WASHINGTON (08/17/06) -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has appointed Cynthia A. Carpenter as Director of the agency's Office of Enforcement. She will succeed Michael Johnson, who is now the Assistant for Operations in the Executive Director's Office. 

Carpenter joined the NRC in 1987 as a reactor engineer in the agency's Region I, in King of Prussia, Pa. Since that time, she has held a number of progressively more responsible positions including resident inspector at the formerly operating Yankee Rowe Nuclear Station and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant, both located in Massachusetts. She also worked as an operations engineer and technical assistant. Since 1998, Carpenter has held a number of senior management positions in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation including program director for the Policy and Rulemaking Program; chief of the Inspection Program Branch and deputy director of the Division of Inspection Program Management. She became director of the Program Management, Policy Development and Planning Staff in 2004.

Prior to joining the NRC, Carpenter worked for the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory at the Naval Reactors Facility in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and in the Nuclear Engineering departments at Charleston and Puget Sound Naval Shipyards as a shift refueling engineer and nuclear engineer. Carpenter received a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.