NATO and the U.S. State Department this week held the 18th Annual NATO Conference on Arms Control, Disarmament and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman delivered remarks at the opening session of the conference on April 18.
“NATO will remain a nuclear Alliance for as long as nuclear weapons exist,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the alliance’s role in keeping Russian aggression against European nations in check. “We will always maintain the appropriate mix of capabilities to ensure our security.”
Andrea Kritcher, a design physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has been named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.
Kritcher was recognized for being the principal designer for the December 2022 National Ignition Facility experiment that produced nuclear fusion ignition in a laboratory for the first time.
Kritcher leads the integrated modeling team within LLNL’s Inertial Confinement Fusion program and oversees the integrated modeling of indirect-drive fusion designs fielded at NIF.
The U.S. Department of Energy in March sent a letter to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm, Rosatom, warning it not to interfere with the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
The plant is located in the city of the same name, which was besieged by the Russian military for months at the beginning of the year-old war. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has personnel on the ground in Zaporizhia to keep an eye on the plant, but artillery battles in the vicinity have imperiled the power supply to the plant’s coolant system.
The Department of Energy is concerned that the plant contains sensitive nuclear technology that belongs to the U.S, according to reports.
Last week at the Nevada National Security Site, a man struck a bicyclist with his pickup truck. The cyclist, apparently angered, remounted his bike and caught up to the driver, who, according to police, was likely having a heart attack at the time.
When the cyclist jumped into the bed of the truck to exact revenge, the driver crashed and the pair both were killed. The truck was stolen, according to reports.
The driver, Zayven Mergan, died Sunday of what appeared to be a medical condition, but the police did not rule out the possibility the bicyclist had played a role in the driver’s death after he caught up with him.
