Some, not all, weapons complex watchers contacted Thursday were caught off guard by President Joe Biden’s announcement of the planned nomination of William (Ike) White, longtime acting Department of Energy cleanup boss, to join the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
Exchange Monitor queried seven observers of DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) after the announcement. Many have heard chatter White, who has held the lead chair at EM nearly five years, might leave, but were surprised by the destination.
Others were not.
“No, not a big surprise, especially after my meeting with Ike White on Tuesday of this week at DOE HQ,” Nikolas Peterson, executive director of Hanford Challenge, said via email. “We have been hearing rumors about his potential departure for the last month or so.” White told Exchange Monitor last September he was not pondering retirement.
“Yes, I’m surprised,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “But Ike or not I’m glad there is a nominee … DNFSB is facing serious quorum issues.”
The five-member DNFSB lost its quorum last fall and only has two members. One of them, Chair Joyce Connery, will see her term end in October. An earlier Biden administration nominee, a Savannah River National Laboratory executive Patricia Lee, still awaits a vote by the full Senate.
Moving to DNFSB “is not exactly a promotion” and has “a somewhat different pace,” than Environmental Management,” said a DOE subcontractor executive.
If White is confirmed, the move to the independent safety watchdog would mean a potential five-year term in a job which is less of a political hot seat, said a source with a large DOE contractor. No one knows who will win the November presidential election or whether the next administration will bring in a political nominee to run nuclear cleanup, the source said.
Anne Marie White (no relation) of the Donald Trump administration, confirmed by the Senate in March 2018, was the last EM leader who made it through the appointment process. She was replaced by Ike White in June 2019.
Ike White would not be the first Environmental Management boss to join DNFSB. Jessie Hill Roberson also headed the cleanup office.
“I would not say it’s a shock,” a third DOE contractor source said of White’s pending nomination. A more conventional move for a senior government executive would be to join one of the big DOE contractors. But White is less paycheck-motivated as some, the source said.
The same industry source considers second-in-command or EM-2, Jeff Avery, to be a competent leader of the $8-billion organization. Avery has held the No. 2 post since January 2023, joining the cleanup from the Office of Naval Reactors.
“Seeing that White House news release this afternoon was indeed a surprise to me,” said Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch in South Carolina. “Some colleagues had just met with Ike White this week, as part of meetings during the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s annual D.C. Days.”
During the session with antinuclear activists, White “did not specifically mention that he would be leaving, though he did three times mention what he or “his successor” would do on some issues,” said Don Hancock, administrator at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque. Hancock was one of six citizen group representatives in the meeting.
For now, DOE is mum on what might happen next at Environmental Management. The latest EM organizational chart was posted Tuesday.
The consensus among people contacted Thursday was that the Biden administration will not nominate a political appointee to lead Environmental Management with only a few months left before the election. But the administration could go with another special adviser for nuclear cleanup if White does not stay on while the Senate considers his nomination to DNFSB.
