The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management announced this week that Nicole Nelson-Jean, a familiar face in the weapons complex, will become head of field operations at the end of the month.
A 28-year Energy Department employee and member of the senior executive service, Nelson-Jean now manages the Savannah River Site field office in South Carolina for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. She has held the post for the past three years.
At Savannah River, Nelson-Jean led NNSA efforts to develop a plutonium pits or nuclear weapons cores operation by renovating the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, the DOE nuclear cleanup office said in a statement.
Before coming to South Carolina, Nelson-Jean was NNSA manager at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California from October 2014 through September 2017. She served as acting manager at Livermore for 10 months before that.
In late 2013 and early 2014, Nelson-Jean was a senior adviser at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Previously, Nelson-Jean worked as nuclear attaché, representing DOE for the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, Austria. She has also served as energy attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Japan.
As the Environmental Management associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations (EM-3) Nelson-Jean will oversee nuclear operations; construction; environmental restoration and other activities at 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project cleanup sites.
Thomas Mooney, the DOE-Environmental Management office chief of staff his been acting as head of field operations since shortly after Jeff Griffin left the agency in March to take a post with the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in Chalk River, Ontario. Mooney will soon move to a newly created job of chief operations officer, assisting Nelson-Jean, according to DOE. Mooney will continue to serve as chief of staff until a replacement is named for that position.
Mooney became chief of staff for the DOE nuclear cleanup office in January after serving as chief of staff for the Pentagon’s Office of the Chief Management Officer since October 2017. He has also worked in the White House and for a Virginia-based consulting firm.
When Nelson-Jean relocates to Washington, D.C., Jeffrey Allison, NNSA’s deputy manager at Savannah River, will serve as acting manager until a permanent replacement is selected, according to an NNSA spokesperson.
