International

The United States is continuing its slow descent toward the 1,550-warhead cap on its strategic deployed stockpile set by the New START Treaty and had 1,722 warheads under the treaty’s counting rules as of Sept. 1, the State Department said yesterday. The stockpile number, released twice a year under the New START Treaty with Russia, […]

A top national security advisor for Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said yesterday that the Obama Administration has focused too much on Russia when considering reductions to the size of the nation’s nuclear stockpile. Dov Zakheim, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Reagan and Bush Administration Defense […]

Russia has signaled that it does not want to extend the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction with the United States beyond 2013, suggesting it needs a “more modern” legal framework. Among the threat reduction work for which it is credited, the program has been responsible for the deactivation of 7,610 Russian strategic nuclear warheads, the destruction […]

Tony Price has been named the new Executive Officer at the United Kingdom’s Sellafield site, according to Nuclear Management Partners, the parent body organization responsible for overseeing the site. Price last held the position of Director of Major Projects at Atkins. In his new role, Price will be supporting Sellafield Ltd. Managing Director Todd Wright’s […]

Nuclear Management Partners, the URS-led parent body organization overseeing the United Kingdom’s Sellafield site, is denying speculation that Managing Director Todd Wright will soon leave his post and have his duties taken over by Executive Officer Tony Price, who was appointed this week. Price was brought on to “support Todd’s drive for improvements across the […]

The United States and the international community quickly condemned a nuclear test by North Korea yesterday, the country’s third such nuclear detonation in seven years. North Korea’s KCNA news service said the country detonated a “miniaturized” nuclear device that the U.S. Geological Survey said registered as a 5.1 magnitude seismic event. Experts estimated the yield […]

The Middle East does not have confidence in the extended nuclear deterrence capability of the United States in that region, Israeli security expert Shmuel Bar said yesterday at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “The view in Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East that are American allies is that the United States has […]

The White House on Monday formally nominated Rose Gottemoeller to serve as the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, reaffirming her spot in a role that she has filled in an acting capacity since earlier this year. Gottemoeller replaced Ellen Tauscher as the State Department’s top arms control official while remaining […]

AREVA and engineering and design firm Atkins yesterday announced the formation of a joint venture to compete for Tier 2 contracts in the United Kingdom’s nuclear decommissioning market. French nuclear company AREVA, which with URS and AMEC is part of a team managing the Sellafield site, will work with UK-based Atkins, which has completed consulting […]

The Department of Energy is looking to increase cooperation with Russia on the development of cleanup-related technologies. Earlier this week, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Sergei Kiriyenko, director general of Russia’s State Corporation for Atomic Energy, signed a “statement of intent” on collaboration on “innovative technologies for environmental restoration and radioactive waste management,” according […]

On the sixteenth anniversary of the first signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a panel of nuclear test monitoring experts yesterday emphasized that advances in technology in recent years have addressed many of the technical obstacles to ratifying the treaty in the United States. “Technical issues, yes, have been favorably resolved,” Richard Garwin, […]

Gottemoeller also emphasized the importance of full funding for nuclear weapons modernization. A lack of funding for modernization and stockpile stewardship could be a roadblock to ratification of the treaty, which failed in the Senate 12 years ago. “We’ve got a very complicated situation on Capitol Hill right now with the so-called fiscal cliff approaching,” […]

CH2M Hill executive Mark Fallon, who currently serves as President of the company’s Nuclear Business Group, is moving to the newly created position of Managing Director for CH2M Hill’s European operations, effective Jan. 1. Fallon’s current role includes oversight of CH2M Hill’s defense nuclear work for the Department of Energy, in addition to other nuclear […]

Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin has chosen Robert Card as its new President and CEO, effective Oct. 1. Card told WC Monitor he is “looking forward to moving to Montreal and learning French” when reached by phone—a key point as his inability to speak French has been raised as an issue by Canadian press and Quebec politicians. […]

