ML20135A811

Press Release 96-172, NRC Announces Major Reorganization

ML20135A811
Person / Time
Issue date:	12/02/1996
From:	NRC OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS (OPA)
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PR-96-172, NUDOCS 9612040051
Download: ML20135A811 (10)

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United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Public Affairs Washington, DC 20555 Phone 301-415-8200 Fax 301-415-2234 l Internet:opa@nrc. gov i l

No.96-172 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  !

(Monday, December 2, 1996) l l

l NRC ANNOUNCES MAJOR REORGANIZATION The U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has announced a reorganization of functions to improve the agency's ability to perform its mission of protecting public health and safety. j At the same time, the Commission also has named several new  !

senior staff managers. 1 NRC Chairman Shirley Ann Jackson - joined by Commissioners Kenneth C. Rogers, Greia J. Dicus, Nils J. Diaz and Edward McGaffigan Jr. - announced the changes today. The new organization will take effect on January 5.

In an address to the staff today, Chairman Jackson said the Commission undertook this reorganization after carefully evaluating the present NRC staff structure and after gaining insights from various self-assessments conducted during the past year. She said the Commission believes the new structure will form the basis for implementing decisions arising from the agency's strategic assessment and rebaselining initiative.

Chairman Jackson also announced the forthcoming retirement in January of James M. Taylor, the present Executive Director for Operations; James L. Milhoan, Deputy Executive Director for Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Regional Operations and Research; and Stewart D. Ebneter, Regional Administrator, NRC Region II.

Named to succeed Mr. Taylor is Leonard J. (Joe) Callan, who has been administrator of NRC's Region IV for nearly three years and who has more than 16 years' service with the NRC in both headquarters and regional assignments.

Under the new organization, the Executive Director for Operations (EDO), the chief staff official, will continue to report directly to the Chairman and will have three, rather than i two, deputies. Also reporting to the Chairman will be the agency's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Chief Information Officer (CIO), both new positions. (At present, the EDO is also the Chief Financial Officer.) The EDO, the Chief Financial l Officer, and the Chief Information Officer will constitute an executive council which will establish a comprehensive agency-( wide foundation for accomplishing the agency's overall mission.

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Named to the new deputy EDO positions are:

o Hugh L. Thompson Jr., Deputy Executive Director for Regulatory Programs. Reporting to Mr. Thompson will be the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation; Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards; the Regional Administrators; and the Office of State Programs. Mr.

Thompson is the current Deputy Executive Director for Nuclear Materials Safety, Safeguards and Operations Support.

• Edward L. Jordan, Deputy Executive Director for Regulatory Effectiveness, Program Oversight, Investigations and Enforcement. Reporting to Mr.

Jordan will be the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research; Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data; Office of Investigations; and Office of Enforcement. Mr. Jordan is currently Director of the Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data.

e Patricia G. Norry, Deputy Executive Director for Management Support. Reporting to Mrs. Norry will be the Office of Administration, Office of Personnel, and the Office of Small Business and Civil Rights. Mrs.

Norry now heads the Office of Administration.

The Chief Financial Officer will be responsible for the agency-wide financial operations and planning, including the Office of the Controller, while the Chief Information Officer will be responsible agency-wide for information management, including the Office of Information Resources Management.

Appointments to the CFO and CIO positions will be announced soon.

Chairman Jackson and the Commission announced the appointment of Samuel L. Collins as the new Director of the i Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. Mr. Collins, the present I Deputy Regional Administrator of NRC Region IV, will succeed William T. Russell, who retired in September.

l Successors to Mr. Callan, Mr. Jordan, Mrs. Norry, Mr.

Collins and Mr. Ebneter will be named later.

l EDITORS: Attached are biographical sketches of the newly  ;

appointed officials, as well as those of Mr. Taylor, Mr. Milhoan and Mr. Ebneter.

l This announcement and attachments, as well as the text of Chairman Jackson's statement to the NRC staff, has been posted on the Internet at this address:

http://www.nrc. gov /OPA/newsrel/htm.

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L. JOSEPH CALLAN 1

! L. Joseph Callan is administrator.of the Nuclear Regulatory

Gommission's Region IV, which is headquartered in Arlington,

Texas.

He was appointed to this position in January 1994 after

! spending more than six years as a senior manager in the regional

, office.

