Non-Proliferation

The National Nuclear Security Administration recovered a high-activity radioactive source from an oncology clinic in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and transported it to the United States, the agency said late last week. The U.S.-origin cobalt-60 source was transported in a special cask to an unnamed facility in the United States where it will be prepared for […]

A pair of Republicans are planning to offer an amendment to the Senate’s version of the Fiscal Year 2014 Defense Authorization Act aimed at GOP concerns about President Obama’s arms control aspirations. The Senate formally began debate on the bill yesterday with language barring the transfer of Guantanomo Bay detainees occupying much of the floor […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration recently recovered a high-activity cesium-137 source from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the latest in a series of 18 other recovery operations in the Boston area that have helped secure more than 850 unwanted radioactive sources that could be used in a dirty bomb. The most recent recovery operation netted […]

A truck carrying a surplus radioactive medical source was stolen in Mexico earlier this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday. Mexico’s National Commission on Nuclear Safety and Safeguards (NCNSS) informed the IAEA that the truck carrying a cobalt-60 teletherapy source from a hospital in Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center was stolen […]

Russian and U.S. officials yesterday announced several collaborative nuclear safety and cooperative initiatives following the off-loading this week in Baltimore of the final shipment of low-enriched uranium from Russia under the Megatons to Megawatts program. Over 20 years the program converted about 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from Russian warheads into LEU for […]

Career foreign service officer Robert Wood was nominated late last week to serve as the United States’ Representative to the Conference on Department. Wood has been serving as the top U.S. official at the CD in an acting capacity, and the Friday nomination would make him the permanent representative, with the rank of ambassador. Wood […]

A bill that would require the Administration to gain Congressional approval for international nuclear cooperation agreements that do not meet certain nonproliferation standards was reintroduced late last week by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.). With civil nuclear cooperation agreements being negotiated with countries including South Korea, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, some lawmakers […]

More than four months after the National Nuclear Security Administration submitted a reprogramming request for programs in its nonproliferation account, the last congressional committee signed off on the request this week. While the reprogramming that cleared Congress this week includes $59.2 million for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, it does not include the $11.7 […]

A new civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Taiwan was sent to Congress yesterday by President Obama. The agreement between the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Culture Representative Office is the result of a renegotiation of a previous agreement with Taiwan, and will enter into force after it sits before Congress for […]

Countries around the world are making progress in securing nuclear material within their borders, according to a report released yesterday by the Nuclear Threat Initiative that continued to push for a global system governing all nuclear materials. The report, released in advance of the third Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands in March, noted that […]

Lassina Zerbo, the new head of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, has been named the “2013 Arms Control Person of the Year” by the Arms Control Association. Zerbo was selected through online voting conducted by the ACA, besting nine other candidates picked by the arms control group. Zerbo was lauded for helping persuade China […]

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ famed Doomsday Clock remains at five minutes until midnight, the group said yesterday as it chose to keep the hands of the clock still for the second year in a row. The group’s Science and Security Board and its Board of Sponsors hasn’t moved the hands of the clock since […]

Due to concerns by two Republican lawmakers regarding future nuclear weapons reductions, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday held off on voting on the nominations of Rose Gottemoeller to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and Frank  Rose to be Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance. While 37 […]

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday voted out legislation authorizing a two-year extension of a civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and South Korea. The current agreement is scheduled to expire on March 19, and the Administration has asked Congress for a simple extension of the deal to allow time to work out […]

The White House officially announced yesterday that President Obama would attend the third Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands in March. The announcement comes as no surprise considering it was Obama that established the Nuclear Security Summit process in 2010 when the United States hosted the inaugural event. Obama attended the second summit in 2012 […]

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has concluded that reusing its separated plutonium stock as fuel for potential new reactor technology remains the preferred disposition option, according to a position paper released by the NDA this week. The position paper outlines three possibilities for possible re-use, including incorporation as MOX fuel, reuse in CANDU EC6 […]

The United States and Russia should focus less on nuclear warhead reduction targets and more on other areas to build the relationship between the two countries, a former Bush Administration arms control and nonproliferation expert said yesterday. Speaking at the Brookings Institution, former National Nuclear Security Administration nonproliferation chief William Tobey suggested that working on […]

Secretary of State John Kerry said the case for the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty is “stronger than ever” during a speech in Washington earlier this week, but he stopped short of making any commitment for the Obama Administration to push the Senate to vote on the pact. Ratification of the CTBT has been among the Obama […]

After the recent signing of a new civil nuclear agreement with Vietnam, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) expressed “deep concerns” regarding provisions for enrichment and reprocessing in such agreements in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry this week. Corker, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is pushing for the so-called “gold […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is moving forward with a plan to scale back its Global Threat Reduction Initiative contracting plans, and it released a Request for Proposals for the $20 million small business opportunity yesterday. The RFP largely mirrors a draft released in August that includes a $14 million size standard and “freight transportation […]

All of the highly enriched uranium in Hungary has been removed thanks to a joint effort between the United States, Russia, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Hungary, the Department of Energy said yesterday. The HEU cleanout—the 12th completed by the NNSA’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative—was completed in three shipments over the last six weeks […]

The lack of a final disposition path for U.S. spent nuclear fuel may be hindering U.S. nonproliferation efforts, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz suggested yesterday. In remarks at this year’s American Nuclear Society winter meeting, held in Washington, Moniz said that the United States’ current lack of a final disposal plan for spent fuel constrained […]

Six years after a sharply critical Inspector General’s report on nuclear Material Control and Accountability (MC&A), Los Alamos National Laboratory has made progress, according to a review released yesterday. But the lab still has work to do, the Department of Energy’s IG concluded. “While several corrective actions were completed on the recommendations included in our […]

A bill that would extend the current civil nuclear agreement with South Korea for two years until March 2016 was reported out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday. The Obama Administration has said that it is seeking the two-year extension to the agreement to give it time to work out technical issues before the […]

Approximately 500 workers at the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, under construction at the Savannah River Site, are set to be laid off before the start of Fiscal Year 2014 on Oct. 1 The South Carolina newspaper The State has more details in an article published yesterday.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval (R) and Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz this week agreed to form a working group to find a path forward for disposal of a controversial batch of uranium-233 at the Nevada National Security Site. The group, which plans to meet soon, will be led by DOE Acting Assistant Secretary for […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is looking to make another 14 metric tons of highly enriched uranium available for downblending to low-enriched uranium, and this week the agency released a notice gauging market interest in the project. Over the last few years, the agency has awarded contracts for the downblending of several portions of HEU, […]

While continuing an assessment of alternatives for plutonium disposition, the National Nuclear Security Administration has indefinitely pushed out release of its final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. While the report had been scheduled to be released early this year, that was later delayed to a target date this summer. In a schedule posted […]

A new report from Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs details a once-secret 17-year, $150 million effort to secure massive amounts of plutonium at the Soviet Union’s former test site in Kazakhstan that wrapped up late last year. The report by Eben Harrell and David Hoffman, “Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-year Mission […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has scaled back its Global Threat Reduction Initiative contracting plans to reflect trimmed down future budgets, and yesterday it released a draft Request for Proposals for international nuclear material removal work with a ceiling of $20 million. That’s $80 million less than the ceiling for the agency’s last GTRI contracting […]