President Donald Trump will nominate a familiar face, Joyce Connery, to serve a new term on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), the White House said Tuesday morning.
If confirmed by the Senate, Connery would serve a term expiring Oct. 18, 2025, according to the intent to nominate announcement. Initially nominated by President Barack Obama, she joined the board in August 2015.
Connery’s regular term technically expired in Oct. 18, 2019, but she remains on the board under DNFSB rules that allow a member to serve until a replacement is confirmed. She served two years as DNFSB chair from 2015 through 2017.
Connery is a former director of nuclear energy policy within the Office of International Economics on the National Security Council from 2012 through 2015. Prior to that she worked two years as a senior adviser on national security issues in DOE. She has worked for Department of Energy national laboratories as well as its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The roughly $30 million DNFSB is the federal watchdog for the Department of Energy’s nuclear complex. It has no direct regulatory power over DOE, but can make recommendations that the secretary of energy must respond to publicly.
It has up to five members, with three currently serving: Connery, Chairman Bruce Hamilton, and board member Jessie Hill Roberson.
Hamilton and Roberson have been nominated to new terms, and are waiting for confirmation votes on the Senate floor. A new nominee, former Air Force 91st Missile Wing vice commander Thomas Summers, is also waiting for Senate confirmation.
A Navy veteran and former nuclear executive, Hamilton has been on the board since August 2015. His new nomination would be good through October 2022.
A onetime DOE assistant secretary of environmental management, Roberson first joined the board in early 2000. After spending time away, she rejoined the DNFSB as a member during the Obama administration. If confirmed again, should would serve until October 2023.
However, the Senate in January again returned the nomination of National Nuclear Security Administration official Lisa Vickers to the White House.
Vickers was first nominated in October 2018, then sent back to the White House the following January. The administration resubmitted the nomination within two weeks, but it stalled a second time. Vickers did not receive a confirmation vote by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The White House as of Friday had not resubmitted the nomination to the Senate. There was no public explanation for Vickers’ situation.
“People can sometimes grow tired of waiting. It’s very stressful,” one source said this week.