After he joined NRC in 1979, he was assigned as a resident inspector at the Arkansas Nuclear One plant near Russellville,

Arkansas, and later was named senior resident inspector there. >

In 1984, he became chief of the performance appraisal section, j operating reactors program branch, in the Office of Inspection and Enforcement in NRC headquarters. Later, he was named acting chief of the diagnostic evaluation and incident investigation branch in the NRC Office for Analysis and Evaluation of l Operational Data, i

} Mr. Callan came to Region IV in a managerial capacity in

August 1987, when he was appointed director of the Division of

Reactor Projects, which oversees NRC resident inspectors at

nuclear power plants. He later headed the region's other two i technical specialty organizations - the Division of Reactor i Safety and the Division of Radiation Safety and Safeguards. At

! the time of his appointment as regional administrator, Mr. Callan i

a had been director of the latter division since October 1991.

Mr. Callan is a 1969 graduate of.the U. S. Naval Academy and completed graduate courses in nuclear. engineering at North Carolina State University in 1970. During his 10 years as a Navy

~ officer, he served on two submarines and was an instructor at one of the Navy's nuclear power training sites.

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. EDWARD L. JORDAN

, Mr. Jordan is a graduate in physics and mathematics from Northwestern State University of Louisiana, with graduate studies i in nuclear engineering and physics at Southern Methodist 1 University and Texas Christian University.

j Mr. Jordan first joined the Atomic Energy Commission in 1969, as

] a reactor inspector in the Region III office in Chicago. Since

{ that time he has held positions of increasing responsibility in

inspection, enforcement, engineering, events evaluation, and i quality assurance. Mr. Jordan's earlier experience was in j reactor design, operations and testing at the General Dynamics j Nuclear Aerospace Research facility at Fort Worth, Texas.

i Mr. Jordan is currently the Director of the Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data, U. S. Nuclear Regulatory ,

Commission, Washington, D.C. Mr. Jordan's responsibilities I include management of the NRC prompt response to events and incidents, analysis, and evaluation of operational experience and safety data associated with NRC licensed activities, management of programs for investigation of incidents, plant safety. j performance, and development and implementation of appropriate j tect:nical training for NRC staff. Mr. Jordan is the Chairman of '

the NRC Committee to Review Generic Requirements.

Mr. Jordan is a member of the American Nuclear Society.

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, HUGH L. THOMPSON JR.

Hugh L. Thompson Jr. since 1989 has been NRC Deputy Executive Director for Nuclear Materials Safety, Safeguards and Operations Support. Before his appointment to that position, he had served for two years as director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.

Since joining the Atomic Energy Commission, NRC's predecessor organization, in 1972, Mr. Thompson has held a number j of progressively responsible positions on the Commission staff. '

He was technical assistant to former NRC Chairman Marcus Rowden l and to former Commissioner Peter Bradford. He also held several i managerial positions in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, j including director of the planning and program analysis staff, i director of the Division of Human Factors Safety, director of the 1 Division of Licensing, and acting director of the TVA projects staff. i l

Before joining the Commission, Mr. Thompson was a senior nuclear engineer with the Alabama Power Company and served as an officer in the Navy's nuclear power program. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he holds a master's degree in nuclear engineering from Georgia Tech, and earned a law degree at George Washington University. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.

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. PATRICIA G. NORRY Patricia G. Norry was named Director, Office of Administration of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in July 1982. In this capacity she has been responsible for the provision of centralized administrative services to the NRC in the areas of procurement, property management, facilities support, rulemaking support, Freedom of Information Act requests, publications l services, local public document rooms, and security. I Mrs. Norry joined the Atomic Energy Commission (NRC's predecessor agency) as Staff Assistant to Chairman Glenn T.

Seaborg and served in positions of increasing responsibility.

In I 1978 she was named the Deputy Director of the NRC's Office of Administration.

Mrs. Norry also served as a member of the NRC Three Mile Island '

Special Inquiry Staff in 1979.

Mrs. Norry currently serves on the NRC's Executive Resource Board, Executive Development Committee and the Small Agency Council Executive Board. She has also served as Chair of the NRC's Performance Review Board.

In 1984 and 1991, she was the recipient of the Meritorious Service Executive award, the second highest award of the Federal Government's Senior Executive Service.

Mrs. Norry is a graduate of Seton Hill College and of the George l Washington University Graduate Study Program in Clinical l Psychology. She also completed the National Institute of Public Affairs One Year Fellowship for Graduate Study in Public Administration at Stanford University.

