The U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on Tuesday recommended confirmation of Department of Justice attorney Robert Feitel as the new inspector general for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Feitel would succeed Hubert Bell, who retired last December after more than 22 years as NRC inspector general.
The NRC inspector general manages an office, funded at about $13 million annually, that provides audits and investigations “to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness within the NRC, and to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in agency programs and operations,” according to the agency. The office also serves as the inspector general for the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the health-and-safety monitor for nuclear sites managed by the Department of Energy.
Feitel has since August 2014 served in the Justice Department’s Capital Case Section, which primarily assists the Attorney General’s Review Committee on Capital Cases in determining whether to recommend the death penalty in capital cases. The section also aids U.S. attorneys in investigations and prosecutions of capital cases, among other duties.
Beforehand, Feitel worked for close to 12 years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, detailed from 2010 to 2011 to the Counterterrorism Unit at the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence. He also spent 10 months on the President’s Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force during the early Obama administration and seven years as assistant general counsel for the FBI.
