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External regulation at DOE labs

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volfireman07:
H.R. 755 dated February 10, 2005 has been introduced in the House.  The bill is to provide for the external regulation of nuclear and occupational safety and health responsibilities at any nonmilitary energy laboratory owned or operated by the Department of Energy.  Effective 2 years after the date of enactment, the DOE will have no regulatory or enforcement authority with respect to nuclear safety and occupational safety and health.  The NRC and federal OSHA will assume the enforcement responsibilities.

Includes:
Ames;
Argonne;
Brookhaven;
Fermi;
Lawrence Berkeley;
ORNL;
PNNL;
PPPL;
Stanford Linear Accelerator; and
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator

volfireman07:
All I have is the bill text - only 5 pages of it.  Basically its just says the NRC and OSHA will have authority and must submit a plan with letters of understanding.  I am looking for more information. 

PWHoppe:
There is no easy answer to this. It is the result of a long study/aduit conducted at these sites mandated by congress (I took part in some of these) to turn the enforcement responsibilities over to the NRC and OSHA. My take on it is a consolidation of responsibilities. Basicalliy why have multiple agencys doing the same thing?

volfireman07:
I know that OSHA conducted their audits of the labs in 2003.  The labs are still working to fix all of the identified violations.  They are supposed to be finished in June.  DOE is funding the corrective actions.  I was told that OSHA is going to come back sometime after June to look at the sites again.  I think that external regulation will make the operations a lot safer.  Self regulation is good, but extenal is better as far as compliance goes.   

PWHoppe:
You have inadvertantly touched on it when you said that the labs were still working on correcting violations from the audits done in 2003. However they were not really cited as violations because they audits themselves were done not as a typical enforcement type thing. They were more of an advirsory type of assist visit.

I think that all DOE sites would benefit from outside regulation. Although, I'm not sure what would happen, we will get a flavor for it as it begins at the labs. I think that it may be the future for all the DOE sites.

BTW, the audits took place in both 2003 and 2004.

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