Jeff Chamberlin became the acting deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) after the head of the nonproliferation office became the acting principal deputy administrator.
NNSA made Chamberlin the acting deputy administrator on May 16. He is the NNSA’s full-time assistant deputy administrator for material minimization and management and has worked in the defense nuclear nonproliferation office for 15 years. Corey Hinderstein became NNSA’s acting principal deputy administrator in early May and remains the senate-confirmed head of the nonproliferation office.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, met with the head of Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear corporation Alexey Likhachev this week to discuss safety and security at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, according to an IAEA press release.
Grossi met with Likhachev on Tuesday in Kaliningrad, where the Director General raised the issue of the plant’s offsite power lines, water supplies for reactor cooling, and staffing and equipment maintenance. Grossi aims to engage with both Ukrainian and Russian officials to avoid a nuclear accident at the plant, where explosions are allegedly heard far away from and near to it, the press release says.
“The Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is continuing to face serious nuclear safety and security risks,” Grossi said. “We can’t afford to let our guard down for a single minute.” The IAEA in April reported that drones attacked parts of the plant.
BWX Technologies (BWXT) partnered with the American Nuclear Society recently to train over 60 of the contractor’s employees on nuclear ambassadorship, a BWXT press release said.
The American Nuclear Society, Westmont, Ill., has launched a free service called its ANS K-12 program, which aims to offer tools to provide nuclear science education in grade school classrooms. It is looking for more companies to partner with them for the nuclear ambassador training and three other programs.
Obituary
Physicist and former Sandia National Laboratories director of microelectronics William Spencer died in Raytown, Missouri on April 7 at the age of 93, according to an obituary posted online on Monday.
Spencer received a Master of Science degree in Mathematics at Kansas State University in 1956, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Kansas State University in 1959. He worked as the director of microelectronics at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., from 1973-1978, and then as the director of systems development from 1978-1981.
