International

The United Nations General Assembly this week began substantive negotiations on a draft of a legally binding global prohibition on nuclear weapons, which the official nuclear-weapon states condemned and boycotted. Elayne Whyte Gomez, ambassador of Costa Rica to the U.N. Office in Geneva and president of the ban treaty conference, said Thursday that over 115 states […]

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up on news affecting the U.S. nuclear deterrent during […]

The head of U.S. military forces in Europe said Tuesday the United States should do more to bring Russia back into compliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Trump administration has determined that Russia is in material breach of the treaty, which prohibits the U.S. and Russia from fielding ground-based cruise and ballistic missiles […]

The United Nations General Assembly began negotiations Monday on a legally binding global prohibition on nuclear weapons. The official nuclear-weapon states were among roughly 40 nations to boycott the conference on its first day. “As a mom, as a daughter, there is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons,” […]

A Toronto-based construction and remediation company has secured the contract to finish building and then operate the Port Hope Project radioactive waste disposal facility in Ontario, Canada, the Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) announced on March 17. ECC/Quantum Murray is already building the first storage cell in the engineered above-ground mound. Under contract with the Canadian […]

In a message that was fundamentally preordained, the Trump administration on Thursday officially made clear that it opposes a treaty for a global ban on nuclear weapons, which will be debated next week at the United Nations. “We recently met with Ambassadors about the upcoming conference to establish a treaty banning nuclear weapons,” U.S. Ambassador […]

U.S. and international officials are wrestling with the question of what the State Department funding cuts the White House proposed last week would mean for U.S. diplomacy worldwide. In the fiscal 2018 budget blueprint released last week, the White House requested $25.6 billion in base funding for the State Department, or 28 percent less than […]

The Trump administration is reconsidering every piece of U.S. nuclear arms policy – even the broad end goal of global nuclear disarmament – in its upcoming Nuclear Posture Review, a senior National Security Council official said Tuesday. “We’re being encouraged . . . to do a real honest-to-God, bottom-up review, to rethink things from the […]

The international community is concerned about the future of arms control, particularly the fate of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) – issues that featured prominently during this week’s Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. The INF Treaty prohibits the fielding of ground-based cruise and ballistic […]

The Australian government said Monday it has begun the review process for two recently volunteered locations in South Australia for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility. Two landowners near the rural town of Kimba, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, in January offered use of their properties for the facility, according to a press release from Matthew […]

The international community is concerned about the future of arms control, particularly the fate of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) – issues that featured prominently on the first day of the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. The INF Treaty prohibits Russia and the United […]

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is accepting public comments on a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the planned Near Surface Disposal Facility at the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, the government’s management and operations contractor for its nuclear facilities, has recommended construction of an engineered containment mound that could hold up to 1 […]

Sweden’s Land and Environment Court has scheduled its main hearing in September on permit applications for a proposed spent nuclear fuel repository and nearby encapsulation facility. ”This is a welcome decision. The environmental assessment is an important step in our task to deal with all the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants in Sweden in a […]

A Toronto-based construction and remediation company has secured the contract to complete construction of the Port Hope Project radioactive waste disposal facility in Ontario, Canada, and then to operate the above-ground storage mound, the Port Hope Area Initiative announced Friday. ECC/Quantum Murray is already building the facility’s first storage cell. Under contract with the Canadian National […]

The vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed Wednesday that Russia has deployed a land-based cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and that the Pentagon’s upcoming Nuclear Posture Review will cover options for a U.S. response. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said at a House Armed Services […]

The International Atomic Energy Agency is finalizing its nuclear security plan for the next four years, Director General Yukiya Amano said Monday at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting being held all week in Vienna, Austria. The Board of Governors, one of the agency’s policy-making bodies, meets five times per year to develop recommendations on […]

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up on news affecting the U.S. nuclear deterrent during […]

The vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed Wednesday that Russia has deployed a land-based cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and that the Pentagon’s upcoming Nuclear Posture Review will cover options for a U.S. response. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said at a House Armed Services […]

The International Atomic Energy Agency is finalizing its nuclear security plan for the next four years, Director General Yukiya Amano said Monday at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting being held all week in Vienna, Austria. The Board of Governors, one of the agency’s policy-making bodies, meets five times per year to develop recommendations on […]

French waste management company Veolia announced Monday that its Nuclear Solutions branch has secured a contract to provide treatment systems for irradiated water at four U.K. nuclear power plants being dismantled by Magnox Ltd. Veolia will design, construct, and deploy its Modular Active Effluent Treatment Plants (MAETPs) to remove radioactive material from effluent and pond water at […]

The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority on Wednesday named former Fairfield Energy CEO David Peattie as its new chief executive officer. As of Tuesday he leads the agency’s decommissioning and cleanup of 17 legacy nuclear sites across the United Kingdom. With the blessing of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary of State Greg Clark, the NDA […]

An environmental group is leading the charge against Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) controversial plan to develop a deep geologic repository (DGR) for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste along the shores of Lake Huron. The Great Lakes Environmental Alliance (GLEA), which was formed in response to the proposal, is urging residents in Canada and the United […]

The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority on Wednesday named former Fairfield Energy CEO David Peattie as its new chief executive officer. As of Tuesday he leads the agency’s decommissioning and cleanup of 17 legacy nuclear sites across the United Kingdom. With the blessing of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary of State Greg Clark, the NDA Board approved […]

A £100 million ($124 million), 350-metric-ton silo emptying plant is now in place at the Sellafield nuclear site, the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced Tuesday. The system will be used to extract radioactive waste from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo, a storage facility built in the 1960s that is known as one of the most […]

An environmental group is leading the charge against Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) controversial plan to develop a deep geologic repository (DGR) for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste along the shores of Lake Huron. The Great Lakes Environmental Alliance (GLEA), which was formed in response to the proposal, is urging residents in Canada and the U.S. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has denied a petition from a retired Department of Energy physicist calling for the agency to mandate increased monitoring of nuclear plants’ spent nuclear fuel pools and reactors to prevent a disaster similar to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi triple-meltdown in Japan. The regulator said in a Federal Register notice posted Tuesday that […]

The United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding nuclear weapons prohibition will begin its session next month in New York. The conference held its first organizational meeting last week, where it adopted a draft provisional agenda and elected Elayne Whyte Gomez of Costa Rica as conference president. The U.N. General Assembly First Committee voted […]

Another group has announced its opposition to the anticipated shipments of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from a Canadian laboratory to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The Iroquois Caucus, a Canada-based coalition of seven First Nation communities, said in a prepared statement Wednesday it is “unanimously condemning a plan to truck 23,000 liters of highly […]

The United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding nuclear weapons prohibition will begin its session next month in New York. The conference held its first organizational meeting last week, where it adopted a draft provisional agenda and elected Elayne Whyte Gomez of Costa Rica as conference president. The U.N. General Assembly First Committee voted […]

Laura Holgate, the previous U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Vienna, Austria, Office of the United Nations, has joined the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a non-resident senior fellow. Holgate began her service in Vienna last year, returning to the United States in January […]