Hanford’s top manager must reapply for his job if he wants to keep it

The top manager at the Hanford nuclear reservation will have to reapply for his job if he wants to keep it.

Brian Vance is working as the Hanford manager under a three-year appointment that expires in November.

About 9,300 people work for the Department of Energy and its contractors at Hanford, with additional subcontractors at the site.

DOE is asking for “expressions of interest” from those interested in the job, as is usual to ensure a fair and open competition for its senior executive service positions.

DOE said in a statement that Vance is one of the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s most capable executives and is doing a “superb job” of managing one if its highest priority environmental cleanup sites.

About $2.5 billion of DOE’s annual budget is spent on cleanup of the Richland-area Hanford site, which is contaminated from the production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program during World War II and the Cold War.

Vance was named to lead the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection in November 2017, co-leading the Hanford site with the manager of the Hanford Richland Operations Office.

Then in early 2019 DOE announced it planned to return to a single top DOE manager at Hanford for the first time in 20 years and Vance was tapped for a trial run of the combined position.

In October, then Energy Secretary Rick Perry notified Congress that he was making the single-manager arrangement permanent and Vance continued to serve in the position.

Vance will be eligible to compete for the permanent top manager position.