DOE Waffling on External Regulation
by Larisa Brass,
October 01, 2025
Oak Ridger staff
For over 50 years, when it comes to regulation, the Department of Energy has been a law unto itself. For national security reasons, routine safety checks and reviews for nuclear facilities at DOE sites have been handled solely by the agency.
And, although the agency given extensive thought to including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in regular inspections of its sites, DOE officials are backing off from the notion of outside regulation, according to testimony offered last month by the U.S. General Accounting Office.
In a March letter to a congressional subcommittee, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson indicated that the cost of transferring regulatory authority to outside agencies would outweigh the benefits. GAO's Gary Jones criticized that position in testimony to a House of Representatives subcommittee.
"Today's position sharply contrasts with the DOE's previously held positions supporting external regulation and also conflicts with the department's own pilot program results as well as the conclusions reached by NRC and OSHA," said Jones.
Both the NRC and OSHA have completed pilot projects -- launched by Energy Secretary Federico Pena in 1997 -- at several DOE sites, including Oak Ridge. None of DOE's weapons facilities was included in the projects.
Contrary to Richardson's position, according to the GAO, the results of these projects show that outside regulation for DOE could be accomplished fairly easily and cheaply.
For instance, Richardson's letter contended that if the NRC took over regulation of DOE facilities in Oak Ridge, it would cost $4 million to install special, NRC-approved alarms at the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center here. But, according to the GAO, the NRC has indicated it would be willing to grant a waiver for the alarms "because the facility is safely operated and properly shielded from radiation exposure." And in several other instances, said Jones, Richardson overestimated the costs of transferring to external regulation and ignored cost-saving provisions the NRC has indicated it could agree to.
Instead of increasing the costs for DOE, said Jones, transferring sites to external regulation would save DOE money because the department wouldn't have to support an internal regulation system. Furthermore, said the GAO report, there is no evidence that external regulation would not otherwise benefit DOE.
Both a DOE advisory committee and a working group have recommended handing the job of regulating DOE's facilities to another agency to make the process more open and "eliminate the inherent conflict of interest from self-regulation," according to Jones.
"An important value-added benefit from external regulation is public credibility," he said. "Laboratory officials at the Berkeley and Oak Ridge sites noted the value of gaining credibility from being externally regulated."
But, said Jones, "uncertainty clouds the future of DOE external regulation. DOE's leadership has changed over the years and each of the last three secretaries has changed the department's position on external regulation." Therefore, he said, it's time for Congress to act.
"DOE's wavering positions and its failure to reach consensus with participating agencies on the results of the pilot projects have caused uncertainty about the future of external regulation at its facilities," said Jones. "... We believe that the Congress has an opportunity to make a decision on whether or not a class of DOE's facilities -- as represented in the pilot -- should be externally regulated for worker safety and nuclear facility safety. ..."
Article reprinted from the STAR Foundation website: www.noradiation.org
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