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Independent nuclear safety agency says it's being stonewalled by Department of Energy Sep 23, 2026 An independent federal agency created to provide oversight of safety at nuclear security sites around the country has for months been denied access to federal records and meetings its officials have previously used in the course of their work. Officials from the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board have raised alarm over what they’ve called “stonewalling” by the U.S. Department of Energy of their efforts, particularly amid a range of changes to the department’s safety requirements — referred to as “Project Velocity” — which officials have characterized as weakening the agency’s safety protocols and requirements in connection with national laboratories. New Mexico legislators from the Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee recently signed a letter calling on federal officials to “bring the [Department of Energy] back into compliance with federal law” and to restore access to the oversight agency. Another letter expressed concern for the safety-related directives issued in connection with Project Velocity and urged department leaders to explain how the changes could affect safety for workers and the public. State Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, called the safety outlook a “four-alarm fire moment” for the state’s national laboratories — including Los Alamos National Laboratory, the only facility that produces plutonium pits for the nation’s nuclear arsenal — saying the status quo is “putting New Mexicans’ lives directly at risk.” Steinborn, who serves as the committee’s chair, signed the Sept. 16 letters to federal officials. The letters, which the committee sent to Energy Secretary Chris Wright and President Donald Trump, noted members’ “serious and escalating concerns” around the Energy Department’s new orientation toward the safety board coupled with the new directives, which legislators said have moved forward “without sufficient transparency or critical review” and “pose serious risks to the residents of New Mexico.” Officials from the Department of Energy and the White House did not respond to emails seeking comment on the department’s denials to the safety board or its new directives. Board hamstrungThe safety board has only one sitting member, with four vacant seats that require appointment by the president and confirmation by the U.S. Senate. A letter written in July by the lone board member, Patricia Lee, to members of Congress noted the board cannot issue formal recommendations without a quorum, which is three members. Lee wrote the board this year has experienced “increasing access challenges,” which she went on to describe as “the most significant in its history.” Department officials have denied the board and its staff from accessing various records and meetings, including a bi-monthly safety and operations call held by National Nuclear Security Administration officials, according to memos attached to Lee’s letter. One of the records the board has sought for almost a year is a draft action plan related to the improvement of plutonium pit production, which covers several areas that potentially impact nuclear safety, including “reducing safety basis requirements, streamlining waste policy, and re-evaluating nuclear criticality safety analyses and controls,” according to the board’s letter to Congress. The document was requested to be delivered by October 2025, but the agency “has not yet provided it or explicitly denied the request,” the letter states. As an explanation of the changes, officials from the safety board point to a March 10 memo from Department of Energy officials called “Clarifying Instructions Regarding Interface with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.” The memo instructed department staff against providing information to the board that is considered “pre-decisional” or “deliberative,” an instruction that has been cited in connection with revocation of access to reports and meetings to which board staff previously had longstanding access. Jonathan Plaue, the safety board’s technical director, gave a presentation to the Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee in August to share “broader concerns about the Department of Energy’s cooperation with the board.” Plaue told the committee the safety board’s access to information at the department is “significantly worse, by orders of magnitude” than it has been in past years. He pointed to federal law, which states the Department of Energy “shall fully cooperate with the Board and provide prompt and unfettered access to such facilities, personnel, and information as the Board considers necessary to carry out its responsibilities.” In response to questions, Plaue acknowledged the board’s position is that the department is not in compliance with federal law. He said for the most part, Los Alamos National Laboratory continues to cooperate with the board, but Plaue added, “there are NNSA headquarters documents that impact our oversight at the laboratory.” Since the board’s July letter to Congress, he said, the National Nuclear Security Administration revoked the board’s resident inspectors’ access to a web-based emergency operations center platform the agency has used for about a decade. As a result, the board’s inspectors are “unable to monitor emergencies fully without interrupting NNSA personnel that are part of the emergency response,” Plaue said. ‘Sweeping changes’Plaue noted dozens of recent department directives resulted in “sweeping changes” to requirements — some of them safety-related — for national laboratories. He said the changes were made without input from any of the board’s experts. “This concept of the mass revision of significant numbers of nuclear safety requirements, outside the federal workforce by contractors without any federal subject matter experts — whether from the board or DOE — is very concerning,” he told the committee. In a statement issued in August, the department described the recent directives as “updating outdated and duplicative operating requirements to give its world-class scientific workforce more time to focus on critical science, energy, and national security missions.” “These reforms will improve efficiency, strengthen stewardship of taxpayer resources, and help DOE’s National Laboratories, plants and sites operate with the speed, discipline and agility their missions demand, while maintaining rigorous safety and security standards,” the news release stated. In a phone call Tuesday, Steinborn said the committee wished to raise alarm regarding what he called “a serious problem that demands attention.” “Unfortunately, this is something that we, as a state, can’t compensate for — the deficiencies that this is going to create with this oversight of our national labs and the safety inspectors, we don’t have that technical expertise and we don’t have that authority, as federal facilities,” Steinborn said. “Hopefully this will send a very strong message to our members of Congress, to the governor and ultimately to the White House, that we’re concerned, and as a state with these facilities here, with citizens who are working in these labs and nearby communities, that we’re owed a very serious responsibility to keep us safe." Published comments by Greg Mello:
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