LOOKING AHEAD

Babcock & Wilcox –led Nuclear Production Partners and the National Nuclear Security Administration will convene at 9 a.m. Wednesday for a hearing on NP2’s protest of the agency’s Y-12/Pantex contract award. NP2 protested the award in November—its third protest of the contract—and the GAO is expected to decide the challenge by Feb. 28. The hearing is not open to the public.

• The Center for a New American Security’s Elbridge Colby and the Cato Institute’s Christopher Preble will debate whether the U.S. should modernize only one leg of the nuclear triad at 6 p.m. Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
• President Obama will address the nation at 9 p.m. Tuesday for the annual State of the Union address, where it will be interesting to see if the President mentions arms control or nuclear security, as he has in past addresses.
• The three protesters that broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex in July of 2012 will be sentenced in a Knoxville court on Tuesday. Sister Megan Rice, the nun involved in the break-in, is facing between 5 years, 10 months, and 7 years, 3 months, while the other two protesters, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, could see prison terms several years longer.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on civilian nuclear cooperation agreements at 10 a.m. Thursday. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Thomas Countryman and Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman will testify at the hearing, which will take place in Room 419 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.