Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
12/18/2015
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has reorganized its Office of Emergency Operations (NA-40) and its Office of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation (NA-80) in support of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) new preparedness approach for emergencies such as adverse weather, accidents, or terrorism.
NA-40 will “focus its efforts primarily on building the capacity to respond to all hazards," according to an agency release. The new organization will retain its Office of Plans and Policy, which will oversee the DOE’s emergency management system; the Office of Operations and Exercise, which will support hazards emergency management; the Office of Preparedness, which will develop emergency management training; and the Office of Consolidated Emergency Operations Center, which will operate DOE’s Consolidated Emergency Operations Center, the NNSA said. Associate Administrator Deborah Wilber will continue to lead the organization.
A.J. Gipson, acting deputy associate administrator for the Office of Emergency Operations, said today by telephone the department’s emergency management program “became somewhat fractured over the years in that different programs were basically handling their own set of operations.” This move, he said, will streamline operations to create a “centrally focused” approach across the nuclear security enterprise. “Rather than inquiries being stovepiped inside the various programs, they should come from the field emergency operations centers into headquarters operations center and we will fuse that information and disseminate that to the appropriate people,” he added. The NNSA’s current focus is on the headquarters level, “and then we will eventually grow this out to the field,” Gipson said.
Functions previously in NA-40 that were moved to the NA-80 organization include the Office of Nuclear Incident Policy and Cooperation, which builds capacity for “domestic and international capabilities in counterterrorism and counterproliferation” and “international nuclear incident capabilities”; the Office of Nuclear Forensics, which manages the agency’s nuclear forensics capabilities; and the Office of Nuclear Incident Response, which will be “the technical leader in responding to and resolving nuclear and radiological threats worldwide” using “expertise in the areas of radiological search, render safe, and consequence management,” the NNSA said. Associate Administrator Steven Aoki will continue to lead NA-80.
Aoki said by telephone the reorganization is “almost entirely a change in the reporting channels.” Fundamental personnel responsibilities remain the same, he said, and “we’re going to continue to meet the same obligations that we’ve had all along.”
“One of the motivating factors here was [Energy] Secretary [Ernest] Moniz’s desire to have unity of effort and to incorporate all of the DOE laboratories and DOE program organizations in emergency readiness and preparedness,” Aoki said. “This is very much an organizational change that our leadership is invested in and supports.”
