The Department of Energy said Wednesday evening it will promote Mark Brown to become the new cleanup project manager at the Idaho National Laboratory where he will replace Connie Flohr who plans to retire from the agency in April and take a job in industry.
Brown is deputy manager of the Idaho Cleanup Project and has spent 15 years at the national laboratory and has 40 years of experience in nuclear operations and environmental cleanup, the DOE Office of Environmental Management said in a press release.
The deputy manager position will be filled competitively once Brown steps into the top role, DOE said in the release.
A Navy veteran, Brown is a former director of tank farm operations at DOE’s Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to his online bio.
DOE announced early last month that Flohr, a 35-year agency hand, is retiring as a fed. Someone with knowledge of her plans expects her to take a position with Navarro Research and Engineering. Flohr held various management positions at DOE and is a former agency budget official who took the Idaho cleanup manager post in 2020.
Among the milestones recorded during Flohr’s tenure was the startup of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit in April 2023. The facility is designed to convert roughly 900,000 gallons of liquid high-level sodium-bearing waste into a more solid, granular form.
