Office of Nuclear Energy

The Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) is an agency of the United States Department of Energy which promotes nuclear power as a resource capable of meeting the energy, environmental, and national security needs of the United States by resolving technical and regulatory barriers through research, development, and demonstration.

Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy of Office of Nuclear Energy
Incumbent Michael Goff Acting  since May 3, 2024
United States Department of Energy
Reports to	Under Secretary of Energy for Science and Innovation
Appointer	President of the United States
Formation	April 3, 2006
First holder	Dennis Spurgeon

The Office is led by the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy, who is appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. The current acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy is Michael Goff.^[1]

Overview

The Office of Nuclear Energy is guided by the following four research objectives detailed in its Nuclear Energy Research and Development Roadmap:^[2][3]

• Develop technologies and other solutions that can improve the reliability, sustain the safety and extend the life of current reactors.
• Develop improvements in the affordability of new reactors to enable nuclear energy to help meet the Administration's energy security and climate change goals.
• Develop sustainable fuel cycles.
• Understand and minimize the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Organization

The Office is under the general supervision of the Under Secretary of Energy for Science and Innovation. It is administered by the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy (NE-1), who is appointed by the President of the United States. The Assistant Secretary is supported in running the Office by a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and five career Deputy Assistant Secretaries. Each of the five Deputy Assistant Secretaries oversee a different branch of the Office's work. As of 2022, staffing and organization was as follows:^[1]

• Assistant Secretary
  • Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
    • Deputy Assistant Secretary – Nuclear Infrastructure Programs - Tracey Bishop
    • Deputy Assistant Secretary – Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition - Paul Murray
    • Deputy Assistant Secretary – Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Supply Chain - Dr. Jon Carmack
    • Deputy Assistant Secretary – International Nuclear Energy Policy and Cooperation - Aleshia Duncan
    • Deputy Assistant Secretary – Reactor Fleet and Advanced Reactor Deployment - Alice Caponiti

Laboratory

The Office of Nuclear Energy is the landlord of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). INL is in southern Idaho, just west of the Eastern Snake River Plain. It occupies 890 square miles (2,300 km²) of desert and is about 42 miles (68 km) from Idaho Falls.

INL is an applied engineering laboratory dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's research of nuclear energy, national and homeland security, and clean energy. Past and current work includes initial development of: nuclear reactor designs, prototype reactors for the U.S. Navy, and technologies to manage nuclear waste. INL also conducts research supporting fuel cycle development, as well nuclear energy demos and deployments.

Lab history

INL was established in 1949 as the "National Reactor Testing Station" by the Atomic Energy Commission. It is the location of historic Experimental Breeder Reactor Number I (EBR-I), which was the first nuclear reactor to generate usable electrical power.

CASL Hub

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) was established in July 2010 as the first of five Department of Energy Innovation Hubs.^[4][5] It was administered by the Office of Nuclear Energy, and coordinated by Oak Ridge National Lab and INL.^[6] CASL had one goal: To develop a simulation environment that modeled the operation of an entire reactor down to the characteristics of a single fuel rod (which significantly exceeded the resolution available with existing industry tools). This simulation environment was named the Virtual Reactor. The Virtual Reactor was designed and built to provide solutions to a wide variety of reactor performance challenges.^[7]

In order to develop what was eventually called the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA), it was necessary for CASL to conduct both basic research and technology development.^[8] Work of such scope and complexity was accomplished through a partnership of U.S. government, academia, and industry.^[4] In 2020, the CASL project concluded, making VERA available for licensing and deployment by the nuclear industry.^[9][10]

List of assistant secretaries

The Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy is the head of the Office of Nuclear Energy. The assistant secretary is responsible for a budget of $1.626 billion as of fiscal year 2021.

Parties

  Democratic   Republican

Status

  Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy

Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	President(s)
	George W. Cunningham[11]	1979	1981		Jimmy Carter
	Shelby Brewer[12]	1981	1984		Ronald Reagan
	A. David Rossin[13]	1986	1987
	Theodore J. Garrish[14]	1987	1989
	William H. Young[15]	1989	1993		George H. W. Bush
	Dennis Spurgeon	April 3, 2006	2009		George Bush
	Pete Miller	2009	November 2010[16]		Barack Obama
	Peter Lyons[17][18]	April 14, 2011	June 30, 2015[19]
	John Kotek	2015	January 2017[20]
	Edward McGinnis	May 2017	November 2017		Donald Trump
	Rita Baranwal	July 11, 2019[21]	January 8, 2021[22]
	Dennis Michael Miotla	January 8, 2021	May 10, 2021		Joseph Biden
	Kathryn Huff	May 10, 2021	January 19, 2022
	Andrew Griffith	January 19, 2022[23]	May 11, 2022
	Kathryn Huff	May 11, 2022[24]	May 3, 2024
	Michael Goff	May 3, 2024	Incumbent

See also

• Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative
• High-temperature electrolysis