Poneman: NNSA Needs to be ‘Integrated’ with DOE

The National Nuclear Security Administration needs to be integrated with the rest of the Department of Energy not only because of its important national security work with the nuclear weapons stockpile but also because of its nonproliferation and emergency response work, outgoing Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman said during a speech and question-and-answer session at the Wilson Center yesterday. The comments by Poneman, who will formally leave DOE after five years on Friday, come as several panels are studying the NNSA and its governance structure, and while Poneman declined to offer specifics as he prepared to leave his position, he hinted that he believed the semi-autonomous agency should remain intertwined with DOE. “The NNSA remains absolutely critical to us in terms of both the preservation of our deterrent—safe secure and effective—and the critical role it plays in emergency response, they did a fabulous role in Fukushima, and all the stuff in nonproliferation and locking own nuclear materials. But it does also need to be integrated in a way that … we need to work that seam of the energy piece and the national security and nonproliferation piece.”