The U.S. cannot do away with North Korea's of nuclear ability, said former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, speaking at a Calcalist conference held in Tel Aviv Monday. Calcalistech.com The chairman of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), Senator John Barrasso, has called on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw a proposed rule requiring uranium recovery operators to conduct up to 30 years of groundwater monitoring following in-situ leach (ISL) uranium production. World-nuclear-news.org The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Department last Saturday restarted a “subcritical graphite exponential pile” dating back to the earliest years of the atomic age. Nei.org Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio)—both members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee—have sent a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry saying that the slow pace of DOE authorizations for commercial nuclear energy exports is having harmful consequences for U.S. competitiveness and national security. Nei.org