The Department of Energy is a federal ministerial department with the following missions:
- Managing the nation's decentralised power grid system.
- Monitoring the nation's nuclear power facilities, while managing directly the few (>5%) owned by the Federal Government.
- Controlling the production, storage, transport and sale of fissile materials, both reactor and especially weapons grade, thus helping enforce non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
- Providing disaster cleanup aid in energy-related diasters.
For these missions the Department of Energy has two forces at its disposal: the Atomic Regulations Enforcement Section and the Disaster Response Unit. Its head is the Minister of Energy, aided by a number of government agencies in his duties concerning non-proliferation of nuclear armaments, but whose Assistant-Minister of Power manages much of the "decentralised electrical grid" nonsense.
Oceanyka's electrical grid is a mishmash of local grids and microgrids controlled by regional powers, electrician cooperatives or private corporations, which are connected through the Department of Energy's port stations. This institution, being mostly neutral in political terms, has increasingly gained the citizenry's trust to manage interconnections between grids. Prior to the Department of Energy's foundation in early 1962, electricity's use as a weapon of war was well documented, with armed commandos seeking to overload the enemy's electrical system or destroy their infrastructure, ensuring constant regional blackouts and an unreliable supply of energy. Now, the Department of Energy simply pulls energy from another grid, acting as a middleman in purchases of electrical power between polities or groups.
However, arguably its most important duty is the permanent monitoring, auditing and surveillance of all fissile materials within the Oceanykan Federation, as well as directly managing a few nuclear power plants which the Government directly owns (the largest and most important being the Port Pirie Nuclear Station. These materials may be stored by themselves, operate within a nuclear power plant's fuel cycle, or more worryingly be part of a "physics package", an institutional term for an atom bomb. To operate fissile materials, the Government (in a very rare case of regulatory strictness) can choose to grant the following licenses:
- C-type Hazardous Fuels License - Issued by the DoE at its own discretion. Allows the proprietary to own and utilise HEU fuel and MOX fuel.
- B-type Enrichment License - Issued by the DoE with permission from the Department of the Presidential Office. Allows the proprietary to enrich and commercialise fissile materials to other license holders. Weapons-grade fissiles must be turned in with
- A-type Atomic Weapons License - Issued by the DoE after approval from The Oceanykan Council, which votes on the matter. Allows the proprietary to utilise weapons-grade fuels such WGU fuel and WGP fuel, as well as to construct a maintain a predetermined number of atomic bombs.
All of these licenses require granting consent to periodic surprise visits by DoE agents. Facilities dedicated towards fissile storage, nuclear power production or stashing atomic weapons must, by law, have one or more DoE agents permanently stationed there. Note that the use of LEU fuel and TOX fuel is not regulated, but their users will still be the target of periodic visits. The Oceanykan Federation takes its legislation regarding atomic weapons very seriously, and any breach will be reason enough for a less-cordial visit by men in black with gas masks and automatic weapons: the Atomic Regulations Enforcement Section, or ARES.
Finally, the Department of Energy is tasked with facing head-on any environmental disaster which has to do with energetics or energy production facilities. This includes hydrocarbon spills and fires (gas and petroleum), coal mine fires, and the most dangerous of all, nuclear meltdowns, missions for which the Department of Energy reserves its legendary Disaster Response Unit.