Budget & Policy

Funding for federal agencies runs out Dec. 8, but Congress is working on another short-term fix to keep the government running for a little while longer, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday. The new budget year, fiscal 2018, began on Oct. 1, but the federal government for now remains funded at prior-year levels. “We’re […]

The Energy Department last week issued a draft request for proposals for a contract that could be worth up to $4 billion over 10 years to provide various support services to the Hanford nuclear cleanup site in Washington state. The incumbent contractor is Mission Support Alliance, a partnership of Leidos, Jacobs Engineering, and Centerra Group. […]

Funding for federal agencies runs out Dec. 8, but Congress is working on another short-term fix to keep the government running for a little while longer, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday. The new budget year, fiscal 2018, began on Oct. 1, but the federal government for now remains funded at prior-year levels. “We’re […]

WASHINGTON — The author of a congressional report that pondered ways to trim billions of dollars in U.S. nuclear-weapon spending over the next 30 years speculated recently that targeting the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex would not yield considerable savings. “You might find some more savings there, but I don’t think that changes the […]

Congress has received the Department of Energy’s report on options for disposal of Greater-Than-Class C and Class-C-Like Waste, setting the stage for legislative approval of the department’s preferred alternative to potentially divide the material between commercial sites and DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The Energy Department projects the United States will hold […]

WASHINGTON — The author of a congressional report that pondered ways to trim billions of dollars in U.S. nuclear-weapon spending over the next 30 years speculated that targeting the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex would not yield considerable savings. “You might find some more savings there, but I don’t think that changes the bottom […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Thursday touted its role in a multilateral nonproliferation program aimed at sharpening international expertise in nuclear nonproliferation verification. In a press release, the NNSA said it — along with agencies from Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — recently participated in an exercise dubbed “LETTERPRESS” at the former […]

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said it is unclear how Congress will keep the government funded when the current continuing resolution (CR) runs out Dec. 8. “ I don’t see how this ends,” Smith said Nov. 15 at a special operations policy forum. “Increasingly, there are people who […]

A day after an influential Senate committee mulled whether to change the president’s unilateral authority to launch a nuclear strike, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee introduced a bill to ban the U.S. from launching a nuclear first strike. U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Wednesday introduced exceptionally short legislation that would […]

Congress this week sent a defense authorization bill to President Donald Trump’s desk that would authorize research into a new nuclear-capable cruise missile, allow construction of a controversial plutonium processing facility the administration wants to cancel, and let the Department of Energy build a new office building for nuclear-weapons support personnel in Albuquerque. The House […]

President Donald Trump plans to nominate nuclear industry lobbyist and former Capitol Hill staffer Melissa Burnison as assistant secretary of energy for congressional and intergovernmental affairs, the White House announced Wednesday. If nominated and then confirmed by the Senate, Burnison would lead the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs as the principal Department of Energy […]

The massive defense authorization bill now on its way to President Donald Trump’s desk would make it harder for the Department of Energy to move plutonium pit production out of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — something the agency has not actually proposed doing. However, that the Department of Energy (DOE) has […]

The Hanford Advisory Board is calling for the Department of Energy to ramp up to $4 billion in annual spending for cleanup of the Hanford Site in Washington state, despite DOE officials saying that will not happen. A combination of operating the Waste Treatment Plant starting within a half-decade while construction continues on parts of […]

A community advisory board to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina wants the Energy Department to provide funding to start construction of a vault that will store retired waste processing equipment. In a recommendation approved Tuesday, the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) asked DOE to get a head start on building a vault to […]

President Donald Trump plans to nominate nuclear industry lobbyist and former Capitol Hill staffer Melissa Burnison as assistant secretary of energy for congressional and intergovernmental affairs, the White House announced Wednesday. If nominated and then confirmed by the Senate, Burnison would lead the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs as the principal Department of Energy […]

President Donald Trump plans to nominate nuclear industry lobbyist and former Capitol Hill staffer Melissa Burnison as assistant secretary of energy for congressional and intergovernmental affairs, the White House announced Wednesday. If nominated and then confirmed by the Senate, Burnison would lead the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs as the principal Department of Energy […]

U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Wednesday introduced exceptionally short legislation that would prevent the United States from initiating a nuclear first strike against a foe. The bill has just one section, which reads in total: “Section 1. Policy on No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons. It is the policy of the United States to not use […]

A community advisory board to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina wants the Energy Department to provide funding to start construction of a vault that will store retired waste processing equipment. In a recommendation approved Tuesday, the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) asked DOE to get a head start on building a vault to […]

WASHINGTON — At the end of a mostly civil hearing Tuesday in which former federal officials advised senators against limiting President Donald Trump’s authority to launch nuclear weapons, Trump critic Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) emphasized the importance of ongoing nuclear deterrent modernization programs. “Many of us have been to the facilities where [nuclear weapons] are […]

An interest group representing communities that host Department of Energy nuclear weapons and cleanup sites wants a meeting with the head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), who earlier this summer urged the White House to dissolve the decades-old safety watchdog. The Energy Communities Alliance “believes DNFSB must not be eliminated in order […]

The House of Representatives on Tuesday evening overwhelmingly approved a unified 2018 defense policy bill that would authorize a new ground-launched cruise missile program, continue construction of a plutonium-conversion facility the White House wants to cancel, and allow the National Nuclear Security Administration to start building a new headquarters branch in New Mexico. The House […]

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to convene a hearing today to discuss whether the U.S. president should have sole authority to launch the nation’s nuclear weapons. The hearing is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Eastern time at the Senate Dirksen Office Building Room 419 on Capitol Hill. Presiding over the session is committee […]

The Hanford Advisory Board is calling for the Department of Energy to ramp up to $4 billion in annual spending at the Hanford Site in Washington state, despite DOE officials saying that will not happen. A combination of operating the Waste Treatment Plant starting within five years from now while construction continues on parts of […]

The Government Accountability Office would like federal agencies to increase their collaboration on research into low-dose radiation, and it has recommended the Energy Department lead such an effort. But DOE hasn’t been eager to assume such a role, the GAO said in a Nov. 1 report. People who work at nuclear power plants, defense waste […]

Ralph Holland, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), plans to retire at the end of December. Holland, who assumed responsibility for the EM Consolidated Business Center in Cincinnati in August 2015, has served in a number of management posts within DOE over the past […]

The Government Accountability Office would like federal agencies to increase their collaboration on research into low-dose radiation, and it has recommended the Energy Department lead such an effort. But DOE hasn’t been eager to assume such a role, the GAO said in a Nov. 1 report. People who work at nuclear power plants, defense waste […]

The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes Congress to give the National Nuclear Security Administration even more money than President Donald Trump requested, while also bucking the commander in chief on a couple big nuclear programs. The latest NDAA, which emerged from a bicameral conference committee Wednesday afternoon, would allow congressional appropriators to […]

The House and Senate on Wednesday reached a compromise on this year’s defense authorization legislation, though the fate of a couple Department of Energy nuclear programs remained unknown at deadline Wednesday. What was known came from congressional summaries of the massive bill report that will accompany the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act to President […]

The Government Accountability Office would like federal agencies to increase their collaboration on research into low-dose radiation, and it has recommended the Energy Department lead such an effort. But DOE hasn’t been eager to assume such a role, the GAO said in a Nov. 1 report. The GAO said there were many reasons DOE would […]

The chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are discussing how to keep the government open after the current continuing resolution (CR) runs out Dec. 8, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Oct. 31. “We are in a four-cornered, bipartisan negotiation over how to fund the government, including the Trump […]