The Energy Department’s top nuclear cleanup official at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico has called it a career.
Doug Hintze’s last day as manager of DOE’s Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office was Friday, an agency spokesman confirmed Monday. Hintze spent more than 12 years in supervisory positions for the Office of Environmental Management (EM) following a three-decade career in the U.S. Navy, according an online biography.
He was honored during a retirement ceremony Thursday, according to a Saturday article in the Los Alamos Reporter. Jeff Griffin, who will himself soon leave his position as EM associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, presented Hintze with a distinguished service award, the online newspaper reported.
Hintze became manager of the EM Los Alamos Field Office in September 2015. Before that he spent more than three-and-a-half years as assistant manager for mission support at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a job that entailed overseeing contracting and procurement. He also spent four years as an assistant manager for integration and planning at SRS.
Hintze retired with the rank of captain from the U.S. Navy Reserve after a 30-year naval career of active and reserve service. One of his last Navy positions was as an emergency preparedness liaison officer, providing support to civil authorities during a natural or human-made crisis.
With Hintze’s departure, the Los Alamos Field Office has an acting manager, Thomas Johnson Jr., currently the deputy manager for DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the spokesman said.
Johnson has been in that post since September 2018, according to an online biography. From May 2015 to September 2018, he was associate deputy manager for business-related functions at Savannah River, according to his DOE biography. Before that, he was associate deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management at DOE headquarters from 2012 through 2015.
Since the 1980s, Johnson has also worked at other posts at the Energy Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
