Steven Erhart has been selected as the acting administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, leapfrogging the semi-autonomous Department of Energy branch’s highest-ranking career civil servant at the helm until the Senate confirms the White House’s administrator-designate.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the move Jan. 19 at the bottom of a press release acknowledging the departure of Frank Klotz, the retired air-force general who led the agency for almost four years, including the first year of the Donald Trump administration.
Erhart is the full-time director of the NNSA’s Office of Policy, which among other operations handles the agency’s private communication with Congress. He was selected to lead the agency on an acting basis over William “Ike” White, who was Klotz’s confidant and NNSA chief of staff and associate principal deputy administrator.
Erhart was previously the Production Office manager at the NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where he oversaw the agency’s uranium refining program. Erhart led the office, which also oversees the Pantex nuclear warhead assembly and disassembly plant in Amarillo, Texas, from its inception in 2012 until 2015, when he assumed his current role at NNSA headquarters in Washington.
In December, Trump nominated former National Security Council and Department of Energy official Lisa Gordon-Hagerty to be the next NNSA administrator. Her nomination was sent to the Senate, but the Senate Armed Services Committee had yet to schedule a confirmation hearing at deadline Friday for our sister publication Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.