Ed McGinnis

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy – U.S. Department of Energy

Edward McGinnis serves as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy. The Office is responsible for conducting research on current and future nuclear energy systems, maintaining the government’s nuclear energy research infrastructure, establishing a path forward for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste management program, and a host of other national priorities.

Prior to his current role, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Nuclear Energy Policy and Cooperation and was responsible for the Department of Energy’s international civilian nuclear energy activities, including international nuclear energy research, development and demonstration cooperation, multilateral nuclear energy cooperation, international nuclear energy policy, international nuclear safety cooperation, and advocacy for U.S. civil nuclear exports and industry. As part of these responsibilities, Mr. McGinnis served as Steering Group Chairman of the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation that consists of more than 65 countries and four international organizations. He also served as the Departmental Representative in the U.S. interagency for civil nuclear energy trade and promotion. Mr. McGinnis has also served as a Vice Chairman and Principal U.S. Representative to the Generation IV International Forum and was responsible for U.S. domestic nuclear fuel assurance matters, including technical oversight activities regarding the United States Enrichment Corporation, uranium inventory management matters, as well as U.S. nuclear energy security matters.

Prior to working in the Office of Nuclear Energy, Mr. McGinnis led a number of other high-priority U.S. government initiatives at DOE, including having served as the senior director for the Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction where he managed global operations involving the search, recovery, security and disposal of high-risk radiological and nuclear sources in cooperation with over 40 countries, including within the U.S. These activities included recovery of high-risk radiological sources from Iraq, establishment of a Global Radiological Regional Partnership Program, and the first-of-its-kind repatriation of high-risk U.S.-origin plutonium-239 sources. Mr. McGinnis also established and served as the director of the Nuclear and Radiological Threat Reduction Task Force, which was created to carry out a number of key Secretarial national security initiatives, including the development of a global nuclear materials removal and research reactor security study that included the identification of nuclear research reactors throughout the world by level of vulnerability and an action plan to effectively mitigate such vulnerabilities.

Mr. McGinnis also served as senior advisor and special assistant to four Assistant Secretaries and Deputy Administrators for nonproliferation and national security at the Department of Energy where he served as a senior advisor for all aspects of the Department’s nonproliferation missions, including nonproliferation research and development, materials protection, control and accounting, and warhead security.

Mr. McGinnis holds a master’s degree from The American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C., and is a graduate of the Kennedy School’s Senior Executive Fellows Program as well as the Program for Senior Executives in National and International Security at Harvard University.