Michael Lempke is set to take over as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Operations, shifting from the Office of Naval Reactors’ Naval Reactors Laboratory Field Office to assume responsibility for the agency’s site offices, NW&M Monitor has learned. Lempke will also serve as the agency’s Associate Principal Deputy Administrator, reporting directly to Principal Deputy Administrator Neile Miller in a move designed to strengthen the link between the site offices and the agency’s front office.
Lempke’s appointment caps the latest chapter in the effort to reorganize the NNSA’s site offices. After reporting to the Office of Defense Programs, the agency’s field offices were shifted to report to a newly created associate administrator spot in an effort to align the agency’s field work with the broad NNSA mission and better integrate it into the agency’s overall structure. Lempke has headed up the Office of Naval Reactors’ combined Laboratory Field Office in Pittsburgh since management of the Bettis and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories was combined in 2009.
The NNSA has also selected longtime Navy veteran Frank Lowery as its new Deputy Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security. The position has been vacant since last summer when Doug Fremont was promoted to the NNSA’s top security job. Lowery spent 30 years in the Navy, most recently serving as the chief of staff to the commander of Submarine Group Two, the Navy’s Atlantic fleet of nuclear-powered fast attack submarines.