Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/10/2014
This week marked the start of operation for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s reincorporated Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. With the NRC’s changing workload, the NRC staff launched a working group last year to review the organizational structure of the materials and waste management programs, and determined that Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs would function more efficiently within NMSS. “The realignment will help us meet these demands while maintaining our ability to protect public health and safety and the environment,” said Mark Satorius, the NRC’s Executive Director for Operations. “We fully expect these changes to make us more efficient and improve our communications both inside and outside of the agency.”
Catherine Haney has been named director of the merged organization, with Scott Moore as deputy director. Larry Camper will serve as director of the Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery and Waste Programs, and Mark Lombard will head the Division of Spent Fuel Management. Other senior staff include Laura Dudes, director of the Division of Materials Safety and State Agreements; Marissa Bailey, director of the Division of Fuel Cycle Safety, Safeguards and Environmental Review; Josephine Piccone, director of the Yucca Mountain Directorate; and Andy Imboden, director of the Program Planning, Budgeting and Program Analysis staff.
Originally, the programs under FSME were under the NMSS banner, but back in 2006, under the thought that spent nuclear fuel related-licensing was going to increase, the NRC spun off the FSME programs into its own entity. According to the NRC, NMSS retained fuel cycle facilities, high-level waste disposal, spent fuel storage, and radioactive material transportation while FSME worked on regulating industrial, commercial, and medical uses of radioactive materials and uranium recovery activities and also decommissioning of nuclear facilities and power plants. Part of the reasoning for the merger, the NRC said, was to reduce overhead costs and improve the ratio of staff to management while also improving efficiency.
