The Joe Biden administration’s $7.6-billion budget request for the Office of Environmental Management was the largest request for nuclear-weapons cleanup since 2015, the office’s acting head told contractors Thursday.
Biden’s ask is the “largest administrative request for environmental management that I can recall,” William (Ike) White, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, told the Energy Facilities Contractors Group (EFCOG) during its annual meeting, held online this year.
The last time an administration sought more money for the Office of Environmental Management (EM) than Congress enacted the prior year was back in 2015 when EM’s budget was around $6 billion, White said.
Even in a week when a key federal measure of consumer inflation posted its biggest increase since the first half of 2008, that point largely stands, even though White did not adjust his numbers for inflation.
White also told EFCOG attendees that the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory should start treating sodium-bearing waste “by early next year.” DOE had previously targeted startup by the end of this year. The long-anticipated project, lately delayed by restricted staffing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will process waste generated by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel at Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center.
As he has in previous speeches, White recited various EM milestones that have been met in the past 18 months, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The list included completed tear-down of the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant complex in what is now called the East Tennessee Technology Park at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, startup of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Lessons have been learned during the pandemic, White said.
“We found that we were operating better than we were without telework,” White said. “There are obviously some things that we can’t do,” he added. Previously, “when we have a really big problem a lot of people can sit in a room together.” That’s not easily doable now, he added.
White Nears Two-Year Milestone at EM
With the administration yet to nominate a permanent assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, White is nearing the two-year mark as the official helmsman of nuclear weapons cleanup in Washington.
A career federal employee with previous jobs at the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, White has been the top boss at EM since mid-June 2019, initially given the title of senior adviser for the office by DOE’s then-undersecretary for science Paul Dabbar.
When Biden took over from President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, White was kept in the top job at EM and given the title of acting assistant secretary for the office. He has about a year to go before he can catch David Huizenga, who was detailed to the top spot in EM for about three years before returning to DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration in 2014.
As an acting assistant secretary named at the outset of a new administration, White could serve for up to 300 days, until roughly mid-November or so. The exact timing of White’s departure could depend on whether the Biden administration has nominated someone to replace him on a full-time basis by the time his temporary appointment ends, DOE said.
White has now served longer than the last Senate-approved boss of Environmental Management, Anne Marie White. The two are not related. The latter resigned under pressure from Dabbar, who sources said was unhappy with Anne White’s handling of complaints about radioactive contamination around a public school near the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The Trump administration appointee was only 15 months into her tenure at EM.
The DOE under the Biden administration has said Ike White will visit the community around the Portsmouth Site to discuss the Zahn’s Corner Middle School and the recently-commenced demolition of the X-326 Process Building.
The Biden administration has already nominated its choices for administrator and No. 2 person at the National Nuclear Security Administration, who recently testified before a Senate panel, but at press time has not put forward a name for EM.
The only name that has consistently popped up in the rumor mill for the EM job is Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chair Joyce Connery, but that panel which has slots for five members currently stands at only three. Moving Connery at this stage would entail the temporary loss of a quorum at the safety panel.
