Budget & Policy

Here’s a look at the key events we’ll be keeping an eye on this week:  NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Neile Miller, former Lockheed Martin Chairman and CEO Norm Augustine, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Deputy Director for Policy Thomas Kalil, and Charles Shank, the co-chair of a National Academy of Sciences report […]

In a scathing editorial published yesterday, the New York Times ripped a House of Representatives plan to link reductions to the nation’s nuclear stockpile to implementation of the New START Treaty. “Did House Republicans somehow miss the end of the cold war?” the Times said, discounting “misplaced strategic priorities” in the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense […]

Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Michael Burgess (R-Texas) yesterday called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate the Department of Energy’s support for USEC. “We believe that this support is unlikely to result in the successful commercialization of USEC’s domestic uranium enrichment technology, may have been and may continue to be undertaken in contravention of […]

With another deadline for USEC’s troubled American Centrifuge Project looming, National Nuclear Security Administration nonproliferation chief Anne Harrington emphasized the Obama Administration’s support for a research, development and demonstration program for the project in testimony before a Senate panel yesterday. The Administration requested $150 million for the RD&D effort in the NNSA’s Fiscal Year 2013 […]

Though the Senate Environment and Public Works hearing yesterday on nominating both Allison Macfarlane and Kristine Svinicki to Nuclear Regulatory Commission posts was tempered by the high likelihood of approval for both candidates, two conflicting narratives of the premature end to current Chairman Gregory Jaczko’s term, divided along party lines, persisted. Committee Democrats accused Svinicki […]

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced a round of personnel changes yesterday in a memo to employees, including the appointment of Joanne Choi as acting deputy chief financial officer and the retirement of Chief Human Capital Officer Mike Kane. Choi, who was previously director of finance and accounting in the Office of the Chief Financial […]

Thirty-three House Democrats want President Obama to make good on a promise to veto the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act if it contains House-passed provisions linking tying the implementation of the New START Treaty with Russia to efforts to modernize the nation’s nuclear deterrent. In a June 18 letter, the lawmakers—led by Rep. Ed […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory is cutting another 80 contractor positions from its flexible workforce as it tries to navigate a difficult budgetary environment, LANL Director Charlie McMillan said in a memo to employees yesterday. The cuts come on the heels of the departure of 557 full-time employees and 55 flexible term contractors from the lab’s […]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today is planning to consider the nomination of Allison Macfarlane to chair the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the renomination of Kristine Svinicki to another term on the Commission.  The meeting comes with Kristine Svinicki’s term set to expire June 30, while Macfarlane was nominated to head the agency […]

Reflecting its continuing concern about the management of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee will hold a hearing next week to examine the creation of the agency more than a decade ago. Former NNSA Administrator and nonproliferation chief Linton Brooks, former NNSA executive and Los Alamos National Laboratory Director […]

Groups from the traditional political right and left banded together Friday to cosign a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee criticizing the committee’s push to fund continued work on the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility at Los Alamos. They ranged from the small-government advocate Taxpayers Protection Alliance to the Quaker-based Friends Committee on […]

The Government Accountability Office has accepted a request by Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Michael Burgess (R-Texas) to investigate the Department of Energy’s support of USEC. Due to staffing issues, though, the government watchdog group won’t begin work on the study for approximately three months. Because Markey is the ranking member of the House Natural […]

The Department of Energy’s Isotope Program could be leaving money on the table, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Friday that suggests the program has been lax in analyzing how it sets prices for the more than 300 different isotopes it supplies, including 10 provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration. The program […]

Lawmakers largely responded along party lines yesterday after a long-awaited Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector General report on the tenure of Chairman Gregory Jaczko was released. The IG found that, though Jaczko did not exceed his authorities in calling for emergency actions following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011, at other times he […]

