Real estate developer and former GOP state Senate candidate Tim Walsh is in line for a new gig: overseeing the clean-up of America’s nuclear bomb waste. Trump nominated Walsh, who has donated over $2.5 million to Republican candidates and conservative causes since 2022, to be the next assistant secretary of energy for the Office of Environmental Management on March 10.
Trump also appointed the last Senate-confirmed secretary, Anne Marie White, in March of 2018. Her bio page notes her “more than 25 years of experience across a broad range of activities within the nuclear field with industry-recognized credentials in characterization and disposition of radiologically contaminated sites.” White is listed as Walsh’s vice-secretary on his nomination.
Between White and Walsh, the Environmental Management office was led by a series of acting and interim secretaries, the most recent being Candice Trummell Robertson, whom Biden picked to lead the department in June 2024. She had “over 20 years of experience leading all aspects of radioactive waste management, with more than a decade in senior executive roles at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” according to the Department of Energy (DOE) . Other acting secretaries during both the first Trump and Biden administrations, Susan Cange and James Owendoff, had similarly hefty resumes.
Walsh’s nomination was first reported by Wayne Barber of the Exchange Monitor, an industry newsletter covering nuclear and hazardous waste management for the DOE, nuclear material security, and decontamination & decommissioning of nuclear facilities. Barber noted Walsh’s real estate development background, but also his unknown status, writing: “apparently not much is known about Walsh yet within the DOE weapons complex, at least judging from hallway conversations among attendees at this week’s Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix.”
The Colorado Times Recorder reached out to academics and professionals in the nuclear industry, all of whom were similarly unfamiliar with Walsh, but offered their thoughts on the complexity and challenges of the Environmental Management office’s mission.
Dr. Vincent Paglioni is an Assistant Professor in Systems Engineering at Colorado State University, where he teaches courses on Risk Analysis and Nuclear Engineering.
“The Office of Environmental Management cleans up some of the most contaminated sites we have in the country,” says Paglioni. “They were the ones that helped us deal with Rocky Flats. Now that happened to the benefit of the state of Colorado. But [nationally] there’s a lot left to clean up. You can particularly look towards the Hanford site in Washington state. That is going to be years and years, if not decades and decades of active management and a lot of that from the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM).
“EM is going to have their hands full for quite a while with these sites,” Paglioni continued. “My hope is that the leadership recognizes not only the importance of their mission in and of itself, but their mission’s importance rather to the broader nuclear power industry and really the nuclear ecosystem within the United States, because we cannot have these sites treated just like you would any other plot of land. And I do not know why Tim Walsh was appointed for this position. It does not seem that he has the deep understanding of waste management and decommissioning that would be required in this role. Confident leadership is going to be crucial for improving public trust and supporting nuclear power, and I hope they’re able to continue that leadership.
“For this branch of DOE, at least it’s not Walsh by himself. The technical expertise of the DOE is still strong, but it does not set up the Office of Environmental Management for success. A master’s in civil engineering, does indicate that at the very least, it’s not no experience with the scope or scale of the projects that he might be involved with. But, speaking for myself personally, without experience in radiation management, in decommissioning and deactivation of these sites, that is personally concerning.
“The past holders of this office, they had deep experience not only in civil engineering, but in the type of work that this office engages in, which is cleaning up our legacy Manhattan Project and legacy nuclear sites. And especially as we’re moving forward with, ideally building more nuclear power in the country, cleaning up those sites is going to be a priority because that helps the nuclear industry gain back public opinion that if we are good stewards of the land, that is how. we get people on our side, not just out of necessity because nuclear power is the best carbon-free large output and dispatchable energy source, but because we’re actually taking care of the environment. So that’s what I’d want to see from EM moving forward, but I have concerns regarding this appointment, that’s for sure.”
Professor Mark Jensen, Chair of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Colorado School of Mines, also emphasized the complex technical nature of the EM Office’s responsibilities, while noting that Walsh’s general project management experience could still be effective, as long as his team has the requisite expertise.
