritt 50. Tim Dwyer 

16. Cynthia Miller 51. Jay DeLoach 

17. Matt Moury 52. Jack Deplitch 

18. Dominic Napolitano 53. Woody Cunningham 

19. Jan Preston 54. Mark Flynn 

20. Joe Roarty 55. Vi Johnson 

21. Randy Robinson 56. Dana Hienz 

22. Louise Sabo 57. Nadine Loften 

23. Herb Massie 58. Laureen Manning 

24. David Ralston 59. Brenda Atkins 

25. Tim Hunt 60. Wayne Andrews 

26. Tonya Huntley 61. Ralph Arcaro 

27. Davis Hurt 62. Elaine Baer 
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28. Loretta Borostovik 63. Farid Bamdad 

29. Lisa Jellett 64. Rich Azzaro 

30. Roy Kasdorf 65. Sandy Hairston 

31. Martina Felton-McCree 66. John MacEvoy 

32. Bruce Graham 67. Rick Schapira 

33. Russell Green 68. Bill Shields 

34. Ajit Gwal 69. Gloria Jones 

35. Asa Hadjian 70. Ken Pusateri 

71. Christine Centeno 

72. Joe Neubeiser 

73. Sue Dickerson 

74. Dea Ruff 

75. Nancy Creason