Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Monday announced plans to create a commercial nuclear fusion facility within 10 years, The Associated Press reports.
The Biden administration sees fusion as a carbon-free energy source for powering homes and businesses. The Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist in charge of nuclear weapon design and physics, whose team frequently uses the National Ignition Facility for weapons experiments, said in March that a fusion power plant is a distant possibility.
“We’re not anywhere near a power plant,” said Mark Herrmann, program director for weapon physics and design. Granholm told the AP in Vienna that “it’s not out of the realm of possibility” the U.S. could build a commercial fusion facility within 10 years, a specific administration goal.
Three new countries – Belarus, Egypt and Zimbabwe – committed to treaties aimed at achieving nuclear safety, security and the peaceful use of nuclear technology, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
While attending the 67th regular session of the IAEA General Conference in Vienna in September, representatives of the three nations legally signed onto various multilateral treaties overseen by the IAEA “which cover a spectrum of subjects aiming to bolster global nuclear safety and security as well as enabling the development of nuclear science and technology,” the IAEA said in a statement.
“The annual treaty event is a vivid example of our expressed commitment to multilateralism. In the world of nuclear activities, we need certainty,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said. “Ambiguity is not a good idea when it comes to nuclear materials, when it comes to nuclear reactors and when it comes to nuclear relations. Especially when this concept seems to be under so much strain, we have to commit ourselves to the legal norms that provide for universalization.”
Amid continuing congressional brinkmanship over federal spending that had the federal government close to a shutdown, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) proposed amending the House’s 2024 budget bill for the Department of Energy to drop Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s salary to $1 a year.
Norman, who during the current budget debate has opposed stopgap bills that would keep the government open temporarily, made headlines after the most recent U.S. presidential election for asking then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to urge then-President Donald Trump (R) to invoke “Marshall Law!! [sic]” three days before Joe Biden (D) was sworn in as President.
Co-sponsoring the amendment is Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), who has called for an impeachment inquiry into Granholm. Tenney said Granholm lied under oath in April, when the secretary of energy told Congress that she owned no individual stocks. Later, in June, Granholm said that she did own individual shares but that a government ethicist determined the ownership did not conflict with her official duties at DOE. Granholm said she has since sold those shares.
The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday considered the nomination of Derek Chollet to be undersecretary of defense for policy, a position that would land him on the Nuclear Security Council.
Chollet currently serves as counselor of the State Department. SASC Chairman Jack Reed said in opening remarks that Chollet is “well qualified for this role, having served in a number of key leadership positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council.”
The full senate must now vote on whether Chollet will assume the position.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California’s first and longest-serving woman Senator, who wielded great influence over the federal government’s nuclear weapons, waste and energy programs as the leader of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, died Thursday in Washington at age 90, according to a statement from her chief of staff posted online just before 10 a.m. Eastern time Friday. The statement followed reports by multiple media outlets.
Feinstein eventually voted for the 30-year nuclear-weapons modernization program proposed by President Barack Obama’s (D) administration, staking her support for an arsenal refresh to such things as the dismantlement of the B83 megaton gravity bomb, which Congress by and large has opposed, and continued funding for nonproliferation and counterterrorism programs.
Feinstein also supported the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, usually called the Iran Nuclear Deal, that curbed sanctions on Tehran in exchange for reductions in the country’s nuclear program. In 2016, Feinstein sharply criticized Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on the Senate floor after he attempted to block the U.S. from buying Iranian heavy water. Cotton’s proposal eventually failed.
Louis Butterworth, of Baldwin,Penn., a former Army Chemical Corps soldier who monitored 1950s nuclear tests in the Nevada desert, died Sept. 22. He was born July 6, 1932, in Talladega, Ala.
The first member of his family to attend college, Butterworth graduated from Jacksonville State College in Alabama with a degree in chemistry and mathematics. After joining the Army through the Reserve Officers Training Corps, he was stationed at Fort McClellan, Ala., and later was ordered to Nevada, “where he monitored nuclear tests in Frenchman’s Flat during the 1950s,” according to his online obituary.
Butterworth later worked as a nuclear scientist for Goodyear Atomic at the Piketon Gaseous Diffusion Plant and at Bettis Westinghouse.