“Within the Department of Energy, the Office of Environmental Management is one that faces particularly sticky technical questions,” said Jensen. “It’s important to have people in an office like that who can handle and understand the technical aspects. I think the success here will depend on the new undersecretary’s ability to get the best out of the team that they have, and to know what they don’t know.
“Someone who specialized in management of complex projects could be a good person for something like this,” said Jensen. “This is not a choice of someone who’s been a technical person in the DOE system for years, who is going to know the ins and outs of the culture and what the problems were, but, I think the approach of this administration is not to rely on existing expertise and to try and change things quickly.”
Technical expertise isn’t needed just to successfully complete enormous nuclear clean-up projects like Rocky Flats and Hanford, but to do so without anyone getting sick from radiation. Erie resident Ben Hemphill, PE a mechanical engineer in the nuclear sector, stressed the importance of safety procedures.
“I’ve been on site for a decommissioning project, supporting some work that I helped design and in the nuclear sector, there’s a really, really robust safety policy that a lot of outsiders don’t understand,” says Hemphill. “There’s a safety mindset in the nuclear world that I just haven’t seen in other industries. Anyone can stop something if they think it’s unsafe. It’s really important for the safety of the workers, but also safety of the environment and people- of the public.
One of the major sites that we’ve worked on is the Hanford site- one of the Manhattan projects where they worked on plutonium processing. And plutonium processing requires all sorts of nasty chemicals, strong acids, and really challenging components to work with. One of the specialties of the company I work with is designing tools for remote operation- places where humans are not allowed to go into because of radiation dangers. We develop highly specialized tools to assist in decommissioning these facilities. It takes a team of engineers to understand a problem, develop a solution, build a solution and ship it off. And then it takes a team of operators to learn how to work these tools, so it’s a long process. It’s just much more complex when there’s radiation involved.”
Reached for comment, a DOE spokesperson offered the following statement on Walsh’s nomination:
“Timothy Walsh’s decades of experience in complex project management and innovative leadership make him an excellent choice to lead the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. We look forward to working with the Senate to move forward with his nomination.”
Walsh did not respond to an email request for comment. The Colorado Times Recorder also reached out to U.S. Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper to ask if they plan to support Walsh’s nomination, but has yet to receive any replies. This article will be updated with any responses received.
From 2020 – 2024, Walsh donated over $220,000 to Republican federal candidates in Colorado and nationwide. He’s also given over a million dollars to Republican candidates for state and local offices in Colorado, nearly all of which was self-funding his 2022 statehouse run.
Walsh and Secretary Wright are friends via another shared passion: charter schools.
In 2022, Walsh posted a video of Wright promoting Ace Scholarships, a conservative education group that promotes using public money for vouchers to private, mostly religious schools. Their wives both serve on Ace’s national board as well as its national advisory board. Tim also is a member of the national advisory board and the Colorado state board. On his LinkedIn page, Wright lists himself as sitting on the same boards as Walsh, though his name doesn’t appear on the nonprofit’s online board lists.
Walsh also serves on the board of PragerU, the right-wing edu-tainment media group founded by Dennis Prager that pushes a conservative Judeo-Christian version of American civics and history into cartoon-based lessons. During his 2022 run for state senate, CTR broke the story of Walsh’s previously undisclosed funding of PragerU’s video lesson series about the Founding Fathers, produced by infamous conspiracist Dinesh D’Souza. In 2023, Chris Wright recorded an hour-long PragerU interview, “Is There a Climate Crisis?” with sub-sections titled “The ESG Scam” and “Are American Oil and Gas Companies Being Squashed?”
PragerU re-released the video following Wright’s nomination under the title, “Who is Department of Energy Nominee Chris Wright?”
According to its 2022 and 2023 tax filings, the Tim & Lisa Walsh family foundation gave $350,000 to PragerU and half a million dollars each to Ace Scholarships and Stand Together, which is the official name of the Koch Network of conservative activist groups.
