After running operations at the Energy Department’s most complex nuclear cleanup project for nearly 18 months, Brian Vance this week was named manager of the Hanford Site on a permanent basis.
Vance in October 2017 assumed management of the DOE Office of River Protection, which oversees radioactive waste tank operations at the Washington state complex. When Richland Operations Manager Doug Shoop retired in February 2019, Vance also took over that operation focused on cleanup at Hanford.
Last October, then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry told Congress the Hanford Site would go forward with a single manager, Vance, for both offices.
Until now, Vance has been serving a three-year term-limited appointment that would have run out in November. In February, the DOE Office of Environmental Management started taking applications for a permanent site manager for about 11,000 federal and contract workers. It is routine for federal agencies to hold an open competition for Senior Executive Service positions.
“Brian has guided Hanford operations with a steady hand,” DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White said in a Tuesday statement on Vance’s permanent appointment. “Brian will continue to lead this team into the next phase, as we move towards actual tank waste treatment and cleanup completion in many areas.”
Hanford is scheduled to start turning low-activity waste from underground tanks into a glass-like substance by the end of 2023 at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel. In total, the facility holds 56 million gallons of low-activity and high-level waste in underground tanks.
Joe Franco will remain deputy manager for the Richland Operations Office, and Ben Harp will stay on as the Office of River Protection deputy manager. They will oversee the day-to-day operations of each office.
Before joining the Energy Department at Hanford in 2017, Vance served for seven years in management jobs with Westinghouse Electric and AREVA. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy for 25 years.
Meanwhile, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has yet to hire a permanent associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, or EM-3. The agency early this year advertised the No. 3 position at Environmental Management, which on a current budget of about $7.5 billion oversees remediation at 16 contaminated properties around the nation. The last permanent EM-3 was Jeff Griffin, who left the cleanup office in March to take a job with the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
The duties of the EM-3 post are currently handled on an acting basis by Environmental Management Chief of Staff Thomas Mooney.
