The White House this week officially nominated Bruce Hamilton to take over as the full-time chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board: an independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog he has led on an acting basis since February.
The Donald Trump administration nominated Hamilton with around a month of legislative days left on the Senate’s calendar in the 115th Congress. Any nominations and bills not acted upon before the 115th Congress gavels out in early January will become null and void, though some nominations might be allowed to stay active in next session.
Whether any nominations are held over may depend on whether Republicans maintain control of the Senate after the mid-term elections Nov. 6.
Hamilton, a Navy veteran who spent decades in the nuclear energy industry, joined the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in August 2015 and was elevated to vice chairman last year in the early days of the Trump administration. He became acting chairman in February of this year following the resignation of Chairman Sean Sullivan, who left after suggesting that Congress dissolve the board.
Hamilton’s is not the only nuke nomination facing an uncertain fate in the waning days of the congressional session. Also in legislative limbo is William Bookless, a senior physicist from design agency Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who Trump nominated in August to be principal deputy administrator of the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. That is the second-highest ranking post in the agency.
Bookless and Hamilton each will have to pass muster in a confirmation hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, then be confirmed by the full Senate. The committee had not scheduled a nomination hearing for either at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
Meanwhile, over in the State Department, Trump this week officially nominated Jeffrey Eberhardt, a career senior executive service official now serving in the department’s arms control bureau, as special representative of the president for nonproliferation, with the rank of ambassador.
If approved by the Foreign Relations Committee and confirmed by the full chamber, he will take over as the State Department’s point person on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: the primary instrument of international nuclear arms control. The Senate had not scheduled a confirmation hearing at deadline.
