By George Lobsenz
Donald Cook, head of the UK’s nuclear weapons production enterprise from 2006 to 2009 and a former top manager at Sandia National Laboratories, was nominated by President Obama last week to be deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Energy Department agency in charge of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.
Cook, who will lead weapons development at NNSA, was managing director of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), which is run for the British Ministry of Defense by a consortium led by Serco, Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Jacobs Engineering.
Before working at AWE, Cook worked for 28 years at Sandia, the nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico that is operated for DoE by Lockheed Martin.
If confirmed by the Senate, Cook would be NNSA’s operational point man on the hot-button issue of warhead refurbishment and modernization initiatives, which are under review by the Obama administration as it pursues new arms control agreements with Russia.
In a varied career at Sandia, Cook led key programs in pulsed power sciences, microtechnologies, infrastructure and security.
From 1999-2006, he was in charge of design and construction of the Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Applications complex. In addition, in 2003 he was named program director for Sandia’s infrastructure program and for the lab’s safeguards and security technologies program, which responded to new nuclear material protection requirements stemming from the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.
From 1977-1999, Cook led efforts in pulsed power accelerator design and experimentation, fusion research, hydrodynamics, radiography, diagnostic development, and computational code development. He managed the Sandia Inertial Confinement Fusion program from 1984-1993 and was director of pulsed power sciences from 1993-1999.
In another key NNSA appointment this week, the agency named Clarence Bishop, previously an aide to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and a former chief of staff to Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), among other positions, as director of congressional, intergovernmental and public affairs.
Bishop most recently was deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development under O’Malley. He also served four years as O’Malley’s chief of staff when O’Malley was mayor of Baltimore.
Bishop also has more than 20 years experience on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch of the federal government, including deputy executive director of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and chief of staff to former Rep. Parren Mitchell (D-Md.).