President Joe Biden’s nominee for deputy secretary of energy, David Turk, pledged Thursday to work with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), over concerns a new DOE approach toward subcontractors might hurt small businesses around the Hanford Site in Washington state.
“I know it is a priority for you, it will be a priority for me if I am confirmed as deputy secretary,” Turk said in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
During the hearing, Cantwell pressed the nominee “to ensure a smoother implementation,” of a new procurement procedure on subcontractors.
“In the long term it will probably be a positive thing, but in the short term we are seeing some loss of small businesses because of this,” Cantwell said. “Nobody wants this to be all about big prime contractors,” Cantwell said of the nuclear cleanup business.
During his testimony, Turk also said the new administration will not “lowball” its budget request for cleaning up the Hanford Site, and has no plans to revive the stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project in Nevada.
When asked by Cantwell about securing funding for Hanford to meet Tri-Party agreement milestones, Turk replied that requests under Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will be more generous than under the Donald Trump administration. Hanford’s two operating offices received a combined $1.6 billion from Congress for fiscal 2021, well above the roughly $1.3 billion proposed by the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Turk promised Sen. Catherin Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) he would help ensure the Department of Energy complies with a 2020 legal settlement to start moving half of a metric ton of plutonium out away from the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.
“Absolutely,” Turk said in response to Cortez Masto’s inquiry as to whether he was committed to close communication on the issue between DOE and Nevada’s senators. Energy Secretary Granholm and the National Nuclear Security Administration have confirmed DOE is on track to meet this agreement, which stipulates the removal should begin by the end of this year, Cortez Masto said.
Turk also also moved to reassure Cortez Masto that “President Biden has been very, very clear on Yucca Mountain,” which the administration does not plan to develop into a permanent nuclear waste repository. For any repository, the government needs consent-based permitting with incentives, Turk said.
Like Granholm during her confirmation hearing, Turk told Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) he is not familiar with the issue of DOE bartering or placing excess government uranium on the market, which the Wyoming lawmaker said undercuts uranium producers in his state. Turk promised to study up on the uranium policy, discontinued at DOE under Rick Perry, Trump’s first secretary of energy.
Most of the questions to Turk during the three-plus hour hearing centered upon energy, climate change, electric transmission and natural resource issues that involve parts of DOE not heavily invested in defense- and civilian-nuclear issues.
Most nuclear-specific questions dealt with issues affecting the DOE Office of Environmental Management, although there was the occasional reference to nuclear weapons and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Turk told Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), whose home state houses nuclear-tipped Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, that DOE must “make sure that we have a safe, reliable, sure stockpile” of nuclear weapons, and support installations such as the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and its 91st Missile Wing.
Formally nominated by Biden on Feb. 3, Turk is the deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency and is no stranger to DOE or Congress. A deputy assistant secretary of energy for international climate and technology during the administration of former President Barack Obama, Turk also served on the Judiciary Committee staff for then-Sen. Joe Biden before he joined the Obama administration as vice president in 2009.
One of Turk’s early jobs in congress was working for then-Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who did a virtual introduction for the nominee Thursday. During his introductory remarks Turk said he grew up in a mill town in Illinois and, while in high school, had an internship one summer at the DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
Haaland Clears Senate Energy Panel
Also Thursday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced the nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) to be secretary of interior along a mostly party-line 11-9 vote.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) agreed to back the nomination although she has serious misgivings about how some of her policies might affect Alaska. Murkowski said Haaland’s nomination, as potentially the first female Native American cabinet member, has generated much pride among Alaska’s indigenous population.
Should Haaland be confirmed by the full Senate, it would create an open seat in the congressional district that includes Sandia National Laboratories facilities in New Mexico, which would be filled via a special election within 90 days of the vacancy being created.
