Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
5/30/2014
Jack Zimmerman, federal project director for the Department of Energy’s two depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion plants, has been selected as DOE’s next cleanup chief for the Idaho site. Zimmerman is set to begin his new role as the DOE Idaho Operations Office’s Deputy Manager for the Idaho Cleanup Project in July, and he will succeed Jim Cooper, who is set to retire from federal service at the end of July. “We are extremely pleased that Jack is joining the management team at the Idaho site,” acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Dave Huizenga said in a release issued late this week. “Jack is a proven professional who brings a wealth of knowledge from the Miamisburg Closure Project, and most recently the DUF6 Conversion Project. We look forward to working with him and continuing the success of the environmental cleanup mission at the Idaho Site.”
Zimmerman has served as the federal project director for the two DUF6 conversion plants, located at the Paducah and Portsmouth sites, since 2006. During that time, he managed both the construction of the plants as well as their commissioning, startup and eventual operation—expertise that likely would come in handy at the Idaho site, where efforts are currently underway to get the site’s Integrated Waste Ttreatment Unit fully operational. Other cleanup activities underway the Idaho site include facility D&D activities, efforts to remove buried transuranic waste and spent nuclear fuel management.
Among Zimmerman’s previous positions, he served as Associate Director for DOE’s Mound site in Ohio from 1998 to 2004. “I look forward, with great enthusiasm, to working with everyone involved in the environmental cleanup mission and others at the Idaho Site,” Zimmerman said in the release, adding, “Together, we will safely accomplish great things.”
