Mark Gilbertson, a longtime Department of Energy manager, is the new associate principal deputy assistant secretary for regulatory and policy affairs for nuclear cleanup.
Gilbertson takes over the post vacated through the Oct. 30 retirement of Elizabeth “Betsy” Connell at the Office of Environmental Management (EM). His appointment was reflected in both an updated organization chart for the office dated Nov. 2 as well as an updated online DOE biography.
A veteran of more than 25 years in the DOE weapons complex, Gilbertson was most recently director of the DOE’s National Laboratory Operations Board, a post he had held since June 2019. From November 2018 until mid-2019, Gilbertson was principal deputy assistant secretary of EM, the No. 2 post in the organization, under then-Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White.
This is Gilbertson’s second go-round as head of the regulatory and policy affairs office that provides technical and policy support for EM’s roughly $7-billion-a-year portfolio of Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear-weapons cleanup work. He last ran EM’s policy shop from May 2017 to November 2018, according to his bio.
Away from EM, Gilbertson has worked in management jobs at the DOE Office of Legacy Management and worked at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Gilbertson is a permanent replacement in the policy and regulatory slot, which he started Nov. 2, a spokesperson for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said in a Tuesday email.
An industry observer thinks this might not be the only job change at the Environmental Management within the next couple of months. The cleanup office is currently led by William “Ike” White, a career federal civil servant who is senior adviser for environmental management to the DOE’s undersecretary for science, Paul Dabbar, a political appointee of the Donald Trump administration.
White is senior adviser to an undersecretary “who will not be there” once President Elect Joe Biden is sworn in, the source said.
