U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry plans to resign in a matter of weeks, after nearly three years as the Trump administration’s top manager for a range of civilian nuclear operations, Politico reported Thursday.
Three informed sources said Perry would make an announcement before the end of November, according to the report. Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette is his anticipated successor, sources said.
Perry, who served more than 14 years as the governor of Texas, was sworn in as energy secretary in March 2017. He has been among the quieter members President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, but has in recent weeks been scrutinized for his travels to Ukraine as the House considers whether to impeach Trump over allegations that he pressured that country’s president to investigate potential political rival Joe Biden.
Two sources told Politico that Perry has for months been eyeing his exit from the Cabinet, which they said is not linked to the impeachment proceeding. He would join a sizable list of former Trump agency chiefs.
A DOE spokesperson offered a non-denial denial of the report, the Washington Post reported: “While the Beltway media has breathlessly reported on rumors of Secretary Perry’s departure for months, he is still the Secretary of Energy and a proud member of President Trump’s Cabinet. One day the media will be right. Today is not that day.”
A source with a DOE contractor said Friday that Perry’s work in recent months, including domestic and international travel, has had the feel of a farewell tour. Perry has also protested a bit too much when asked if he is leaving, the industry source told Weapons Complex Monitor.
Perry leads an agency that he said he would eliminate during his abortive 2011-2012 run for president. As energy secretary, he manages a department with a budget of more than $30 billion per year. Well over half of that goes to the DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, civilian steward of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and the Office of Environmental Management, charged with remediation of 16 sites contaminated by decades of nuclear arms operations.
The Office of Environmental Management received $7.2 billion during fiscal 2019, which ended Monday. That marked the highest level of spending for the office since it received almost $7.3 billion in fiscal 2005. A continuing resolution signed last weekend by the president will keep government spending at fiscal 2019 levels into late November.
The House of Representatives in June approved a funding package with almost $7.2 billion for nuclear cleanup in fiscal 2020, while Senate appropriators committed more than $7.4 billion for Environmental Management in a DOE-funding bill that is still waiting for a floor vote. The federal government is funded with a short-term budget through Nov. 21 to give lawmakers time to settle on full-year spending levels.
Under Perry’s watch the Energy Department suspended the practice of trading or bartering excess government uranium in order to subsidize remediation of the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The department also issued a revised interpretation of the definition for radioactive high-level waste – saying not all wastes from spent fuel reprocessing are highly radioactive, and in some cases can be sent to disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste.
The Department of Energy is charged by Congress with permanent disposition of tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste, but has made little progress in completing that mission.
In each of its three budget plans under Perry, the Energy Department requested congressional appropriations to resume licensing of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. It has been denied twice by Capitol Hill, and appropriators in both chambers have zeroed out the proposal for about $110 million for the 2020 federal year that began Tuesday. Congress has yet to finalize the 2020 budgets for any federal agencies, but there is little likelihood of a surprise comeback for Yucca Mountain in this spending cycle.
The Energy Department in 2008 first filed its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, under Secretary Samuel Bodman and President George W. Bush. The Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later, while Steven Chu was energy secretary.
Perry has supported resumption of licensing as required under the 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. In the original law, Congress gave the Energy Department until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin disposing of the nation’s spent nuclear power fuel and high-level radioactive waste – which has yet to happen. The 1987 amendment specifically directed the waste be buried in a repository under federal land about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
“I’m not a ‘Yucca Mountain or bust’ person. Let’s find a solution to this. Yucca is one of the solutions,” Perry said in March during a May hearing of the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee on his agency’s $31.7 billion budget proposal for fiscal 2020. “But if you do not have a permitting process that is finalized you’re never going to be able to move this out of your states.”
Perry, though, has also acknowledged congressional opposition to actually building the repository. During a March 2018 budget hearing, then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) told the energy secretary Congress would strip out the proposed licensing funding and asked whether DOE would come back for more in 2019 (it did).
“I’ll follow the law, sir, and I expect the results will be about the same,” Perry told Heller, a fierce Yucca Mountain opponent who lost his seat to Rep. Jacky Rosen (D) in the November 2018 midterms.
Prior to becoming deputy energy secretary in August 2017, Brouillette spent more than 10 years as an executive and lobbyist for the United Services Automobile Association in San Antonio, Texas. His service in the federal government included a stint as assistant energy secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs from 2001 to 2003.
During his May 2017 confirmation hearing, Brouillette said he is “in favor of following the law” on radioactive waste disposal – meaning the direction of the amended Nuclear Waste Policy Act to build the Yucca Mountain repository.
“If the science is so definitive as to show that the site is unsafe, I don’t think it’s in the interest of anyone to place nuclear waste and endanger the lives of Americans anywhere,” Brouillette told Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.). He added, though, that “if the science were to show that it is safe, we would be obligated to follow the law.”
Questioned by the senator on whether the Energy Department should continue its consent-based siting approach for nuclear waste disposal, Brouillette said “I think it’s important that states have input into the process.”
President Barack Obama initiated that plan for new siting for storage and disposal of nuclear waste near the end of his term in office, based on recommendations of a blue-ribbon panel of experts. But that strategy did not get further than a draft plan before Trump took office.
Perry’s potential departure, and succession by Brouillette, should not change much in the operation of the Energy Department, the industry source said. He cited NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty or Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes as prime candidates to succeed Brouillette as deputy secretary.
During a September hearing on Capitol Hill, Menezes said it would be up to Congress to ultimately decide on, and provide resources for, a national nuclear waste management strategy.
In the meantime, Yucca Mountain “is still the law. It’s a permanent repository, Congress made that clear,” Menezes said. “We only have had limited resources that we can pursue that. And so it’s really up to Congress and the appropriators to determine whether or not we have the resources to be able to develop that.”
ExchangeMonitor Publications reporter Wayne Barber contributed to this article.
