The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management appointed Betsy Forinash, a 30-year veteran of nuclear-cleanup and regulatory work, as the deputy assistant secretary for waste and materials management, the cleanup branch said Thursday.
Forinash’s selection was announced by Candice Robertson, acting principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, or EM-2, in a “Dear Colleagues,” email viewed by Weapons Complex Monitor.
In the new post, Forinash will oversee Office of Environmental Management (EM) waste management projects and processes and focus “on developing risk-based disposal policy,” Robertson, said in the email.
Recently, the job Forinash has filled was held on an acting basis by Doug Tonkay,
Prior to this appointment, Forinash worked as director of the Office of Infrastructure Management and Disposition Policy, according to DOE.
During more than 15 years at the Environmental Protection Agency, Forinash led programs on a wide range of issues, including the proposed Yucca Mountain spent fuel repository in Nevada, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and emergency response and radioactive air emissions. She spent five years at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development – Nuclear Energy Agency.
Forinash came to DOE in 2014, and focused on issues including developing the policy and technical basis to reinterpret the agency’s definition of high-level waste, according to the Robertson email.
