President Joe Biden’s administration is starting to weigh potential nominees for a permanent assistant secretary for environmental management, including one who has held the post before, an industry source said last week.
Under consideration for a possible return to the nuclear-weapons cleanup office is Monica Regalbuto, who led the office from 2015 until 2017 and is now director of nuclear fuel cycle strategy at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory.
Nicole Nelson-Jean, currently EM’s associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, is also in the running.
A third candidate is said to be Jim Werner, a one-time DOE planner for legacy management sites who has spent the past decade as a section manager for the Congressional Research Service, according to his LinkedIn bio. Werner also spent about five years as director of air and waste management in Delaware, President Biden’s home state, the industry source said.
Earlier in the Biden administration, it was rumored that the White House was considering Joyce Connery, the current Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board chair, to lead the DOE Office of Environmental Management. The board, an independent health-and-safety inspector for DOE defense-nuclear sites, was at deadline operating with only three of its five slots filled: its minimum for a quorum.
Meanwhile, William “Ike” White has been running Environmental Management on an acting basis since mid-2019 after the last Senate-confirmed EM-1, Anne Marie White, resigned under pressure from her boss, then-undersecretary for science Paul Dabbar.
Environmental and advocacy groups have called on the Biden administration to appoint someone attuned to environmental justice issues.
