Hearing of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee - Department of Energy Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste
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REP. SIMPSON: Thank you.
I want to get back to the relationship between the Congress and this committee and the department, if I could, for just a minute, because some of the concerns, I think, that the committee has, and some of the issues the committee has, often deal with politics within the department. We know there are politics that are played here, but there are oftentimes politics played within the department, depending sometimes on where employees come from, what labs they come from, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You came from the United States Enrichment Corporation.
MR. SPURGEON: No, actually, I came from a golf course in Florida.
REP. SIMPSON: I'd like to have come there, too. (Laughs.) Did the department place any restrictions on you to avoid any conflicts of interest with your old employer?
MR. SPURGEON: I had to do a number of things. I've worked for more than one person in the nuclear industry. But anybody coming into my position cannot have any financial connection whatsoever to energy companies, particularly nuclear energy companies.
REP. SIMPSON: I would assume that you have similar ethics restrictions that apply to your career staff working within the department?
MR. SPURGEON: Yes. People are required to file financial disclosure statements associated with their past interests, but it's a lot more stringent, if you will, for people that go through the Senate-confirmed political appointee process.
REP. SIMPSON: If you have on your staff an employee that came from one of the national labs -- worked for a contractor at one of the national labs -- do the same conflict of interest restrictions prevent that employee from making decisions that affect funding for their home laboratory, if you will?
MR. SPURGEON: You know, I want to admit to you -- and I'm very familiar with my restrictions -- I'm less familiar with the actual legal issues pertaining to people that are not at the political level, and I would like to answer that question for the record so that I do it correctly.
REP. SIMPSON: Okay. Where does the GNEP manager come from? What lab? Mr. --
MR. SPURGEON: Well, the deputy manager. I am the GNEP manager.
REP. SIMPSON: Right.
MR. SPURGEON: But the deputy manager worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
REP. SIMPSON: Some of the concerns, I think -- Los Alamos is a weapons lab.
MR. SPURGEON: Yes, sir. But they do a lot of things other than weapons today, but they are principally a weapons laboratory, yes, sir.
REP. SIMPSON: And, of course, that is one of the debates that's going to go on in Congress here, is that as weapons work decreases, weapons labs and representatives from those areas are going to substantially try to get work from other laboratories to maintain a workload in those weapons laboratories. I've noticed that Los Alamos has a substantial amount of GNEP work -- it leads the GNEP safeguards campaigns, has major roles in fast reactor transmutation fuels, separations and waste forms campaigns, also provides the GNEP country coordinator for Russia. What control do you have over the money when you send it to a weapons lab?
MR. SPURGEON: Well, you have control from the standpoint of they're using the money to perform the statement of work that is assigned to them. They do report in to -- and we have a structure set up to coordinate work that's done at all of our laboratories -- which Idaho is the technical manager of -- Mr. Phillip Finck runs that program for us at Idaho. But we have control of the scope of work and we have control of the funding that is allocated to them.
But I will tell you what Los Alamos's budget is. They -- for this year, it's $30 million, but $15 million of that was directed by the committee, so it's really 15 (million dollars) for what I would call the programmatic work that we have defined and $15 million for the hot cell upgrade improvement work that was directed by the committee.
REP. SIMPSON: I think some of the concern is that some of the money is being directed -- how do you say this? -- for political purposes rather than necessarily where the work ought to be done. But I've noticed -- yeah, that's a first -- I've noticed that regarding how much control you have over funding that you send to Los Alamos, in Section -- U.S. Code 2410, Section 3220, Status of Contractor Employees: "Each officer or employee of a contractor of the administration shall not be responsible to or subject to the authority, direction or control of any officer, employee of the department or the Department of Energy who is not an employee of the administration except the secretary of Energy." And I'm just wondering how much control you have over those employees. Do you have some control over those employees as you would if they worked at the NE lab?
MR. SPURGEON: No, because I'm not the programmatic officer for the Los Alamos laboratory. That is an NNSA laboratory from the standpoint of its major reporting relationship. I don't own the Idaho National Laboratory, but that's the phrase we use.
REP. SIMPSON: Yeah.
MR. SPURGEON: Because I do accept ownership and responsibility for the Idaho National Laboratory; I do not for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
REP. SIMPSON: So you actually have more control over the NE lab than you do if the money goes to Los Alamos?
MR. SIMPSON: In general, yes, sir.
REP. SIMPSON: The same question could be asked, I guess, Mr. Sproat. The department has designated Sandia as the lead lab on Yucca Mountain, on the Yucca Mountain project?
MR. SPROAT: Yes.
REP. SIMPSON: In light of that same section that I just read, how are you able to (maintain ?) effective operational control over Sandia?
MR. SPROAT: Actually, there -- let me answer that question from two vantage points: one is contractual, one is managerial.
