The Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition announced April 25 it elected Katherine Peretick as chair of the coalition and Stacey Paradis as vice chair.
The two will lead the commission in its aim to build a nuclear waste management program to dispose of spent nuclear fuel stored at both operating and shutdown nuclear plants nationwide, according to a coalition press release. Peretick is a commissioner for the Michigan Public Service Commission, while Paradis is a commissioner from the Illinois Commerce Commission.
The Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition is an ad hoc organization that says it represents nuclear waste policy interests of member state utility regulators; other state, tribal, and local government officials; electric companies with nuclear reactors either operating or shut down; and others from the private sector.
U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), 75, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Monday he will not seek re-election, months after announcing his cancer diagnosis.
“After grueling treatments, we’ve learned that the cancer, while initially beaten back, has now returned,” Connolly said in a letter to constituents in Fairfax County and Northern Virginia. “I’ll do everything possible to continue to represent you and thank you for your grace.”
“The sun is setting on my time in public service, and this will be my last term in Congress,” Connolly said. “I will be stepping back as Ranking Member of the Oversight Committee soon. With no rancor and a full heart, I move into this final chapter full of pride in what we’ve accomplished together over 30 years.”
Charles Smith, who headed a Department of Energy office dedicated to small and disadvantaged businesses during the first Donald Trump administration, is also running it the second time around.
Smith was appointed director of the DOE Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization in late January, according to his LinkedIn post. Smith led the office basically during the entire first Trump administration from January 2017 through Jan. 20, 2021, according to his LinkedIn page.
Smith then acted as a strategic advisor to a couple of different organizations between 2021 and January 2025, according to his bio. A U.S. Navy veteran, Smith has worked in senior manager positions for state and federal agencies as well as at J.P. Morgan. During the Joe Biden administration, the DOE Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization was headed by Ron Pierce.
Former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director John Foster died on April 25 at the age of 102, the lab announced Tuesday.
Foster served as Lawrence Livermore’s fourth director from 1961-65, before becoming director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense from 1965-1973, under four defense secretaries and two presidents. However, his career began in World War II, when in 1942 he did research at Harvard’s Radio Research Laboratory. He was advising the U.S. Army Air Corp in Italy and reverse-engineering German radar to mitigate bomber casualties by the age of 21.
Foster completed his bachelor’s degree at McGill University with honors in 1948. He married Barbara Anne Boyd Wickes there, who joined him on a cross-continent motorcycle journey in 1952 from Montreal to Berkeley, Calif., when Ernest Lawrence, founder of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recruited Foster to join Lawrence’s University of California Radiation Laboratory. Foster then, after completing his doctorate in physics at University of California Berkeley, was one of a select few recruits to join the newly established Livermore branch that would eventually become Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He led the team on the weapons effort, from the first successful detonation test at the Nevada Test Site in 1955 to other compact warhead designs during the Cold War.
