Kathryn Huff, the White House’s pick for assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy, cleared the full Senate this week, clinching her spot as head of the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office.
The Senate voted 80-11 Thursday to confirm Kathryn Huff, who the Joe Biden administration first nominated in January to lead DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy as assistant secretary, or NE-1.
Only 11 Republicans opposed the nomination and while most of the chamber’s Republican leadership voted no, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and chair of the Republican Conference, voted “aye.”
Barrasso was a vocal supporter of Huff’s nomination, praising her suitability for the job on the Senate floor Thursday, in an unrelated hearing only hours prior to the vote, and last week during the committee meeting in which the panel of lawmakers who vetted Huff’s nomination approved her unanimously.
On the other hand, a number of high-profile Republicans voted against Huff, including minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Ben Sasse (R-Ind.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
Hawley took to Twitter before his vote to voice his discontent with Huff’s nomination, calling her a “radical leftist.” Hawley also accused Huff of “storming” the Wisconsin capitol in 2011 during a union protest — sharing Tweets from the nominee from the time geotagged in Madison, Wisc.
This same radical leftist, who the Senate is about to put in charge of the nation’s nuclear policy, also stormed the Wisconsin Capitol in 2011 pic.twitter.com/AOwWmRoUMK
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) May 5, 2022
Asked if he thought Huff had violated the law by attending such a protest, Hawley told RadWaste Monitor Thursday that he didn’t “know whether she did or not.”
Meanwhile, nuclear professional organization the American Nuclear Society (ANS) applauded Huff’s confirmation in a press release Thursday.
“We look forward to Dr. Huff’s tenure as ‘NE-1’ and are confident that Dr. Huff will continue to advance nuclear energy’s critical role in securing affordable, reliable and emissions-free energy for Americans and the world,” ANS president Steven Nesbit and CEO Craig Piercy said in a statement.
Prominent industry trade group the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) also chimed in Thursday, saying in a statement that Huff ”continues to demonstrate her exceptional commitment to nuclear carbon-free energy through programs which support the research, development, demonstration and deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.”
Huff, a former nuclear science professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, joined the Biden administration in May 2021. She worked for nine months or so in the Office of Nuclear Energy’s number two spot, as well as acting NE-1, before transitioning into a politically-appointed role at DOE as a senior advisor to energy secretary Jennifer Granholm.
While Huff was acting NE-1, an anonymous DOE employee alleged that she may have engaged in prohibited hiring practices during the nuclear energy office’s search for a deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition. Those allegations, however, didn’t stop the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee April 28 from favorably reporting Huff’s nomination to the full chamber on a voice vote.
Huff’s confirmation puts her in charge of a DOE office tasked with, among other responsibilities, finding a solution for the more than 80,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel stranded at civilian nuclear power reactors across the country. The agency is already hammering out details for how it will go about canvassing willing host sites for a federal interim storage facility — a task made more difficult by the lack of a permanent repository for nuclear waste.
