The Senate is scheduled today to hold a confirmation hearing for former Texas governor Rick Perry, who President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to lead the $30-billion-a-year Energy Department.
The hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is slated to begin at 10 a.m. Eastern time and will be webcast.
While Perry lacks the high-level of technical credentials of his two immediate predecessors, he has some experience in the nuclear waste arena.
In 2014, he supported storing Texas’ spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste within the state. Privately operated Waste Control Specialists, to which Perry has been politically connected through its late owner, Harold Simmons, is now pursuing a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to operate a consolidated interim storage facility for spent fuel in West Texas.
In 2003, Perry signed a controversial bill that allowed Waste Control Specialists to convert a state-run, low-level nuclear waste facility into the private venture it is today.
If confirmed, Perry would helm an agency that spends more than 60 percent of its annual appropriation on nuclear weapons programs and cleanup of nuclear waste created by the Cold War arms race with Russia.
