WASHINGTON — A Senate committee convened here Thursday to consider three of President Donald Trump nominees for senior Energy Department jobs
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will mull the testimony of the three DOE nominees and, in a business meeting that had not been scheduled at press time for Weapons Complex Monitor, vote on whether to send their nominations to the floor for the full Senate.
The Senate panel considered Mark Wesley Menezes, a lobbyist for Berkshire Hathaway Energy, to be undersecretary for the Department of Energy; Paul Dabbar of mega-bank J.P. Morgan to be DOE’s undersecretary for science; and David Jonas to be DOE’s general counsel.
“Under secretary for the Department of Energy” is the position on DOE’s current organizational chart labeled “under secretary for management and performance.” The department’s assistant secretary for environmental management reports directly to the undersecretary for management and performance.
That caught the attention of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member of the committee and a constant advocate for DOE’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash.: the largest, most expensive active nuclear cleanup in the country.
“Will you be responsible for Hanford cleanup?” Cantwell asked Menezes.
“From day one,” Menezes said.
Cantwell then asked Dabbar — who would not have the Environmental Management office in his chain of command were he confirmed — whether he understood the complex cleanup DOE has undertaken at the World War II and Cold War plutonium production site.
Dabbar, a nuclear navy veteran who has served in DOE before, told Cantwell he would aid the cleanup however he could as the undersecretary for science.
“I’ve been to the Hanford Reservation many, many time,” Dabbar said. “I understand the moral imperative associated with what Hanford accomplished … and the obligation of the nation to clean it up.”
So far, the only DOE leadership position the Trump administration has filled is secretary of energy. Former Texas governor Rick Perry was sworn into that role on March 2.
Meanwhile, insurance industry lobbyist and former DOE legislative-affairs staffer Dan Brouillette is still waiting for the full Senate to confirm him as deputy energy secretary. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved his nomination June 6, but the Senate has yet to schedule a confirmation vote.
Multiple news outlets have reported that Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) is blocking Brouillette’s confirmation over concerns about DOE’s plan to restart its application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear-waste disposal facility.
Heller’s office did not reply to multiple requests for comment this week about either Brouillette’s nomination, or whether the senator from Nevada could vote for Menezes, Dabbar, or Jonas.
The White House has yet to nominate anyone to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration or DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, a former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist and DOE headquarters employee, is said to be the administration’s top choice for the National Nuclear Security Administration job.
For the Office of Environmental Management, the Trump administration is said to favor Alan Parker, president and project manager for Mid-America Conversion Services: a new Atkins-led contracting team that in February started work on a five-year, $318-million contract to process a total of 740,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride at DOE’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites in, respectively, Ohio and Kentucky.
