In an end-of-the-year press release, the National Nuclear Security Administration bid farewell to three longtime employees who have retired.
The three retirees, all of whom spent at least some time in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Defense Programs office are:
- Ralph Schneider, a Ph.D. physicist who was most recently director of the Office of Research and Development within Defense Programs at NNSA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Schneider sponsored early Pentagon research on two high-energy physics facilities critical to maintaining the potency of the U.S. nuclear arsenal without explosive tests: the Z Machine at the Sandia National Laboratories and the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Schneider joined the Department of Energy in 2000.
- Doug Wade, who was most recently acting director of the Advanced Simulation and Computing program in NNSA Defense Programs at headquarters in Washington. He was previously the Defense Program’s top budget wonk, running the office’s budget planning and execution division for six years. He also “supported the initial planning that led to the establishment of the Stockpile Stewardship program,” the agency said.
- Tim Driscoll, who finished his NNSA career as a senior adviser at headquarters in Washington, prior to which he had been the agency’s uranium manager since 2014. As uranium manager, Driscoll reported directly to the NNSA administrator about the agency’s enriched uranium programs. These include construction of a modern enrichment plant — the Bechtel-contracted Uranium Processing Facility — at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. For most of the George W. Bush administration, starting in 2002, Driscoll worked in the NNSA’s Defense Programs office, where he managed a previous life-extension program for the B61 nuclear gravity bomb that wrapped up in 2008. That effort was separate from the NNSA’s current B61-12 life-extension program, which aims to replace the four versions of the weapon that now exist with a single type of bomb.
“The challenging missions of NNSA require a highly-skilled workforce that is dedicated to national security,” the agency wrote in a Dec. 22 press release. “[S]o when one of own enters retirement, we make sure to say, ‘Thank you for your service.’”
