It was all over but the waiting at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, at which time Brent Park had still not been sworn in as deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
But barring personal or political catastrophe, Park will soon take the reins of the Department of Energy agency’s roughly $2-billion-a-year nonproliferation branch. He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on March 23, about a month and a half after President Donald Trump nominated him for the job.
A NNSA spokesperson in Washington declined to comment about the timeline for Park’s swearing-in.
Meanwhile, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has already found somebody to do Park’s old job.
James Peery will become associate laboratory director for global security at Oak Ridge, the Battelle-managed laboratory announced Thursday. In that role, the former Los Alamos and Sandia hand will manage programs focused on nuclear-security and nonproliferation technology development.
Park, prior to his confirmation, had held that position at Oak Ridge since 2010. The physicist has also worked at the Nevada National Security Site and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
One of the biggest and most controversial components of Park’s realm of responsibility would be a mission to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium under an arms-control pact with Russia that was finalized in 2010 after a decade of negotiations.
The plutonium is slated to be turned into commercial reactor fuel in the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) CB&I AREVA MOX Services is building at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. However, the NNSA has wanted to cancel the program for years and is drawing up the congressionally required paperwork to proceed with its preferred alternative: diluting the plutonium at planned Savannah River facilities, then burying it deep underground in New Mexico.
In his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Park told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) he would, if confirmed, make visiting the MFFF one of his “highest priorities.” Graham favors continuing the project.
While the plutonium mission is in Park’s wheelhouse, MFFF construction is not. That responsibility belongs to Robert Raines: a career civil servant who is the agency’s associate administrator for acquisition and project management. Park’s department would take over MFFF when, or if, the contractor finishes building it.
