Carlos Alvardo will temporarily step in as the No. 2 fed at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, with Gabriel Pugh, the plant’s most recent deputy manager, leaving for the Department of Energy’s National Training Center, according to an internal email.
Sunday was Alvardo’s first day as acting deputy manager at the main civilian nuclear weapons service center, according to an email to NNSA personnel from Frank Lowery, DOE’s associate administrator for management and budget.
Alvardo, the current associate deputy manager for operations at the NNSA Production Office, is a longtime DOE hand who came to the agency in 1988, starting as an electrical engineer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. This is his second stint in as many years as the acting No. 2 at the federal office. He was previously the stopgap deputy manager from October to February.
The NNSA Production Office oversees both Pantex and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The facilities were supposed to have transitioned to a new long-term management and operations contractor earlier this year — the Fluor-led Nuclear Production One team with Amentum and other partners — but NNSA cancelled the award and following bid protests and allegations of a revolving-door conflict of interest and announced it would put the sites under separate contracts to be solicited in the future.
