Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) on Thursday reported a drop in second quarter net earnings despite higher sales largely due to lower performance on the Virginia-class submarine program and aircraft carrier construction at the Newport News Shipbuilding segment.
Net income fell 12% to $152 million, $3.86 earnings per share (EPS), from $173 million ($4.38 EPS) a year ago, still beating consensus estimates by 57 cents per share. Net income is down nearly 8% so far this year, according to this week’s earnings report.
Sales increased 4% to $3.1 billion from $3 billion a year ago, and through the first half of 2025 are up less than a percent. An HII affiliate is in charge of legacy nuclear cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Chief Nuclear Officer Tim Rausch has announced his resignation from Tennessee Valley Authority, effective by March 1, 2026, according to a July 14 Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
In his role as chief nuclear officer, Rausch is overseeing seven TVA nuclear reactors at: Browns Ferry in Alabama, Sequoyah in Tennessee, and Watts Bar in Tennessee. Rausch also serves as TVA’s executive vice president.
Rausch joined TVA in 2018 after serving as vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2017.
President Donald Trump this week nominated Ho Nieh, currently an executive with Southern Co.’s nuclear branch, to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
The nomination of Nieh, a former NRC staff manager, was announced in a Wednesday press release by the White House. He was nominated to serve the remainder of a term that would expire June 30, 2029.
The new NRC nomination comes in the same week where chair David Wright was reconfirmed by the Senate to serve as an NRC commissioner and Annie Caputo announced her resignation. Prior to that, former commissioner Christopher Hanson was terminated from his position by Trump on June 13. There might be a quiz later.
A federal district judge in Texas has agreed to suspend proceedings until Sept. 29 in a lawsuit by Texas, Utah and Last Energy that challenges Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing for small reactors.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle issued the latest extension in the case June 30 at the request of the parties.
“Since the May 30, 2025 joint status report, the parties have conferred and identified potential options for a mutually agreeable resolution that could avoid or limit further litigation in this case,” according to a joint motion by the litigants. The parties are considering what impact President Donald Trump’s May executive orders might affect small modular reactor licensing, according to court filings.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) recently appointed executives from Dominion Energy and BWX Technologies to the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority.
The selection of Eric Carr, Dominion’s president of nuclear operations and chief nuclear officer, and Scott Kopple, BWXT’s senior director of government relations was announced in a July 18 press release.
The nuclear authority was created by the Virginia legislature in 2013, according to its website. Nuclear power currently accounts for about a third of the commonwealth of Virginia’s electricity and 95% of its carbon-free power.