Brian Vance is the manager of the DOE Office of River Protection and Richland Operations Office. In this capacity, Vance is responsible for an overall annual budget of nearly $2.5 billion, and oversight of the contractors and more than 11,000 employees involved in cleanup of the 580-square-mile Hanford Site. In his role as manager, Vance is responsible for the safe and environmentally acceptable cleanup of the site, including groundwater remediation; hazardous waste and facilities decontamination and disposal operations; treatment and disposal of radioactive chemical liquid waste; and the design, construction and commissioning of the world’s largest complex of nuclear vitrification facilities, the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.     

Vance has more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear industry. Prior to joining DOE, he was project director for the 300-296 Soil Removal Project at CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company. Before that, he was a product manager responsible for the identification and implementation of delivery efficiencies at the Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC AP1000 nuclear power plant. He was also home office director for the Moorside Project, a development project to construct three new nuclear plants at a site near Cumbria, England. Vance also worked for French company Areva, where he was the director for the licensing project to achieve the design certification for the U.S. EPR Nuclear Plant with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.   

Vance served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years as a nuclear-trained submarine officer. While on active duty, he gained extensive project and program management experience as a Submarine Force Acquisition Professional, including two assignments as a major program manager prior to his retirement at the rank of captain in 2009. 

Vance holds a Bachelor of Science in meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University, a Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is also credentialed as a Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute.