Budget & Policy

The Donald Trump administration plans to pay for a larger civilian nuclear weapons budget in fiscal 2021 by requesting funding for only a single Virginia-class attack submarine next year, rather than a pair, Bloomberg News reported Thursday. The outlet is the first to confirm rumors that circulated in Washington in January that President Donald Trump’s […]

An article in Tuesday’s issue of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misidentified the director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The director is John Lubinski.

Canadian utility Ontario Power Generation on Friday terminated its plan to build a nuclear waste disposal facility near Lake Huron after a First Nation group voted against the project. Members of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) on Friday voted 1,058 to 170 not to support the deep geologic repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A hyper-partisan political climate, as reflected by the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump and the start of presidential primaries this month, reduces the chances of timely passage of appropriations bills to fund the government for fiscal 2021, issue watchers said last week. The Energy Department and other federal agencies are likely […]

New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation this month called on the Department of Energy to suspend a controversial order that the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says has curtailed its access to nuclear-weapon sites. The Energy Department should lift the almost 2-year-old Order 140.1 to comply with recent changes to federal law that require […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The Trump administration does not plan to request any funding in fiscal 2021 for licensing the planned nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., issue experts said at an industry conference here Tuesday. That would reverse the White House’s efforts in its last three budget proposals to persuade Congress to appropriate money […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy has begun a limited program to explore opportunities for recycling used nuclear fuel, a senior official said Tuesday. “We are starting a small effort to look at some of these options, but it’s early in development and there’s no clear outcome on where it’s going […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, the Energy Department’s cleanup contractor at the former gaseous diffusion plant in Pike County, Ohio, pocketed 86% of its potential fee for fiscal 2019, or $19.20 million of the available $22.78 million. The vendor claimed about $3.61 million of a potential $6.68 million in subjective fee for the federal budget year that ended […]

The chief financial officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is moving into the corresponding position at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Cherish Johnson will start as the regulator’s CFO on Feb. 18, according to a Monday press release. She succeeds Maureen Wylie, who retired after working for 35 years in the federal government. […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette is creating a new Department of Energy policy shop to handle “all policy within the Department,” and appointing a new personal adviser for nuclear security, according to an all-hands memo dated Tuesday. To do this, Brouillette will rebrand the current Office of Policy (OP) as the Office of Strategic Planning […]

New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation this month called on the Department of Energy to suspend a controversial order that the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says has curtailed its access to nuclear-weapon sites. The Energy Department should lift the almost 2-year-old Order 140.1 to comply with recent changes to federal law that require […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The White House does not plan to request any funding in fiscal 2021 for licensing the nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., issue experts said at an industry conference here Tuesday. That would reverse the Trump administration’s efforts in its last three budget proposals to persuade Congress to appropriate money to […]

A new inspector general’s report bashed the human resources department at the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board as ineffective, inefficient, and incapable of supporting the agency’s oversight of defense-nuclear sites. The board’s “human resources program is currently not designed and implemented to effectively support the execution of its mission,” reads a Monday report from […]

Mid-America Conversion Services, the contractor in charge of operating depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion facilities at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio and Paducah Site in Kentucky, won roughly 69% of its potential fee for fiscal 2019. That represents $2.42 million of a potential $3.5 million for the federal budget year that ended Sept. […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, the Energy Department cleanup contractor at the former gaseous diffusion plant site in Pike County, Ohio, pocketed 86% of its potential fee for fiscal 2019, or $19.20 million of a potential $22.78 million. The vendor claimed about $3.61 million of a potential $6.68 million in subjective fee. It also took home $15.59 million […]

The head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the secretary of energy are reportedly at odds over the weapons agency’s 2021 budget request, which would be at least $17.5 billion and perhaps as high as $20 billion for the coming fiscal year, a new digital publication reported this week. The Dispatch, a […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) hopes to meet soon with new U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette to discuss public health and safety issues at nuclear sites overseen by his agency. In a Jan. 16 letter, DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton congratulated Brouillette on his December confirmation as energy secretary and said the board would […]

Passage of a law to reauthorize the U.S. Energy Department’s cleanup of the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state drew kudos Wednesday from participants at a local meeting. The measure, which passed the U.S. Senate on Dec. 2 and was subsequently signed into law by President Donald Trump on Dec. 20, would reauthorize […]

The head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is deeply unhappy with a rumored budget request of roughly $17.5 billion for the upcoming 2021 fiscal year, a new digital publication reported Tuesday. The figure would prevent the semiautonomous Energy Department branch from meeting the goals set out in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) pledged to this year implement several incremental steps toward a common financial reporting system that Congress has ordered put in place by December, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The GAO’s report includes a letter from NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty describing three steps the agency […]

U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette has started off the new year by giving more authority to DOE Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes, effectively making him acting second in command at the agency until a deputy is in place. Brouillette said in a Jan. 10 email to Energy Department staff that to “ensure continued operational effectiveness,” […]

The Trump administration is less than a month away from releasing its latest annual budget request, but so far no one is saying officially whether it will feature another attempt to revive the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The White House’s fiscal 2021 spending proposal is due on Feb. 10, a senior administration official confirmed […]

U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette has started off the new year by giving more authority to DOE Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes, effectively making him acting second in command at the agency until a deputy is in place. Brouillette said in a Jan. 10 email to Energy Department staff that to “ensure continued operational effectiveness,” […]

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not be published Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

An article in Monday’s Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, “JASONs Endorse Fast Start to New Pit Complex,” should have said the Los Alamos National Laboratory is supposed to produce 30 plutonium pits a year by 2026.

U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette has started off the new year by giving more authority to DOE Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes, effectively making him acting second in command until a deputy is in place. Brouillette said in a Friday email to Energy Department staff that to “ensure continued operational effectiveness,” Menezes now has authority […]

Bud Albright, who chairs the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, will step in as interim president and CEO of the organization following the Dec. 29 death of David Blee. The Nuclear Industry Council said Monday that the board of directors selected Albright, an undersecretary of energy for former President George W. Bush, as interim leader pending […]

The story “NNSA Plans Expedited Environmental Review of Pit Production at SRS” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, Jan. 07, 2020) should have said that the agency will not conduct a new environmental review of its plan to produce 80 plutonium pits a year by 2030, but that it could conduct a more limited review of the […]

Bud Albright, who chairs the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, will step in as interim president and CEO of the organization following the Dec. 29 death of David Blee. The Nuclear Industry Council said Monday that the board of directors selected Albright, an undersecretary of energy for former President George W. Bush, as interim leader pending […]

By Llewellyn King Special to Weapons Complex Monitor David Blee could have been anything he wanted to be, so long as the job involved people. David, who died suddenly and tragically early at 66, was dynamic in everything he did — and he did nothing better than people. He could lead them, inspire them, cajole […]