Concerned about reduced oversight across the weapons complex, the House Energy and Commerce Committee wants the Government Accountability Office to study the National Nuclear Security Administration’s governance model and evolving contractor assurance systems among site contractors. Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) made the request yesterday in a letter to Comptroller […]

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chairman Peter Winokur will be one of the keynote speakers at this year’s Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum in Amelia Island, Fla., Oct. 15-18. Winokur joins an unparalleled group of speakers at this year’s Forum, including Under Secretary for Nuclear Security Tom D’Agostino and Senior Advisor for Environmental Management Dave […]

Two former National Nuclear Security Administration officials said yesterday that the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee did not go far enough with the reform language it inserted into the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act, suggesting that the NNSA needs to become a standalone agency. Speaking at a hearing on the creation of NNSA […]

The House late last week passed the “Nuclear Terrorism Conventions Implementation and Safety of Maritime Navigation Act of 2012,” a bill necessary for U.S. implementation of two international treaties aimed at curbing nuclear terrorism. The bill makes it a crime to possess radioactive or nuclear material with the intent to use it for harmful purposes […]

After the transportation bill passed by Congress Friday failed to grant the Department of Energy transfer authority for a program supporting USEC’s American Centrifuge technology, Hill staff are questioning how the Department plans to make up $42 million in additional funding needed to complete the program. The two-year research, development and deployment cost-share program is […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board appears to be having trouble complying with Congressional direction to obtain the services of an Inspector General. In a brief letter sent to Senate appropriators last week and publicly released yesterday, the Board said it had engaged in “extensive discussions” with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Inspector General, […]

The Department of Energy would have a significant amount of control over the participant in a proposed uranium enrichment research and development program under the House version of the FY 2013 Defense Authorization bill released yesterday, which would also require DOE to justify its selection of a company. USEC’s American Centrifuge Project has been DOE’s […]

The House Armed Services Committee is moving to extend key milestone deadlines related to the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility that would result in massive fines against the National Nuclear Security Administration if not met. The committee included language to extend MOX-related milestones by two years in its version of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense […]

The conventional wisdom among Republicans advocating modernizing the nation’s nuclear weapons complex is that investments in the weapons complex are necessary to allow the nation to reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal. But a former Obama Administration official said late last week that the reverse is also true, and he suggested that existing support among Democrats […]

Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee are expected to make a strong statement about the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility at today’s markup of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act, authorizing funding for the project the Obama Administration wants to defer and including language that would prevent money from being spent on […]

Richard Lugar, the six-term Republican senator from Indiana and one of the GOP’s most ardent arms control advocates, was defeated in Indiana’s Republican primary yesterday by State Treasurer Richard Mourdock. Lugar joined the Senate in 1976 and one of his signature achievements came with the creation of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which helped […]

A new report out by the Project on Government Oversight and Taxpayers for Common Sense suggests massive cuts to plans to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex as part of a plan that could reduce the nation’s deficit by $688 billion over the next 10 years. The report takes aim at a host of familiar […]

The House Armed Services Committee approved legislation yesterday that would shift construction responsibility of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility and the Uranium Processing Facility—and all major National Nuclear Security Administration projects in the future—to the Department of Defense. The drastic move, which is likely to run up against opposition in the Senate, is […]

Acting Under Secretary of Energy Arun Majumdar, who also serves as director of Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, will leave the Department of Energy next month, DOE Secretary Steven Chu announced in an e-mail to employees yesterday. DOE Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs David Sandalow took over Majumdar’s duties as Acting Under Secretary of […]

Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee fended off several attempts by Democrats to water down the panel’s dramatic National Nuclear Security Administration reform efforts, making only small concessions on provisions designed to increase the agency’s productivity and efficiency. Reps. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) offered several measures to roll back the reform […]

As Congress takes steps that could lead to federal funding for USEC’s American Centrifuge project, Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) is ramping up opposition to government support for the proposed enrichment plant. While members of the House and Senate met Tuesday to conference on a transportation funding bill, Pearce’s office circulated a handout on the House […]