A Senate committee was scheduled Thursday to decide whether Kathryn Huff will get a chance to lead the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, according to a recent meeting notice.
When the White House announced its intention to nominate Huff to be assistant secretary for nuclear energy in January, the former assistant professor of nuclear engineering was in the midst of a nine-month stint as the office’s acting head. Following a controversial personnel decision that generated at least one allegation of hiring malpractice, DOE earlier this year moved Huff into a new role: senior advisor to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
None of that came up in Huff’s nomination hearing in March before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, when she spoke to lawmakers about DOE’s interim storage inquiry and the rollout of its $6 billion civil nuclear credits program.
Now, the committee will vote on whether Huff should return to the top of the Nuclear Energy office’s organization chart. If she gets the go-ahead from the Committee, Huff will still need the support of at least 51 senators to be confirmed for the job she held for nearly a year after joining DOE in May 2021.
In February, an unidentified DOE employee alleged that a “former career Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary” of Nuclear Energy was reassigned as a senior advisor to the Secretary of Energy after becoming “circumspect” for engaging in prohibited personnel practices.
The unidentified DOE employee told the Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general that “undue political influence and preferences were applied” in selecting nuclear-waste-management- and LGBTQ-advocate Sam Brinton for the senior executive service position of deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy.
The personnel office has not said whether it is investigating the complaint, or planned to.
Meanwhile, DOE is looking for someone to fill the position of acting deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition.