State Department arms control chief Rose Gottemoeller is headed to Europe today for a two-week trip focused on nonproliferation, including talks in Moscow Sept. 7-8. Gottemoeller, the acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, will also visit Geneva, Helsinki, Oslo, and The Hague before heading to Moscow for meetings with senior […]

The comments aren’t likely to spark any new negotiations (for now), but Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signaled that Moscow would be open to further nuclear reduction talks beyond the 1,550-warhead ceiling established by the New START Treaty—as long as those talks involve U.S. missile defenses and other thorny issues. However, given the looming […]

Though the National Nuclear Security Administration is committed to a global transition to producing medical isotopes with low-enriched uranium, it is seeking permission to export highly-enriched uranium to a Canadian company to make the isotopes. In an application filed July 30 and made public this week, NNSA is seeking permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission […]

EnergySolutions is looking to sell of its European business unit, which includes the company’s contract to manage the U.K.’s Magnox nuclear power stations. In a release issued yesterday, new CEO and President David Lockwood said that EnergySolutions had been approached by “third parties” over the potential purchase of its ESEU business, and that the company […]

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty needs to be fixed, and a senior nuclear nonproliferation expert laid out a five-part plan for strengthening the landmark treaty that includes consequences for countries that withdraw from the pact, more invasive inspections and nuclear reductions for all countries: not just the U.S. and Russia. And failing improvement, former Nuclear Regulatory […]

A pair of experts yesterday urged the Obama Administration to put the brakes on future reductions to the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, suggesting at a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing that such moves would have little impact on nonproliferation and efforts to dissuade Iran and North Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons. “There is […]

President Barack Obama and new Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to continue “discussions on strategic stability” in a joint statement released yesterday after their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Mexico. In a wide-ranging statement that touched on most of Obama’s nuclear security agenda, the leaders also agreed to successfully implement the […]

The heads of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s three nuclear weapons laboratories, defense programs chief Don Cook and nonproliferation chief Anne Harrington are in Russia this week to meet with the directors of Russia’s weapons laboratories and tour Russian facilities in an effort to foster cooperation between the two countries. Details of the trip have […]

A new report by the Washington Times suggests the Obama Administration is poised to push for reductions dramatically below the levels found in the New START Treaty to as low as 1,000 strategic deployed nuclear weapons. According to the Times, the new reduction target would be outlined in a soon-to-be-released Nuclear Posture Review implementation study […]

The Obama Administration expects that two Russian research reactors currently using highly enriched uranium will be converted to use low-enriched uranium by 2014, according to a statement released yesterday by the National Nuclear Security Administration. In a joint statement yesterday, the U.S. and Russia said that joint studies by the Department of Energy and Rosatom […]

In a move recognized as a necessary preliminary step to multi-lateral talks on nuclear reductions, the five countries that possessed nuclear weapons when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed said Friday that China would lead a working group on coming up with common definitions of nuclear terms. The P5, made up of the United States, […]

Here’s a look at several key meetings and events we’ll be following this week:  Nuclear experts will address NATO’s Deterrence and Defense Posture Review and the future of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe on Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. during the second day of a two-day “NATO Shadow Summit” in Room 602 of […]

Arms control advocates for the second straight year are up in arms over language in the House version of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act that would tie funding to implement the New START Treaty with Russia to efforts to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and arsenal, accusing House Republicans of “partisan hostage […]

NATO members convening in Chicago yesterday endorsed the alliance’s Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, and as expected, the documented contained few surprises. The review recommits NATO to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons, as the alliance stated at its Lisbon Summit in 2010, but said it will remain a nuclear alliance for as […]

Arms control advocates have panned NATO’s recently released Deterrence and Defense Posture Review as a disappointment, suggesting that it does little to alter the alliance’s declaratory posture and doesn’t go far enough in pushing for reductions to the approximately 200 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe. But Ivo Daalder, the United States’ ambassador to […]

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has released key dates anticipated for the competition for cleanup at the Magnox and Research Sites Restorations sites. The NDA announced Friday it plans to publish a contract notice on July 16, which will be followed by a bidder’s conference in Manchester, UK, starting July 19. The agency has […]