Deciding where nuclear cleanup fits in the pecking order within President Joe Biden’s Department of Energy will likely be determined by the just-confirmed deputy secretary David Turk, the acting boss at the Office of Environmental Management said Wednesday.
The assessment was offered by William (Ike) White, acting assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management (EM), when asked by a member of the Environmental Management Advisory Board if the $7-billion nuclear cleanup branch will continue to report directly to the secretary of energy’s office. The advisory panel met online.
The new administration decided, for the time being at least, to have EM report directly to the secretary of energy. This undid a change from the prior administration.
“I don’t really know if that’s a permanent change or not,” White said in a response to a question from Jack Craig, acting chairman of the advisory board, a national body that provides external advice, information and recommendations to the EM assistant secretary. “I suspect when we have the deputy secretary on board, hopefully this week, I would assume that would be one of the things he would take a look at,” White said.
The deputy secretary at DOE acts as the chief operating officer and typically is the driving force for organizational structure, White said. Turk’s nomination as deputy secretary was confirmed in a 98-2 vote by the full Senate late Wednesday.
White is a longtime federal manager at DOE and has been in charge of day-to-day operations at EM since June 2019. His initial title there was special adviser to DOE’s then-undersecretary for science Paul Dabbar. White was given the title of acting assistant secretary by the Biden team. The Donald Trump administration had EM reporting to the science undersecretary rather than directly to the secretary of energy’s office.
In reaction to a question from board member Robert Thompson, White said he expects the DOE, under new Secretary Jennifer Granholm, to take a look at the prior administration’s much-debated stance on reclassifying some high-level radioactive waste. The acting EM chief acknowledged there are strong opinions for-and-against the reinterpretation.
That’s especially true in Washington state, where DOE’s Hanford Site houses much of the potentially re-classifiable waste. In a pair of dueling letters, Washington’s attorney general and others, including local tribes, urged Granholm to jettison the Trump era reinterpretation, while several towns and counties around the site, including Richland, where Thompson is a city council member, endorsed the new approach and urged it be used at Hanford.
