Katherine Herrera will become deputy technical director of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) effective Dec. 24, a spokesperson for the independent federal nuclear health-and-safety group said Monday.
In her new position, Herrera will help manage about two-thirds of the board’s full-time employees as the No. 2 official in DNFSB’s Office of the Technical Director. Steven Stokes is the current DNFSB technical director.
Herrera joined the DNFSB in 2015 as deputy general manager in the Office of the General Manager. Among other things, the support office provides record-keeping, organization, and communications functions that support the board’s core mission of nuclear safety oversight. Herrera came to the board after more than a decade at the Department of Homeland Security, where she was most recently chief of staff for the management directorate at the department’s at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a DNFSB spokesperson said Monday.
Herrera received a law degree from Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., the board spokesperson said.
The Office of the Technical Director employs about 80 of the board’s 120 full-time employees, according to the agency’s latest budget request. The board has an annual budget of roughly $30 million to carry out its mission of observing and inspecting Department of Energy nuclear facilities for potential health and safety problems.
DNFSB chairman Sean Sullivan announced Herrera’s impending move to the Office of the Technical Director earlier this month as part of a broader reorganization of DNFSB’s senior staff, the board spokesperson said. The spokesperson declined to provide further details, but said the DNFSB will post a new organization chart on its website after the reorganization is official.
Earlier this year, ProPublica reported Sullivan privately proposed that the White House either eliminate the DNFSB as part of the Donald Trump administration’s drive to shrink the federal government, or drastically curtail its budget and eventually fold the agency into the Department of Energy.
Congress has yet to go along with either plan and, in appropriations and authorization legislation drafted over the summer, has proposed funding the DNFSB at historical levels.
