Reinhard Knerr, a director at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office (PPPO), will in mid-July become the new permanent manager for the agency’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico.
The appointment is part of a flurry of new assignments unveiled this week by the DOE Office of Environmental Management.
Knerr is currently federal project director for conversion of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. The Energy Department on Tuesday announced his appointment via the Twitter account for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which is overseen by the Carlsbad office.
The Carlsbad Field Office, which has a $397 million budget, oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and its nearly 1,000 employees.
Knerr has held management and planning roles at the Paducah Site since 2004. In his current position, he recently managed completion of a record of decision for disposing of depleted uranium oxides from the DUF6 conversion plants. He has prior experience with WIPP, where he once served as a transuranic waste certification team leader, according to the release. In addition, Knerr spent time as a safety engineer working for the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at the Pantex Plant in Texas.
He becomes the first permanent manager of the Carlsbad Field Office since Todd Shrader moved on a year ago to take the No. 2 post at Office of Environmental Management headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Greg Sosson, who held the acting Carlsbad manager post since December, is returning to DOE headquarters, where he will serve as deputy assistant secretary for safety, security and quality assurance for Environmental Management. After working 28 years in the commercial nuclear power business, Sosson joined DOE in 2015 as chief of nuclear safety, associate deputy assistant secretary for field operations oversight, and chief safety officer for the cleanup office.
Sosson will fill a post that has been held on an acting basis by Mike Mikolanis, who is moving back to his old job as assistant manager for nuclear material stabilization at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Energy Department said this week.
Carlsbad Deputy Manager Kirk Lachman is also on the move, as he on June 21 will become the agency’s new EM manager for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico. A 27-year veteran of DOE, Lachman has held various management roles with both the cleanup office and NNSA. In addition to having briefly served as acting director of the Carlsbad office after Shrader left, Lachman is a former deputy chief of field operations at Environmental Management headquarters and has held various management jobs at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.
Thomas Johnson has been acting EM manager at Los Alamos since Doug Hintze retired from DOE at the end of February. Johnson returns to his old post as EM’s deputy manager at the Savannah River Site.
