Hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee - Energy Department Nominations

Hearing

"Thank you, Chairman Murkowski, for calling this hearing and for having these qualified
nominees before us today.

"Dr. Regalbuto has been nominated to lead the department's Office of Environmental
Management. The office is responsible for cleaning up the environmental contamination that
resulted from five decades of nuclear weapons production. This is an extremely critical
assignment, not only for the importance of cleaning up these sites, but for the complexity of
the undertaking, and the sheer scale of the problem. The Office of Environmental
Management accounts for about one-fifth of the department's nearly $30 billion annual
budget. The program is especially important to the state of Washington, which is home to
the Hanford site, which is the largest, most complex and most expensive of all of the
department's cleanup sites.

"Dr. Regalbuto is extremely qualified for this position. She holds a doctorate in chemical
engineering. And for the past 15 years, she has held increasingly senior positions at the
Argonne National Laboratory and within the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear
Energy and Office of Environmental Management. For the past year, she has been the
Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management. So, I will
have some very important questions for you today about both tank vapors and our process
moving forward and the 324 building on the site. And I look forward to hearing your
responses on that.

"I also want to welcome Mr. Elkind, who has been nominated to lead the department's
Office of International Affairs. This, too, is an extremely important position. It is responsible
for managing the department's international energy policy and international cooperation in
energy, science and technology. So I look forward to asking him questions as well.

"So thank you, Madam Chair, for these important nomination hearings."

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