A senior Department of Energy official on Thursday urged the Senate to confirm nominees to fill four leadership vacancies, including a candidate to oversee the agency’s nuclear power and waste activities.
“I’d like to kindly ask the committee for consideration … around the leadership positions that are still open for us as a department. We very much appreciate the leadership of this committee on reviewing our nominees, but we still have outstanding the heads of the Office of Science and ARPA-E, as well as general counsel and nuclear energy,” Paul Dabbar, DOE undersecretary for science, said during a hearing on energy innovation before the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.
The nominees are: Rita Baranwal as assistant energy secretary for nuclear energy; William Cooper as DOE general counsel; Lane Genatowski to direct the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy; and Christopher Fall to direct the Office of Science.
Dabbar noted that all four got the thumbs-up from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year. But the full Senate did not vote on any of the nominations before the 115th Congress ended on Jan. 3. They were returned to the White House, which renominated all four in mid-January. “We kindly ask for potential Senate consideration should the nominees be voted out of this committee again,” Dabbar said.
“Rest assured that we, too, are trying to get these nominees through the process just as quickly as we can,” committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) responded. “You need to have your full team up and running, particularly in these key areas.”
Murkowski did not elaborate. A committee spokesperson on Friday said nothing has been scheduled to date.
A materials engineer and veteran of the nuclear industry, Baranwal since August 2016 been director of the Energy Department’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program, which provides funding and other resources in support of research and development of nuclear energy technologies. The White House first nominated her as assistant secretary of nuclear energy in October. Following a confirmation hearing, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 27 advanced the nomination to the Senate. It died there, but has been revived in the 116th Congress.
If confirmed, Baranwal would assume leadership of an office with a budget of $1.3 billion for the current fiscal year through Sept. 30. The Office of Nuclear Energy manages a host of other programs to advance nuclear power technologies, including the GAIN initiative. Following the dissolution of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management during the Obama administration, the Office of Nuclear Energy has the lead in meeting the agency’s legal mandate to dispose of the nation’s spent nuclear power reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The office would presumably be charged with overseeing the DOE license application for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada if that process is revived.
Two years after the proceeding began, the Obama administration in 2010 defunded licensing at the Energy Department and the adjudicating Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Trump administration has twice requested that Congress appropriate new funds for the two agencies to restart licensing, but was rebuffed both times. It is expected to try again in the upcoming budget request for the 2020 federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
During her confirmation hearing, Baranwal said she would obey the dictates of federal law as it relates to radioactive waste. The 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act directs that Yucca Mountain, roughly 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, be the sole location considered for a geologic repository for that waste.
The Office of Nuclear Energy is currently led by Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Edward McGinnis.
DOE Adds Permanent Inspector General
After moving relatively quickly through the confirmation process, former Senate staffer Terri Donaldson has become DOE’s permanent inspector general.
The Energy Department swore in Donaldson on Jan. 23 for a lifetime appointment, but did not announce her installation at the Forrestal Building in Washington until Thursday.
The Donald Trump administration nominated Donaldson in June 2018. The Senate confirmed her in December, rushing Donaldson through along with a limited number of other executive appointments before the end of the 115th Congress.
As inspector general, Donaldson is DOE’s chief internal watchdog, empowered to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the department.
Donaldson was most recently general counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in the 115th Congress, under Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). Before joining Barrasso’s staff in 2017, less than a year before she was nominated for the inspector general job, Donaldson practiced corporate environmental law in the private sector.
Donaldson’s most recent stint in public service prior to 2017 was from 1999 to 2004, when she served as general counsel for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under then-Gov. Jeb Bush (R).
Before Donaldson assumed the role, the Energy Department had been without a permanent inspector general for more than three years. April Stephenson, DOE’s principal deputy inspector general, periodically led the office on an interim basis from early 2017, after the Senate stonewalled the nomination of department veteran Susan Beard: the Barack Obama administration’s nominee to replace former DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman.
Friedman retired in September 2015 after nearly 17 years on the job.
