Susan Cange, second-highest in the chain of command at the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office, became acting assistant secretary for environmental management on Friday.
Cange, a career civil servant who joined the Office of Environmental Management in Washington, D.C., from the Oak Ridge site in Tennessee late last year, replaces Monica Regalbuto on a temporary basis. Regalbuto was the Obama administration’s final appointee to the position that oversees DOE’s $6-billion-a-year legacy nuclear cleanup program.
President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated Friday, has not yet nominated a permanent successor for Regalbuto. The assistant secretary for environmental management must be confirmed by the Senate.
Cange has been with DOE about 30 years. She was manager of the agency’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management before moving to Washington to replace Mark Whitney as principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management. Whitney left DOE last year to take a job at AECOM: one of the biggest remediation contractors in the agency’s nuclear complex.
Rumors persisted last week that a former DOE lawyer Gary Lavine would be tapped to run the Environmental Management office. Lavine has not replied to multiple voice messages requesting comment.
