The Ship-Submarine Recycling Program (SRP) is the process that the United States Navy uses to dispose of decommissioned nuclear vessels. SRP takes place only at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) in Bremerton, Washington, but the preparations can begin elsewhere.
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. The storage and disposal of radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment.
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear weapons program, nuclear reactor production for the United States Navy, energy-related research, and energy conservation.
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 mi (130 km) northwest of the Las Vegas Valley.
Hazel Reid O'Leary is an American lawyer, politician, and university administrator who served as the 7th United States secretary of energy from 1993 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, O'Leary was the first woman and first African American to hold that post. She also served as the 14th president of Fisk University from 2004 to 2013, a historically black college and her alma mater. O'Leary's tenure at Fisk came amid financial difficulty for the school, during which time she increased enrollment and contentiously used the school's art collection to raise funds.
Jennifer Mulhern Granholm is a Canadian-born American politician. From 2021 until 2025, she served as the 16th United States Secretary of Energy. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the Attorney General of Michigan from 1999 to 2003 and as the 47th Governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011, as the first woman to hold each office.
James Rodney Schlesinger was an American economist and public servant who was best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior to becoming Secretary of Defense, he served as Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from 1971 to 1973, and as CIA Director for a few months in 1973. He became America's first Secretary of Energy under Jimmy Carter in 1977, serving until 1979.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is a United States federal law which established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes.
The timeline of the Cox Report controversy is a chronology of information relating to the People's Republic of China's (PRC) nuclear espionage against the United States detailed in the Congressional Cox Report. The timeline also includes documented information relating to relevant investigations and reactions by the White House, the U.S. Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and United States Department of Justice.
Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium.
John Francis O'Leary was an American government official and business executive. He held top positions in the Federal Energy Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy before moving to the private sector, where he rose to chairman and chief executive officer of General Public Utilities Corp.
The Gore–Chernomyrdin Commission, or U.S.–Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation, was a United States and Russian Joint Commission developed to increase cooperation between the two countries in several different areas. The Commission was developed by the United States’ President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin at a summit in Vancouver in April 1993. Al Gore, the United States Vice President, and Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian Prime Minister, were appointed as co-chairmen and the committee derives its name from those two individuals. Before his appointment to the Commission, Chernomyrdin oversaw the Soviet national oil industry as minister from 1985–1989. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Chernomyrdin organized the Soviet oil industry into the Gazprom corporation.
Ernest Jeffrey Moniz, GCIH is an American nuclear physicist and former government official. From May 2013 to January 2017, he served as the 13th United States secretary of energy in the Obama administration. Prior to this, Moniz served as associate director for science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and undersecretary of energy from 1997 to 2001 during the Clinton administration. He is currently the co-chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), as well as president and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), a nonprofit organization funded by the natural gas industry that works on climate and energy technology issues, which he co-founded in 2017.
Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall is an American national security and energy leader, public servant, educator, and author who served as the 11th United States Homeland Security Advisor in the Biden administration from 2021 to 2025. She previously served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations and held appointments at academic institutions and think tanks.
Warren Fletcher "Pete" Miller Jr. is an American nuclear engineer known for his work in the areas of computational physics, radioactive waste management, transport theory, nuclear reactor design and analysis, and the management of nuclear research and development programs.
A Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future was appointed by US President Barack Obama to look into future options for existing and future nuclear waste, following the ending of work on the incomplete Yucca Mountain Repository. In 2012, there were 70 nuclear power plant sites where 65,000 short tons of spent fuel is stored in the US. Each year, more than 2,000 short tons (1,800 t) are added to this total. Nine US states have "explicit moratoria on new nuclear power until a storage solution emerges". A deep geological repository seems to be the favored approach to storing nuclear waste.
Robert Louis (Bob) Ferguson was a nuclear-trained physicist and a 60-year veteran in the field of nuclear energy. He was best known for being appointed the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Programs for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by the first Energy Secretary, James Schlesinger, serving from 1978 to 1980 during President Jimmy Carter's administration.
John Hopkin Nuckolls is an American physicist who worked his entire career at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is best known for the development of inertial confinement fusion, which is a major branch of fusion power research to this day. He was also the lab's director from 1988 until 1994, when he resigned to become an associate director at large. He was awarded the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1969, the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 1981, the Edward Teller Award in 1991, the Department of Energy Distinguished Associate Award in 1995, the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 by Fusion Power Associates, the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service in 1996, and the Enrico Fermi Presidential Award in 2024.
