Christopher Roscetti, the former technical director for the government’s independent nuclear safety watchdog, is now the Department of Energy’s deputy director for environmental health and safety, according to a DOE website.
Roscetti, a career civil servant, assumed the No. 2 post for DOE’s Office of Environment, Health, Safety, and Security in July after serving more than five years as he technical director at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), according to his LinkedIn profile.
In his current role, Roscetti is charged with helping protect DOE’s workers, the public, and the environment, according to a DOE online biography.
Altogether, Roscetti spent more than 16-and-a-half years at DNFSB, which was created by Congress to provide independent analysis and recommendations to the secretary of energy on nuclear defense sites.
A member of the government’s senior executive service, Roscetti is a recipient of the 2021 presidential rank award recipient, according to his bio. Prior to joining the DNFSB, Roscetti served in the U.S. Navy as a submarine officer among other posts.
Meanwhile, the DNFSB has appointed an acting technical director, Tim Dwyer, and is working to permanently fill the position, a DNFSB spokesperson said in a Friday morning email.
In November 2022, the DNFSB organization chart listed Katherine Herrera as the deputy technical director but Herrera is currently serving as acting executive director of operations for the board. The DNFSB is also seeking to fill its executive director of operations vacancy, created when Joel Spanenberg left the board’s staff in August 2022.
The board itself, set up as a five-member panel nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate, has holes to fill.
There are currently only three members on the board and that figure will fall to two next week when longtime federal official Jessie Hill Roberson retires. Roberson’s pending departure leaves only two board members, chair Joyce Connery and vice chair Thomas Summers.
In July, President Joe Biden formally nominated a Savannah River National Laboratory manager, Patricia Lee, to serve on the panel. The Senate Armed Services Committee has yet to set a confirmation hearing, however.
