Budget & Policy

As the Department of Energy inches towards the March deadline for its federal interim storage information request, the agency’s nuclear energy chief is impressed with some of the responses already rolling in, she said this week. “We’re coming into this with a pretty open mind as to what [a federal interim storage site] should look […]

To date, four Republicans have announced plans to run for Rep. Tom Reed’s (R-N.Y.) seat representing New York’s 23rd Congressional District, which includes the West Valley Demonstration Project, a nuclear site being cleaned up by the Department of Energy. After a former lobbyist accused the lawmaker of sexual harassment last March, Reed, who has served […]

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is the new top Republican on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which writes the first drafts of policies touching on defense nuclear programs at the Department of Energy, the panel’s GOP leadership said this week. Lamborn slid into the leadership role after Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former strategic […]

The Sandia National Laboratories have temporarily dropped a requirement that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19, leaving only a pair of National Nuclear Security Administration-owned sites that require vaccination. While Sandia’s mandate is paused, “the discipline process for those employees who are unvaccinated, and processing of religious and medical accommodations are on hold,” a labs […]

Big nuclear weapons programs could be delayed if the government cannot agree on a 2022 budget and instead stretches last year’s budgets through the rest of the current fiscal year, the Air Force’s chief of staff said Wednesday in congressional testimony. Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force chief of staff, said the service could lose […]

For now, top management at the Department of Energy still plans a phased return to onsite work for employees and contractors starting on Tuesday, Jan. 18. “Per DOE’s COVID-19 Workplace Safety and Reentry Framework, employees who are designated site critical will return to the worksite on Jan. 18,” a DOE headquarters spokesperson said in a […]

Big nuclear weapons programs could be delayed if the government cannot agree on a 2022 budget and instead stretches last year’s budgets through the rest of the current fiscal year, the Air Force’s chief of staff said Wednesday in congressional testimony. Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force chief of staff, said the service could lose […]

To date, four Republicans have announced plans to run for Rep. Tom Reed’s (R-N.Y.) seat representing New York’s 23rd Congressional District, which includes the West Valley Demonstration Project, a nuclear site being cleaned up by the Department of Energy. After a former lobbyist accused the lawmaker of sexual harassment last March, Reed, who has served […]

After the COVID-19 Omicron variant spread rapidly across the country this winter, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to host an annual spring conference virtually this year, the agency announced Tuesday. Although NRC’s Regulatory Information Conference (RIC), scheduled for March 8-10, was initially supposed to be held as a hybrid event with some in-person attendance, […]

For now, top management at the Department of Energy still plans a phased return to onsite work for employees and contractors starting on Tuesday, Jan. 18. “Per DOE’s COVID-19 Workplace Safety and Reentry Framework, employees who are designated site critical will return to the worksite on Jan. 18,” a DOE headquarters spokesperson said in a […]

An article in the Jan. 11 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing (Demo Run of Idaho Waste Treatment Unit Hits Logistical Snag) should have reported that a test run of the Department of Energy’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at Idaho National Laboratory began Dec. 27.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is the new top Republican on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which writes the first drafts of policies touching on defense nuclear programs at the Department of Energy, the panel’s GOP leadership said Monday. Lamborn slid into the leadership role after Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former strategic forces […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm visited the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Thursday. Granholm praised the lab for its work on “biosecurity. Defense. Nonproliferation.”   Nonproliferation policy pro Laura Holgate on Tuesday returned as an ambassador to the U.S. Mission to Vienna, the State Department said. The Senate in October approved Holgate’s nomination as the […]

Confirmed active cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled across the National Nuclear Security Administration enterprise compared with early December, a spokesperson for agency headquarters in Washington said Friday.  The increase in active cases, the only number the semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency reports, occurred with the highly contagious but reportedly less severe omicron variant of the virus spreading […]

James McConnell is the new No. 3 and top career civil servant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said before New Year’s. McConnell was appointed associate principal deputy administrator in December, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) website. In that role he would backstop the agency’s […]

Since the confirmed, domestic start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has confirmed 7,916 cases of the illness among the agency’s workforce, a spokesperson said Thursday. Likewise, the latest weekly total of confirmed cases is 313, a whopping jump of 242 since the office’s last weekly […]

After nearly 30 years in Congress, Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) won’t seek another term in the House, he announced this week. “After nearly three decades in Congress, I have been reassigned,” Rep. Rush, who has served Illinois’s 1st district since 1992, said in a statement Tuesday. “Let me make it clear that I am […]

Over time, prominent historical figures such as Danish physicist Niels Bohr and New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra are said to have warned us that predictions are tough to make, especially about the future. So despite the obvious challenges of prognostication, Weapons Complex Monitor will open the year with a few observations about some big […]

On the heels of the arrival of the New Year, here’s a look at what to expect in 2022 at the National Nuclear Security Administration, its sites and its partners. Production Office Protest A bigger deal for industry perhaps than the Joe Biden administration’s imminent nuclear posture review — a type of review that in […]

After nearly 30 years in Congress, Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) won’t seek another term in the House, he told local media Monday. Rep. Rush, who was elected to serve Illinois’s 1st congressional district in 1992, won’t run for reelection in the 2022 midterms, he told the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview published Monday. Rush, […]

The U.S. Supreme Court plans to hear oral arguments Friday in two cases concerning the federal government’s authority to require vaccination against COVID-19 in certain situations. In one case, President Joe Biden versus the state of Missouri and nine other states, the issue is whether federal entities including the Department of Health and Human Services […]

Before Christmas, a federal judge rejected a request from 292 workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to temporarily block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate at the cleanup complex in Washington state, and lawyers had not filed new paperwork as of New Year’s. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice in the Eastern District of Washington […]

A handful of employees at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have until Tuesday to respond to their employer’s motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit about the lab’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Just after Christmas, on Dec. 27, U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley allowed the six employees of UT-Battelle, the University of […]

A federal district judge in South Carolina on Tuesday Dec. 28 refused to block the prime contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina from carrying out its vaccine mandate against employees who refuse to take the shot against COVID-19. U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs said because Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear […]

The story “Biden Signs NDAA, Clearing Path for Bigger NNSA Budget,” [Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, Dec. 28, 2021) should have said the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act fully funds a service life extension for the B83 gravity bomb.

There were 71 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among workers for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch as of Dec. 16, down 16 from the prior week, a spokesperson for the office said in a Dec. 28 email. Also on Dec. 16 date, workers at DOE Office of Environmental Management sites had confirmed 7,416 cases […]

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) died Tuesday, according to a statement from his family. Reid, who was Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress, died “peacefully” Tuesday afternoon following a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer, his wife Landra Reid said in a statement. He was 82 years old. Reid was best known to nuke-watchers as […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration received the approval, though not the appropriation, to spend some $500 million more than requested for fiscal year 2022, under the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law Monday. Aside from allowing the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons agency to spend more than $20 billion — a sum House and […]

A half-dozen employees suing the operator of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate have asked a federal court in Knoxville for two more weeks, until Jan. 4, 2022, to file their amended complaint. The plaintiffs filed their motion for the extension in the U.S. District Court […]

The head of the New Mexico Environment Department, James Kenney, supports a congressional committee’s call for the Government Accountability Office to examine practices at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. Kenney wrote this week to the U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the Government Accountability Office (GAO), backing a request this month by […]