Contractually, the contracting officer that has control of the contract with Sandia resides in NNSA. So in terms of who can formally give direction and change a contract for that -- for Sandia, for their work for us -- it has to go through the contracting officer who is in NNSA. So that's the contractual legal piece. The reality is, from a management piece, in terms of how we work with them, how we work together, the Sandia senior manager who runs their project for Yucca is -- I consider him part of my senior management team, and he's involved in our monthly meetings. I meet with them biweekly. So from a management standpoint, they're -- they are integrated into my senior management team. But from a contractual standpoint, when we have to make a change to their contract, legally we have to go through NNSA. The arrangement has worked out very well, as far as I'm concerned.
REP. SIMPSON: What happens -- you know, we're all human beings -- what happens if there's all the sudden a conflict? Personality or dispute -- who has the final say?
MR. SPROAT: I'm happy to report that in the two years we've had this contractual relationship with them, we have not had that problem.
REP. SIMPSON: Things change.
MR. SPROAT: Yeah, they might. (Laughter.)
REP. SIMPSON: I mean, that's reality -- things change. So the question is --
MR. SPROAT: But I guess also --
REP. SIMPSON: Who will have -- who will be the determining factor if there's a conflict of what's going to happen, what's not going to happen --
MR. SPROAT: Well, I would --
REP. SIMPSON: Regardless of if, you know --
MR. SPROAT: I would hope that what would happen is that, you know, we've been able to maintain a very good, collegial relationship with the folks over at NNSA, who have the contractual control of the contract. And if we've had any issues at all -- and, quite frankly, there's nothing's been elevated to my level that I had to work with Tom D'Agostino's organization to resolve. I would hope that in the future, you know, that kind of relationship -- good working relationship would be maintained, but I haven't run into that problem so far.
REP. SIMPSON: Yeah, but -- you know, at one point if there is a conflict, the resolution is going to say "this person and that person." That's what I'm trying to find out.
MR. SPURGEON: The resolution would go the secretary unless he designated that to the deputy secretary, because that's where we all come together. If either, you know, you know, Ward or I could not agree with Mr. D'Agostino relative to one of these issues, it would go to the secretary for resolution.
REP. SIMPSON: There will be a conflict at some point in time. Even my wife doesn't agree with me all the time. (Laughter.)
Could you provide us for the record a copy of your internal decision memorandum on this designation of Sandia as your lead lab and also provide for the record a copy of the legal memorandum of your office of general counsel addressing the legal questions involved in designating as your lead laboratory an NNSA entity that is by law not subject to your authority, direction or control?
MR. SPROAT: I haven't seen those, so if I can find them, we'll get them up here. And we'll get back to you one way or the other in terms of what we have. That decision was made before I came -- I was confirmed, so I wasn't involved in that decision, so I don't know what documentation exists. I'll have to go see what we have.
REP. SIMPSON: What's the overhead rate -- what overhead rate is Sandia charging your program? What percentage of all nuclear waste disposal funding that you send to Sandia is taxed by the lab to conduct at their own discretion lab-directed research and development?
MR. SPROAT: Let me take that question for the record. I just don't know.
REP. SIMPSON: Okay. I appreciate it.
One other question I have -- if that's okay, Mr. Chairman -- I expect that the department will start its search for a second repository site, looking again at the alternative sites that were initially considered for the first repository. What were those sites?
MR. SPROAT: Before I answer that specific question, let me just go back and just clarify your lead-in to the question. We currently do not -- as a matter of fact, we are specifically -- under the current Nuclear Waste Policy Act we are specifically prohibited from beginning to evaluate a potential site for second repository until and unless authorized by Congress, so we don't currently have the authority to do that. However, with the report we're going to send up here shortly, we will in that report talk about not only how the Yucca Mountain site was selected but the other sites that were evaluated and how far we got in that evaluation when that decision was made.
But to specifically answer your question, in the original tranche of sites for the first repository, there were nine sites in six states, and that -- there was one in Louisiana, two in Mississippi, the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, two in Texas, two in Utah, one in Washington state. And those sites, through their initial screening, were screened down to three sites -- one in Nevada, one in Texas, one in Washington state -- and then based on the further refined results, Congress decided to only authorize us to fully investigate the Yucca Mountain sites.
There were, however -- at that time there were also identified up to 17 potential sites for a second repository, pretty much east of the Mississippi, and they were in 16 different states, and some of those had a little more -- were looked at in a little more detail than others, but we will provide that information in the second repository study to the Congress that we'll send up here in a few months.
REP. SIMPSON: I need to have you clarify Section 161 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that states, "The secretary may not conduct site-specific activities with respect to a second repository unless Congress has specifically authorized and appropriated funds for such activities," which is what you just mentioned. Do you interpret that language to mean that the department cannot do any work on a second repository without further authorization, or does it mean that the department can't pursue studies on a variety of alternative sites for a second repository, including site-specific studies of those multiple sites as long as you don't narrow it down to a single site?
MR. SPROAT: The interpretation that the department has taken, as I've been informed, is that any of those site characterization activities -- site studies -- requires to actually understand what's underneath the ground, drilling holes, that type of thing, and it's the department's current interpretation of that section of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that that's specifically prohibited.
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