Nevada National Security Site

PHOENIX, Ariz. — The head of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management said Monday she intends for the new end-state contracting approach to halt “ever-extending site closure dates” for cleanup of Cold War-era nuclear sites. The Energy Department cannot “simply keep treading water,” but must drive these sites toward completion, Assistant Secretary of Energy […]

The state of South Carolina has no better idea than anyone else outside the National Nuclear Security Administration  (NNSA) about whether the agency has yet shipped 500 kilograms of weapon-usable plutonium to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, according to a recent court filing. In December 2017, a federal judge in South Carolina ordered the […]

The messaging war over a clandestine shipment of plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site last year continued Saturday in the pages of the Las Vegas Review Journal, where Secretary of Energy Rick Perry insisted that his agency gave Nevada officials all the notice the federal government could about the shipment. The Department of Energy’s […]

While the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) hopes the Department of Energy will readjust its classification of high-level radioactive waste, it has not forgotten the federal agency still owes Congress a report on the issue. The ECA asked the House and Senate Armed Services committees on Tuesday to “attempt to require” compliance with a provision of the […]

A federal judge this week refused Nevada’s second request to legally block the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from shipping weapon-usable plutonium to the state from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du, in an order published late Monday, refused to grant an injunction, writing that the request was […]

A federal judge this week refused Nevada’s second request to legally block the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from shipping weapon-usable plutonium to the state from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du, in an order published late Monday, refused to grant an injunction, writing that the request was […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management issued its latest procurement schedule on Wednesday, but it lists no timeline for awarding the long-awaited liquid waste management contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The multibillion-dollar re-award is now listed as “TBD,” or to be determined. When the procurement schedule was updated in November, […]

It will cost about $1 billion through 2025 to build a new X-ray camera to observe subcritical plutonium experiments at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Those figures come from a conceptual design for the planned Advanced Sources and Detectors (ASD) project headed by the Los Alamos National […]

It will cost about $1 billion through 2025 to build a new X-ray camera to observe subcritical plutonium experiments at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. Those figures are based on a conceptual design for the planned Advanced Sources and Detectors (ASD) project headed by the Los Alamos National […]

Blocking all plutonium shipments to Nevada, as the state desires, would disrupt experiments there that help the government determine whether U.S. nuclear weapons still work as intended, the National Nuclear Security Administration argued in federal court this week. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du should deny injunction requested by the state in part because it “would […]

The Energy Department has picked up a two-year option to keep North Wind Solutions in charge of the Transuranic Waste Processing Center at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee through October 2020. An Energy Department spokesperson confirmed Monday the department in October exercised its option to the original three-year base period. The entire five-year agreement […]

With half a metric ton of plutonium already shipped there over the state’s objections, Nevada on Thursday asked a federal judge to block the Department of Energy from sending any more of the fissile material. In a request for a preliminary injunction filed Thursday, the state asked U.S. District Judge Miranda Du to stop DOE […]

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) on Wednesday became the latest outraged politician to demand answers about the Department of Energy’s secretive shipment of plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in November. In a heated letter dated Feb. 6, Sisolak told Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management has set up a website devoted to providing information on the end states contracting model. End states, as defined in December special notice from the DOE cleanup office, is a single-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracting approach with the flexibility to cover both cost-reimbursement and firm-fixed-price task orders within the […]

Nevada on Monday appealed a federal judge’s refusal to block a shipment of plutonium into the state, even though the Department of Energy material in question reached its destination late last year. The state filed notice of its appeal in the U.S. District Court for Nevada, which last week denied Nevada a preliminary injunction it […]

Nevada’s Senate delegation wants unclassified and classified briefings from the Department of Energy about the clandestine shipment last year of half a metric ton of plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) made the request in a Feb. 1 letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Last week, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “before November 2018” moved roughly half a ton of weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site from the Savannah River Site, in Aiken, S.C., the agency said Wednesday in a bombshell court filing. The announcement caught Nevada's governor and congressional delegation by surprise, prompting an outpouring of online […]

The last big segment of the Southwest Experimental Fast-Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) has been uprooted from its Arkansas home and shipped to the Nevada Nuclear Security Site for disposal. The reactor vessel and remaining components from the 20-megawatt, sodium-cooled test reactor arrived at the NNSS on Dec. 13, according to a January report to the Department […]

Nekiylo Dawayne Graves, 27, of Iowa, died Monday after contract security forces and a local sheriff’s deputy shot at him following an 8-mile car chase into the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), in Mercury, Nev. In a Wednesday Facebook video, Nye County Sheriff Sharon Wehrly identified Graves as the deceased. She also identified Nye County […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “before November 2018” moved roughly half a ton of weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site from the Savannah River Site, in Aiken, S.C., the agency said Wednesday in a bombshell court filing. The plutonium is part of a 1-metric-ton cache a federal judge in South Carolina ordered […]

Department of Energy security forces and local law enforcement on Monday fatally shot an unidentified man who drove through a security gate at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), the agency said in a press release. The man “failed to stop” his car at a gate in Mercury, Nev., then led NNSS security protective forces and […]

The last big segment of the Southwest Experimental Fast-Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) has been uprooted from its Arkansas home and shipped to the Nevada Nuclear Security Site for disposal. The reactor vessel and remaining components from the 20-megawatt, sodium-cooled test reactor arrived at the NNSS on Dec. 13, according to a January report to the Department […]

A federal judge had not ruled by early Friday afternoon whether the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) can ship a metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site. Judge Miranda Du of the U.S. District Court for Nevada in Reno on Thursday heard arguments from attorneys representing the state of Nevada and […]

Nevada’s lawsuit seeking to prevent the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from shipping a metric ton of plutonium to the state should be should be transferred to a court in South Carolina, lawyers for that state said Monday. Nevada could have filed its Nov. 30 suit in U.S. District Court for South Carolina, which “retains continuing jurisdiction” over […]

Even if Nevada succeeds in blocking a shipment of 1 metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium to a former nuclear explosive test site within its borders, the material could still leave South Carolina by a court-ordered deadline, the Silver State argued in federal court this week. The filing represents Nevada’s attempt to muscle South Carolina out […]

The U.S. Energy Department is seeking comments on options for disposal of material generated from conversion of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. The DOE Office of Environmental Management said in a Dec. 28 Federal Register notice it has issued a draft supplemental environmental impact statement on disposal […]

Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) garnered 83 percent of its potential fee for its first five months on the job as legacy cleanup contractor at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. After taking over from Los Alamos National Security, N3B earned roughly $2.4 million of a potential $2.9 million from […]

Neither South Carolina nor Nevada want anything to do with 1 metric ton of weapons-usable plutonium that has been legally evicted from South Carolina, and each state is due this week to tell a federal judge why the other should host the material. It is a case of one lawsuit leaking into another, with South […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has less than a year to remove 1 metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium from South Carolina, and the agency will not rule out moving it before the end of January, according to a court filing the state of Nevada dropped just before the new year. The Silver State shared […]

Despite an ongoing partial government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Justice must argue a court case on Jan. 17 about whether the Department of Energy is allowed to store 1 metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium in Nevada, a federal judge said Wednesday. The Justice Department represents DOE in the lawsuit brought by Nevada in November […]