President Obama last week nominated Neile Miller, director of the Energy Department’s budget office and a former White House budget analyst during the Bush administration, to be principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the department’s semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency.
If confirmed by the Senate, Miller would be the second-ranking official at NNSA, behind Administrator Thomas D’Agostino.
The White House said Miller has more than 20 years of experience in nuclear energy, defense policy and budget analysis, and from 2004 to 2007 under the Bush administration served as a senior program examiner in the National Security Division of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where she was responsible for overseeing NNSA and the Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program. She first joined OMB in 1987 as the program examiner for DoE radioactive waste management programs and for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
From 2003 to 2004, Miller was the associate director for resource management and later the associate director of international nuclear cooperation in DoE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. She also served as policy and communications officer in the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.