The administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration is the Department of Energy’s delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 64th annual General Conference in Vienna next week, the DOE nuke agency said Thursday.
The annual meeting of the United Nations body, which promotes peaceful uses of nuclear energy and nuclear-weapons nonproliferation, is scheduled to begin Monday in the Austrian capital.
COVID-19 restrictions have limited the size of national delegations to the event, so Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette delegated Gordon-Hagerty to attend as the primary U.S. representative, a spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Friday.
The administrator will fly commercial to Vienna, the NNSA spokesperson wrote, and will need a COVID-19 test 72 hours before arriving. As with most places, Vienna has its own local rules about wearing masks and maintaining physical distance to prevent the spread of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China, last year.
Then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry was the U.S. representative to the General Conference last year.
Christopher Ford, the assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, will accompany Gordon-Hagerty on the trip, according to an NNSA press release.
Gordon-Hagerty will meet with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi, and “several IAEA deputy directors general,” the NNSA said.
Gordon-Hagerty and Ford also “plan to hold bilateral meetings with Brazil, Canada, France, and Russia to discuss topics as diverse as repatriating nuclear material to cooperating on the security and safeguards of nuclear material to thwart potential terrorists,” the NNSA wrote in its presser.
