Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Atkins Nuclear Secured Holdings Corp. on Nov. 8 named William Madia to its Board of Directors.
In addition to heading his own energy consulting firm, Madia is chairman of the board and vice president for the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University in California. Originally called the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC is one of the Energy Department’s 17 national laboratories.
Madia spent 32 years with Battelle before retiring in 2007. During his Battelle tenure, Madia held director posts at both the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. He has served as president of Battelle Technology International, which has research facilities in Germany and Switzerland.
Madia, who holds a doctorate in nuclear chemistry, also worked for General Physics Corp., where he trained nuclear power plant operators, and served in the U.S. Army, where he worked with its nuclear power program.
“Bill is one of the great strategic minds in the industry and I look forward to his counsel as we expand and diversify SNC-Lavalin’s business within the U.S. federal market,” Atkins Nuclear Secured President Tom Jouvanis said in the company press release.
Montreal-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin completed its purchase of WS Atkins in July 2017. Atkins Nuclear Secured Holdings focuses on the federal agency market for SNC-Lavalin’s global nuclear business.
Atkins is a partner in the AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions team managing tank operations at the Hanford Site in Washington state, and leads the Mid-America Conversion Services team managing uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plants for DOE in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky.
Longenecker & Associates, the Las Vegas-based Energy Department subcontractor, has added a former Honeywell executive and a retired Air Force officer to its advisory board.
The new members are retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Sandra Finan, now a consultant based in Spokane, Wash.; and ex-Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies (FM&T) President Chris Gentile, Longenecker said in a Nov. 21 news release.
Finan served 34 years in the Air Force in before retiring in June 2017. She held posts including commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Finan also worked for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from January 2011 to January 2013, including a stint as acting chief of defense nuclear security. While at the NNSA, Finan helped lead a review of the 2012 incident in which a nun and two other anti-nuclear protestors got inside security fences at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee.
Gentile’s positions included project manager for Honeywell at the NNSA’s Kansas City National Security Campus, which makes most of the non-nuclear parts that go into the U.S. nuclear stockpile. He retired from Honeywell in early 2016 as president of its FM&T section.
“As our work supporting the vital missions of NNSA expands, we are making it a priority to deepen our pool of resources to ensure the highest levels of performance on our projects,” L&A CEO Bonnie Longenecker said in the press release.
The L&A website lists 20 members of the company’s advisory board, not including Finan. The two new members are not replacing any departing board members, but are new additions. The board terms are for two years each.
Longenecker & Associates is a subcontractor for Triad National Security, the new management and operations contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The company is also a subcontractor to Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos, which holds the legacy cleanup contract at LANL. Longenecker also has NNSA business at Sandia National Laboratories in California and New Mexico, and at the Nevada National Security Site. The subcontractor provides quality assurance and other services at the sites.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to become Energy Department general counsel, William Cooper, is still waiting on a vote by the full Senate, although he has apparently already started working at the federal agency in another role.
Cooper, a former staff director for the House Natural Resources mineral resources subcommittee, is now a senior adviser to the Energy Department, according to his LinkedIn profile. He took on the role this month, but the profile does not offer any details on what the job entails.
Cooper had previously served as senior counsel and director of the Washington, D.C., office of the McConnell Valdés law firm for 18 months. Prior to being staff director for the House subcommittee, he headed a trade group for the liquefied natural gas industry for several years.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced Cooper’s nomination on a voice vote on Aug. 23. His nomination was placed on the Senate executive calendar but it appears no Senate floor vote has been scheduled yet although both the House and Senate have returned from Thanksgiving break.
One source expects Cooper and other DOE nominees to be approved during the lame duck session of Congress before new lawmakers are sworn in during January.
Theodore Garrish, who was confirmed in April as assistant energy secretary for international affairs, has also been serving as acting general counsel. He was still listed in that capacity on an organizational chart on the website for the DOE’s general counsel office.
