The Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday is scheduled to vote to approve, or not, four nominees for senior Department of Energy jobs, including the White House’s choice to lead the Office of Nuclear Energy.
Along with Nuclear Energy office director-designate Rita Baranwal, the panel has scheduled confirmation votes for: William Cooper, DOE general counsel-designate; Christopher Fall, the nominee to lead DOE’s Office of Science; and Lane Genatowski, director-designate of the agency’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
The nominees have been pending before the committee “longer than the gestation period for an elephant,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry joked Tuesday morning at DOE headquarters in Washington as part of a webcast address to the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.
Not nearly, in Baranwal’s case. Elephants gestate calves for 22 months. The Donald Trump administration nominated the nuclear-industry veteran in early October, about five months ago. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved her nomination last year in the 115th Congress, but the full Senate failed to confirm her before the 116th Congress started on Jan. 3 and rendered all unconfirmed nominations null and void.
Edward McGinnis, principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy, currently leads the office Baranwal would helm, if the full Senate confirms her this time around. Among other things, the office would argue DOE’s case for licensing Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nevada, as a permanent repository for defense and civilian nuclear waste.
The panel’s business meeting is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday in Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 366.
