The Joe Biden administration’s nominee to head up the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office won’t be back in that job, which she held in an acting capacity, until the Senate confirms her appointment, an agency spokesperson said this week.
“Dr. Huff was nominated by President [Joe] Biden to be our Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy and will remain in her current role of senior advisor until confirmation,” a DOE spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email Thursday.
Biden nominated Huff to be assistant secretary for nuclear energy (NE-1) at DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy in January, by which time she had been the principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy — and the acting assistant secretary — for about eight months.
This personnel shakeup at the top of the nuclear energy office roughly coincided with complaints from an unidentified DOE employee who on Feb. 2 requested that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) inspector general investigate “substantial irregularities” in the agency’s hiring process for a senior nuclear waste management position.
The employee alleged that a “former career Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary” of Nuclear Energy was reassigned as a senior advisor to the Secretary of Energy after becoming “circumspect” for engaging in prohibited personnel practices.
The employee complained that “undue political influence and preferences were applied” at DOE to select Sam Brinton for the position of deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition (NE-8) in the Office of Nuclear Energy. The employee raised concerns about whether Brinton — who is currently legislative affairs director at nuclear services company Deep Isolation and who holds a graduate degree in nuclear engineering — is qualified for the position.
As of Friday, Kim Petry is still serving as NE-8 on an acting basis. Petry is also acting director of DOE’s Office of Integrated Waste Management.
The office of OPM’s inspector general did not return a request for comment by deadline Friday on whether it had received such a request or if it was investigating.
As of Friday, both of the lead positions in the Office of Nuclear Energy were listed as vacant on DOE’s website. The agency spokesperson did not comment on why Huff had been reshuffled into a senior advisor role.
Meanwhile, Huff’s NE-1 nomination would need to be approved by the Senate after she gets a hearing in the chamber’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee. As of Friday, the White House had not officially sent Huff’s nomination to the Senate.
