Jennifer Granholm, President Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of energy, vowed Wednesday that cleaning up the Hanford Site would be a top priority if she is confirmed by the Senate.
“You have my assurance that this is going to be a priority,” Granholm, the former Michigan governor, said in response to questioning from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
In her written testimony, Granholm said enhancing American security through DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration and “clean-up of our Cold War legacy” will be atop her priority list, if confirmed. Those missions will be followed by management of the agency’s 17 national laboratories and research on climate change and emission reductions.
Hanford funding is at roughly $2.58 billion in fiscal 2021, a level it only reached after Congress plussed up the $1.8 billion initially sought by the Donald Trump administration. The request was far below what is needed to fund milestones in the Tri-Party Agreement between DOE, the state of Washington and the Environmental Protection Agency, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said Wednesday at the hearing.
Cantwell and Granholm both praised the prior energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, for overseeing construction of major components of Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant during the Trump administration.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had not scheduled a vote on Granholm’s nomination at the deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor. Granholm needs to clear the committee, still technically under Republican control, and the full Senate, which is split 50/50, with a Democratic tie-breaker in Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sen. Joe Machin (D-W.Va.) the incoming chair of the committee, supports Granholm’s confirmation. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), technically still the committee chair, spent much of the hearing demanding support for fossil fuels that Granholm didn’t give — and plenty of time afterward bashing the energy policies President Biden rolled out this week.
Furthermore, Barrasso told Granholm that he wants the Department of Energy to prevent government uranium from flooding the market, where it competes with stock from domestic providers, such as those in his home state. DOE had previously bartered uranium to help fund cleanup of the former enrichment facilities at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, but ceased the practice during the Trump administration.
From December 2009 through March 2018, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management transferred uranium valued at about $1.4 billion to contractors in exchange for cleanup at Portsmouth, according to a December 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office.
As urged by Barrasso, then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry agreed to discontinue the practice. Congress then included language in subsequent spending packages, in fiscal years 2020 and 2021, that effectively blocked uranium barter.
The Government Accountability Office also recommended DOE adopt a more integrated management approach for gaseous diffusion plant sites at Portsmouth, Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn. That is in part because the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund contains only a fraction of the total amount of money needed to remediate the sites.
Granholm said she has not been briefed on the barter issue but will take a look at it.
Also at the hearing, Granholm told Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) that the Biden administration “opposes the use of Yucca Mountain for the storage of nuclear waste.”
That drew praise from Geoff Fettus, a senior attorney in the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In a Thursday blog post, Fettus called it “an impressive performance by Secretary Designate Granholm and we look forward to her swift confirmation .” Fettus expressed disappointment at the scant discussion of the single largest chunk of the DOE budget, the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
A DOE contractor source said Granholm should have no negative impact on DOE nuclear cleanup efforts. As a governor Granholm should know how to manage, and should also understand how to effectively push for a well-funded budget, the industry source said Thursday by phone.
“There are obviously concerns which were raised at the hearing by several Senators on the decisions related to oil and gas but we do not expect the nomination to be held up,” said Seth Kirshenberg, executive director of the Energy Communities Alliance in a Friday email.
Granholm No Stranger to Public Eye
Granholm, a Democrat, was the first woman to be elected governor of Michigan, serving two terms from 2003 until 2011. Before being governor, Granholm was also Michigan’s first female attorney general.
As governor, one of Granholm’s top economic goals was growing an alternative energy industry in the Rust Belt state, according to an online biography posted by the state.
Since her days in the statehouse, Granholm has been a political commentator for the Cable News Network, sat on various boards and served on the transition team for President Barack Obama. ABC News reported this month that Granholm and her husband hold between $1 million and $5 million in stock in Proterra, a California-based company that manufactures commercial electric vehicles such as buses and trucks. Granholm plans to step down from the company’s board of directors and shed vested stock options.
Born in Canada, Granholm’s parents moved to California while she was a child. Granholm would go on to earn bachelor degrees in political science and French from the University of California-Berkeley and subsequently a law degree from Harvard Law School.