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SAMUEL J. COLLINS I

i Samuel J. Collins is Deputy Regional Administrator for l Region IV of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a position to 1

which he was named in June 1995. In this role, he is responsible

! to assist the Regional Administrator in the conduct of all i functions assigned to the region by the NRC program offices for

!. activities in the states of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, i

California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, i

Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, I South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. In addition

to its main office in Texas, the region has a field office in i Walnut Creek, California.

l A graduate of Maine Maritime Academy, Mr. Collins first joined NRC in 1980 as a resident inspector at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant near Brattleboro, Vermont. He was appointed senior l resident inspector at the Yankee Nuclear Power Station, near l Rowe, Massachusetts, in 1983.

j In 1984, he was named a reactor projects section chief in the NRC Region I office at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and became a branch chief there in 1985. The following year, he was detailed as the deputy director of the Region I Division of l Reactor Projects, and received the permanent appointment and was j

1 named to the Senior Executive Service in 1987.

He was transferred to the NRC Region IV office in Arlington, l Texas, in November 1989, becoming director of the Division of

! Reactor Projects. In September 1991, he was named director of

} the Division of Reactor Safety, which is responsible for l engineering specialty inspections at nuclear power plants in the  !

i Region. In February 1994, he was appointed director of the l l Division of Radiation Safety and Safeguards. This division l

provides inspections and technical evaluation in the areas of j health physics, emergency planning, geology, hydrology, incident response, environmental monitoring, radiological measurements, i and safeguards at licensed facilities. It also implements materials and safeguards licensing programs.

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. Before beginning his NRC career, Mr. Collins spent nine

,1 years with Tenneco Corporation at Newport News Shipbuilding Com- ny, working in various Navy nuclear reactor design and test er.iteering posts and as a project manager.

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} Mr. Collins, his wife, Meg, and their son, Sean, and i daughter, Leela, live in Arlington, Texas, f

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. JAMES M. TAYLOR l

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James M. Taylor was named Executive Director for Operations of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 1989. The Executive Director for Operations is the chief staff I official of the NRC managing the day-to-day health and safety 1 mission and operations of the agency and reporting directly to i the Commission. 1 In June of 1991, Mr. Taylor was designated the NRC's Chief l Financial Officer with responsibility to implement the i requirements of the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. He l also oversees all accounting, budgeting and other financial ,

management activities of the agency.

Mr. Taylor was named Deputy Executive Director for Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Regional Operations and Research in January 1989. Since April 1987, he had served as Deputy Executive Director for Regional Operations and Acting Deputy Executive Director for Operations.

He joined the NRC in May 1980 and since then has served in positions of increasing responsibility, becoming Deputy Director of the Office of Inspection and Enforcement in October 1983 and Director of that Office in January 1985.

In 1989 and in 1994, he received the Distinguished Senior Executive award, the highest award of the Federal Government's Senior Executive Service.

Immediately prior to joining the NRC staff, he served in the Office of Naval Reactors as Associate Director of the Department of Energy's High Speed Submarine Projects, after earlier serving 20 years as an engineering duty officer in the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power Program.

Mr. Taylor is a 1956 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy where he earned a Bachelor's of Science degree. In'1961, he earned a Master of Science and Engineer's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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l JAMES L. MILHOAN l

James L. Milhoan is NRC Deputy Executive Director for Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Regional Operations and Research, a position he assumed in January 1994.

Mr. Milhoan is a graduate of West Texas State University, where he received a bachelor of science degree in mathematics.

He earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering at the l University of New Mexico.

He joined NRC's predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, as a nuclear engineer in 1972 after service as a naval officer aboard a Polaris submarine. Since then, he has  ;

served in a variety of progressively responsible positions. Mr. '

Milhoan was a senior nuclear engineer in the Office of Standards Development, senior policy analyst in the Office of Policy Evaluation, a section chief in the Office of Inspection and Enforcement, and a branch chief in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. He also served as technical assistant to former Chairmen John Ahearne and Kenneth Carr.

In 1987, he was assigned to NRC Region IV in Arlington, Texas, where he served as director of both the Division of Reactor Safety and the Division of Reactor Projects. Later he was named deputy regional administrator of NRC Region II in Atlanta, and, a few years later, administrator of Region IV.

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STEWART D. EBNETER Stewart D. Ebneter has been administrator of NRC Region II since January 1989. The region, which has offices in Atlanta, encompasses 10 southeastern states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. .

Mr. Ebneter joined the Atomic Energy Commission, NRC's predecessor agency, in December 1973 as a reactor inspector in Region II. Later, he was a non-destructive test engineer in Region II and then was chief of the Engineering Inspec' cion Branch and of the Engineering Branch in Region I.

In January 1985, he was appointed director of the Region I Division of Reactor Safety. He also served as director of the Office of Special Projects in NRC headquarters before returning to a senior position in Region I. At the time of his appointment to the Region II administrator. post, he was director of the Region I Division of Radiation Safety and Safeguards.

Mr. Ebneter received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Tri-State University in 1959 and a master's degree in business administration from Athens State College in 1971.

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