About two months after he left the federal ranks, the former top Department of Energy official at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., joined Atkins in a new role created for him.
Jack Craig, who in February retired as manager of DOE’s Savannah River Site office after three years in that role and over three decades with the department, is now vice president of strategic programs for Atkins Nuclear Secured. Atkins, an active player on DOE contracts at the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, is owned by Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin.
In his new job, “Jack will assist in performance assurance of strategic contracts, governance of SNC-Lavalin’s Tier 1 portfolio for DOE and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), and be a major player in defining the company’s expansion strategy within the DOE marketplace,” the company said in a press release.
Michael Budney, a former U.S. Navy captain, replaced Craig as manager of the Savannah River Site.
Craig’s addition is the second Atkins announcement in less than a month involving a high-profile DOE veteran. In March, the company said it had hired Ralph Holland, who retired as EM procurement chief in December, as vice president for commercial development in Atkins Nuclear Secured.
Atkins Nuclear Secured is the name of SNC-Lavalin’s federal nuclear business in the United States, which is headquartered at Oak Ridge.
The Energy Department has renewed its Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB) for a two-year period, through April 11, 2020.
The department announced the extension in an April 17 Federal Register notice.
The 17-member advisory board provides DOE’s Office of Environmental Management with recommendations on issues concerning specific nuclear cleanup sites. This includes areas ranging from cleanup standards and environmental restoration to future land use at these locations.
Continued operation of the board “has been determined to be essential to conduct DOE’s business and to be in the public interest,” according to the Federal Register notice.
While only one EM SSAB officially advises the assistant secretary for environmental management, eight local boards report to it: the Hanford Advisory Board, Idaho Cleanup Project Citizens Advisory Board, Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board, Nevada SSAB, Oak Ridge SSAB, Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board, Portsmouth SSAB, and Paducah Citizens Advisory Board.
The eight chairs and vice chairs comprise the full EM SSABV. Because one of the local boards currently has two vice chairs there are 17 people on the EM SSAB, a DOE official said Tuesday.
President Donald Trump announced Monday he plans to nominate Dan Michael Berkovitz, a former official at the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management (EM), to join the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Berkovitz served as EM deputy assistant secretary for planning, policy, and budget from 1995 to 2001, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Berkovitz’s other federal jobs included general counsel at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, assistant counsel at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and senior staff lawyer for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He is now a partner at the WilmerHale law firm.
Berkovitz would serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring April 13, 2023. He would fill a vacant CFTC slot last held by Commissioner Sharon Bowen, who served from June 2014 through September 2017, according to a commission spokesperson.
The commission’s mission is to support healthy and transparent futures and options markets. It became an independent agency in 1974 when it assumed oversight of agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn, and cotton, previously regulated by the Agriculture Department. In 2010, the CFTC’s authority was expanded to include oversight of the previously unregulated swaps market through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
The CFTC has up to five commissioners, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. No more than three commissioners may come from one political party. If confirmed, Berkovitz would get one of the seats reserved for Democrats.
Berkovitz is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law School and vice chair of the American Bar Association Derivatives and Futures Law Committee.
During its annual conference last week in Washington, D.C., the Energy Communities Alliance remembered Yakama Nation elder Russell Jim as a longtime advocate for cleanup of the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Jim, 82, died on April 7, according to newspaper reports from Washington state.
In his opening remark at ECA, Roane County, Tenn., County Executive Ron Woody said Jim had spent decades ensuring tribal interests had a voice in the environmental remediation of Cold War waste at Hanford. Woody led the ECA gathering in a moment of silence.
The Yakama Nation is located in southeastern Washington state. Jim headed the Yakama Nation’s Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Program for nearly four decades before retiring last year, the Yakima Herald reported.
The Washington state Department of Ecology, in an April 9 tweet, called Jim “a passionate advocate for a thorough and effective Hanford cleanup.”
