International

Senior leaders at the Department of Energy offered condolences Monday for the family of Yukiya Amano, who died late last week after announcing he would resign as director general of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The agency, which guards against the spread of fissile material and promotes the peaceful use of nuclear […]

Mark Esper, President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, held strictly to nuclear orthodoxy in his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, boosting the Department of Energy’s stockpile stewardship program and urging continued funding for long-term modernization and maintenance of the nuclear arsenal. Esper, a former Raytheon lobbyist and current secretary of the Army, said in written testimony the […]

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said Tuesday it had issued a three-year extension for a partnership encompassing 17 companies performing cleanup activities at the Sellafield nuclear site. The Decommissioning Delivery Partnership, formed in 2016, will now remain on the job at least through 2026, according to an NDA press release. The partnership to date […]

WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama administration’s National Nuclear Security Administration leadership duo whipped the Donald Trump administration here Wednesday to immediately extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty with Russia and forget, for now, about modifying the pact. The bilateral treaty, which limits Moscow and Washington to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 […]

The head of the government-owned company that manages the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site is scheduled to step down in January 2020. Paul Foster has served as chief executive officer at Sellafield Ltd. since 2016, and has been at the site since 2000, according to an announcement Thursday. Sellafield Ltd. manages nuclear fuel reprocessing and […]

WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama administration’s National Nuclear Security Administration leadership duo whipped the Donald Trump administration here Tuesday to immediately extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty with Russia and forget, for now, about modifying the pact. The bilateral treaty, which limits Moscow and Washington to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 […]

Saudi Arabia will have to sign “a very strong 123 agreement” to be counted among the “adult members of the world community” that use nuclear power, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said this week in congressional testimony. Perry has made that point directly to the Saudi government, the Energy Department chief told the House Science […]

Saudi Arabia will have to sign “a very strong 123 agreement” to be counted among the “adult members of the world community” that use nuclear power, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said Tuesday in congressional testimony. Perry has made that point directly to the Saudi government, the Energy Department chief told the House Science Committee […]

Nuclear forces worldwide in 2018 declined by roughly 4% over the course of the year, or by 600 weapons, to 13,865, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its latest annual yearbook on nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia, which have more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world’s seven nuclear-armed states combined, drove […]

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency amped up criticism of Russia’s nuclear weapons activities last week, saying the nation at some point “has conducted nuclear weapons tests that have created nuclear yield.” That is a step beyond what agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley told reporters and the public in May at the Hudson Institute in […]

Nuclear forces worldwide in 2018 declined by roughly 4% over the course of the year or by 600 weapons, to 13,865, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its latest annual yearbook on nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia, which have more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world’s seven nuclear-armed states combined, drove the […]

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency amped up criticism of Russia’s nuclear stockpile work last week, saying in a statement that the nation at some point “has conducted nuclear weapons tests that have created nuclear yield.” That is a step beyond what agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley told reporters and the public in May at […]

Eight Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump in a letter to extend the New START arms control treaty that limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. New START went into effect in 2011. The Barack Obama administration proposed the treaty, which the then-Democrat-controlled Senate ratified with […]

Eight Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump in a letter to extend the New START arms control treaty that limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. New START went into effect in 2011. The Barack Obama administration proposed the treaty, which the then-Democrat-controlled Senate […]

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) on Wednesday placed blame squarely on Democrats for the ongoing freeze in licensing and then building a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. “The project boasts support in Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located. So why hasn’t it moved forward? Politics,” Barrasso wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. […]

By Rich Abott Defense Daily The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assesses Russia “probably is not adhering” fully to a multilateral prohibition on nuclear testing, the agency’s director said Wednesday. Speaking at a Hudson Institute event, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr. argued Russia’s development of new nuclear warhead designs and overall stockpile management is enhanced by […]

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assesses Russia “probably is not adhering” fully to a multilateral prohibition on nuclear testing, the agency’s director said Wednesday. Speaking at a Hudson Institute event, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr. argued Russia’s development of new nuclear warhead designs and overall stockpile management is enhanced by even low-yield nuclear testing. “The […]

The Port Hope Project in April resumed remediation of radioactively contaminated properties in the municipality in Ontario, Canada. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ Port Hope Area Initiative is testing all private properties for low-level radioactive waste, left by uranium and radium refining during the 20th century. To date, roughly 1,000 sites are known to require remediation. The […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., has taken custody of some 700 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the United Kingdom, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said last week. The material, shipped to the U.S. from the U.K.’s Dounreay nuclear decommissioning site beginning in 2016, was at Oak Ridge awaiting downblending […]

Lawmakers over the past week filed a pair of bills to prop up the U.S.-Russian New START arms-control treaty, one of which aims to unite Congress in support of the bilateral pact, the other aiming to bind the U.S. to the treaty’s nuclear weapons limits even if Washington and Moscow do not extend the deal […]

The U.S. Congress would be officially in favor of extending the New START nuclear-arms-control treaty, if  bipartisan legislation introduced Wednesday in the House becomes law. The bill from Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chair and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would if signed by President Donald Trump make […]

Noted anti-nuclear Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced legislation that would legally cap U.S.-deployed long-range nuclear warheads at New START levels by mostly prohibiting funding for deployments beyond the limits set by the arms control treaty with Russia. Markey introduced the bill Friday and posted a copy of the 18-page measure, the “Save Arms Control […]

Editor’s Note 05/14/2019, 9:50 a.m. Eastern: the story was corrected to read that the U.K. shipped highly-enriched uranium to an undisclosed U.S. location. The United Kingdom has finished shipping 700 kilograms of excess highly enriched uranium to the United States from the former fast-reactor research site at Dounreay, Scotland, the U.S. and U.K. said Friday. The […]

The House Armed Services Committee should get access “in the very near term” to 810 authorizations the Department of Energy granted to still-unidentified U.S. companies to export nuclear-power technology to Saudi Arabia, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administrator (NNSA) said in congressional testimony. “The Department is moving aggressively to provide information and I […]

A court in the United Kingdom on Tuesday fined the government-owned entity that operates the Sellafield nuclear site £380,000 ($500,742) for a 2017 incident in which an employee was exposed to plutonium. Sellafield Ltd., owned by the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, pleaded guilty to violating the nation’s 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. Along […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday defended the Donald Trump administration’s decision to pursue sales of U.S.-made nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia, including by granting seven unidentified companies approval to transfer some technology and expertise to the nation. On Wednesday, the Daily Beast reported, and Reuters confirmed, that the Department of Energy had granted […]

PHOENIX, Ariz. – Canadian utility Ontario Power Generation (OPG) hopes the government will in 2021 approve construction of a deep geologic repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from three nuclear power plants in the province. Approval for the controversial project would first be predicated on support from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON), on whose […]

The Department of Energy said this week it has not yet decided whether to accept highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Germany at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. There is no schedule for a decision to be made. While Germany would pay for the mission, the total cost and potential technology concerns are being […]

PHOENIX, Ariz. – Canadian utility Ontario Power Generation hopes the government will in 2021 approve its plans for a deep geologic repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from three nuclear power plants in the province. Approval from the Canadian minister of environment and climate change, though, would first be predicated on support for the […]

The head of U.S. Strategic Command this week again praised the advantages of a key treaty limiting the U.S. and Russia to 1,500 deployed strategic warheads, but said any follow-on accord should apply limits all other types of nuclear weapons. “We would like to have all nuclear weapons as part of a future strategic arms […]