Washington state’s open primary Aug. 4 will decide what two candidates will be on the November ballot to succeed Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) to represent the 4th congressional district, which includes the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
There are 11 candidates running for the office that Newhouse is vacating in January, according to the Spokesman-Review newspaper. Newhouse announced in December 2025 he would not seek re-election. Democrats in the traditionally Republican district have lined up behind John Duresky, according to the Spokesman article. Duresky retired from the U.S. Air Force with the rank of major and also worked for the civil service, according to his campaign webpage. There are a slew of Republicans in the open primary including Jerrod Sessler, a Navy veteran, businessman and former NASCAR driver who beat Newhouse in the open primary two years ago before losing in the November general rematch with the long-term incumbent.
Newhouse, 71, is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, who came to Congress in 2015 after serving in the Washington state House and as a state agriculture director. Despite being considered pro-business and pro-border security in conservative ratings, Newhouse was one of a handful of House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
The Air Force is modifying a B-52H bomber to resume testing the Radar Modernization Program (RMP), which will feature an active electronically scanned array radar system based on RTX’s APG-79 to replace the bomber’s Northrop Grumman APQ-166.
The dual-capable B-52 bomber delivers the Long Range Standoff cruise missile, which carries the W80-4 warhead. The National Nuclear Security Administration is refurbishing the W80-4 warhead through a life extension program. The Air Force’s fleet now has 75 B-52Hs after a bomber crashed June 15 while testing the new radar during take-off from Edwards AFB, Calif. The crash killed all eight crew members, as well as the pilot, who was a Boeing employee and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, and the weapons systems officer, who was a colonel in the Air Force Reserves that worked at Boeing.
The last Boeing-built B-52H fielded in October 1962, and, while the Air Force looks to field 100 or more Northrop Grumman B-21 stealth bombers to replace the service’s B-1s and B-2s, the future path for the B-52 is under consideration, including a possible refurbishment and reactivation of some of the B-52s at the Air Force “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., Col. Timothy Spaulding, the program acquisition executive (PAE) for bombers, told reporters here at the annual Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s (AFLCMC) life cycle industry days.
For the second time in two weeks, the Department of Energy unveiled plans for a new data center at one of its nuclear installations, this one at the Paducah Site in Western Kentucky.
In a Wednesday morning news release, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said DOE is teaming up with several energy organizations to help develop parts of the Paducah, Ky., site into a data center for artificial intelligence (AI) along with energy infrastructure. The data center will be fueled by natural gas and battery storage.
The project should be built by 2031, DOE said. The news comes a week after DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced a data center project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Earlier this year, a similar project was announced at the DOE Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
Rian Bahran, the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy deputy assistant secretary for nuclear reactors, left DOE last Friday and joined microreactor developer Antares Nuclear.
Bahran, who was with DOE since January 2025, will now serve as the chief nuclear officer at Antares, beginning this week. In his new role, he will lead the company’s “nuclear operations, licensing, government affairs and policy,” according to Antares’s website. On leaving DOE, Bahran said in a July 24 LinkedIn post that Antares was his “first” pick.
Torrance, Calif.-based Antares was selected to partake in DOE’s reactor pilot program and was the first non-light reactor to reach criticality under the initiative. Bahran has been in the nuclear industry for around 20 years, serving high-level roles at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Pentagon.