DOE - NNSA

This week, the Department of Defense launched a comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. The review comes at a time when members of Congress have become increasingly concerned about the state of the nation’s nuclear weapons enterprise and have begun to debate whether the weapons labs should conduct R&D on new types of nuclear weapons.

Both the House and Senate have passed the fiscal year 2017 “National Defense Authorization Act." The NDAA is a bill, passed annually, that authorizes and sets policy for defense programs at the Defense and Energy Departments, including defense R&D.

Last Friday, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution calling on nations to maintain their moratoria on nuclear weapons testing pending ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Leading up to the resolution, current and former policymakers reflected on the 20-year-old treaty’s prospects, including Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who referred to ratification of the treaty as “unfinished business,” and former senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who argued that the U.S. should never ratify the treaty.

A congressionally mandated report released yesterday by the National Academies warns that severe shortages of molybdenum-99 and its radioactive decay product technetium-99m, an isotope used in medical imaging procedures, are possible after a key Canadian supplier ceases production in October 2016.

The Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing this week on aging facilities and deferred maintenance within the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened a hearing yesterday to discuss the Obama Administration’s pursuit of a United Nations Security Council resolution that would reaffirm the commitments of signatories to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

Among its most significant science-related provisions, the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the Senate would assign management of Department of Defense R&D to a reconstituted Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering. The bill also contains multiple measures to improve DOD’s ability to hire top technical talent, and the authoring committee expresses interest in “comprehensive defense lab governance reform.”

After missing a goal for achieving a high-energy-yield fusion reaction by 2012, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is taking a step back to determine whether fusion ignition by laser is possible by 2020.

Last month, the House passed its version of the annual defense policy bill. The legislation contains various controversial components, including a provision which directs the Missile Defense Agency to begin development of a space-based missile defense system.

Both the House and Senate fiscal year 2017 appropriations bills for the National Nuclear Security Administration would provide just shy of the requested $12.876 billion and would match the request for the three main subaccounts. However, there are some notable differences beneath these topline agreements.