The head of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management field office in Tennessee, Eric Olds, is also temporarily overseeing DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office.
While Olds remains the manager of the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, he now is also serving as the interim acting manager for the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO), a department spokesperson said Thursday.
“He has picked up a bit more travel recently,” the spokesperson said in response to an inquiry from Exchange Monitor.
An agenda for an Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association (ETEBA) conference later this month said Olds will be speaking as the acting manager the the project office overseeing both the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
Teresa Robbins continues to serve as Environmental Management’s deputy manager for Oak Ridge, helping lead and oversee daily operations, the spokesperson said.
In September, longtime PPPO manager Joel Bradburne relocated to Environmental Management’s Washington, D.C., headquarters where he temporarily led the cleanup office prior to Senate confirmation of Tim Walsh. After Walsh was confirmed, Bradburne stayed on as the second-in-command or EM-2.
With the recent retirement of Reinhard Knerr, April Ladd has become the acting deputy manager of the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office.
That is according to a website for the office that oversees the DOE’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio as well as the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
Ladd is a certified project director with more than 15 years of experience with big projects in the nuclear industry, according to the DOE Office of Environmental Management website.
Knerr, the Portsmouth-Paducah deputy manager, who was acting as manager, retired from DOE last month apparently to accept a position in private industry.
Navarro has been mentioned by industry sources as a possible landing spot for Knerr, who spent about 25 years as a fed.
ointing to Olds current dual assignment, an industry executive said Thursday that while Oak Ridge is quickly becoming center of a domestic nuclear energy revival, Paducah might be the second DOE nuclear site in this line. Companies like General Matter and Global Laser Enrichment already plan to make major nuclear investments at Paducah.