Deputy Energy Sec. Nominee Clears Senate Energy Panel
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
9/12/2014
Monica Regalbuto’s nomination to serve as the next Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management appears to have hit a roadblock in the Senate because of one lawmaker’s concerns over DOE’s uranium transfer policies. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso (R) has placed a hold on Regalbuto’s nomination after receiving what he believes is an insufficient answer from DOE to questions about how the Department prepared its analyses showing that its uranium transfers will not significantly hurt the domestic uranium industry, a Barrasso spokeswoman said late this week. Unless lifted, the hold would prevent the full Senate from easily approving Regalbuto’s nomination by unanimous consent, and instead increase the time needed to move forward.
Barrasso has long been a critic of DOE’s uranium transfer policy, by which the Department uses its stock of excess uranium to help fund some cleanup efforts and National Nuclear Security Administration programs. To implement such transfers, DOE has issued a series of Secretarial Determinations that the transfers are not expected to have an “adverse material impact” on the domestic uranium industry. In July, though, Barrasso and 17 other Republican lawmakers sent a letter to DOE seeking more information on the Department’s most recent Secretarial Determination, which was issued in May to allow DOE to move forward with plans to transfer a maximum of 2,705 metric tons of natural uranium equivalent material per year. In its determination, DOE said it based its analysis that the transfer would not have an “adverse” impact on the domestic uranium production industry on work done by Energy Resources International, as well as “as other information and analysis reviewed by the Department.”
Among the information sought by Barrasso and the other lawmakers is how DOE ensured the technical quality of the “other information and analysis” reviewed in making the May Secretarial determination. In a Sept. 2 letter to Barrasso, Assistant Energy Secretary for Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons wrote that the Department is limited in how it could respond to the lawmakers’ questions given a pending lawsuit by the uranium conversion services company ConverDyn against DOE over the uranium transfer policy. “The government has filed the administrative record index with the court. We are providing you with both the index and documents, which together comprise the administrative record,” Lyons wrote. The Barrasso spokeswoman, however, said this week that Lyons’ response “fails to answer” the question posed by Barrasso and the other lawmakers in their July letter. “The American people deserve answers from the Department to the question included in the July 14th letter,” she said.
Regalbuto Nomination Seen as Uncontroversial
Regalbuto has largely been seen as an uncontroversial choice to head up DOE’s cleanup program, and sailed through a hearing the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, upon which Barrasso sits, held to consider her nomination in June. She was nominated by the Obama Administration this spring to fill the vacancy left when Ines Triay stepped down as Assistant EM Secretary in July 2011. Since then, the position has been filled in an acting capacity, first by David Huizenga and then beginning in July by Mark Whitney, who also serves as EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.
At the time of her nomination, Regalbuto had been serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fuel Cycle Technologies in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. However, she has since moved to take a senior management role in EM, and now serves as Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.
Lengthy List of DOE Nominees Awaiting Senate Confirmation
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall—the Obama Administration’s choice to serve as the new No. 2 official in DOE—this week joined the lengthy list of DOE nominees awaiting full confirmation by the Senate. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved Sherwood-Randall’s nomination to serve as the next Deputy Secretary of Energy by a voice vote during a brief committee meeting held Sept. 11, during which Committee Chair Mary Landrieu (D-La.) noted Sherwood-Randall’s “impressive resume.” She currently serves as Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Arms Control. Among her previous positions, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council from 2009 to 2013; and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 1994 to 1996.
If confirmed by the full Senate, Sherwood-Randall would replace Dan Poneman, who has announced plans to leave DOE this fall after having served as Deputy Secretary for five years. Now that she has cleared the Senate energy committee, though, Sherwood-Randall joins a lengthy list of other pending DOE nominees awaiting consideration by the full Senate. Such nominees include Under Secretary for Science nominee Franklin Orr, Chief Financial Officer nominee Joseph Hezir, Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy nominee Ellen Williams and Director of the Office of Science nominee Marc Kastner.
During a committee hearing to consider Sherwood-Randall’s nomination in July, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) warned her that she may have a difficult time getting confirmed by the full Senate. “You’re going to need to navigate a floor process that has not been very kind to our DOE nominees,” Murkowski told Sherwood-Randall. “We’ve certainly cleared a lot of judges this year, a lot of officials for other agencies and departments. So perhaps we can take a little breather from that and focus on DOE for a change. I think that Secretary [of Energy Ernest] Moniz needs to have a full team around him, and I want to help support him in that.”
