Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

WASHINGTON — About a month after word first leaked that the White House wanted to develop a pair of new low-yield nuclear warheads, Defense Secretary James Mattis on Tuesday characterized the proposal as a “bargaining chip” to persuade Russia to freeze what the United States says is a nuclear-capable cruise missile program. In congressional testimony […]

Strata-G LLC has won a $1 million contract from the Energy Department to conduct environmental sampling at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. The sampling will support DOE plans for construction of an additional on-site disposal facility for hazardous and radioactive wastes at the Bear Creek Valley area of Oak Ridge, DOE said in a […]

Cost and schedule details about a proposed low-yield warhead for submarine-launched ballistic cruise missiles will appear in the White House’s fiscal 2019 budget requests later this month, but details about planned improvements to the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons complex will not be published until next year, the agency’s top nuclear official said Friday. The Donald […]

Longtime member Sean Sullivan was set to leave the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) today after a short and tumultuous run as chairman, during which he suggested eliminating the independent federal agency where he has worked for the last five years. Sullivan announced his impending exit on Jan. 19 in a memo circulated to […]

Less than two weeks before 2019 budget negotiations are set to compete for lawmakers’ attention on Capitol Hill, the Senate still has not taken a look at the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration. President Donald Trump nominated former Department of Energy and National Security Council staffer Lisa Gordon-Hagerty to the […]

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis is scheduled to brief House lawmakers Tuesday on the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review: a policy document that proposes refurbishing Department of Energy nuclear infrastructure in part to develop a pair of new warheads for submarine-launched missiles. Mattis is slated to appear alongside Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) is set to consider a draft recommendation for the Department of Energy, according to a vote tally posted online. The board voted three to zero in favor of a meeting to consider a “staff generated outline for a draft recommendation provided to the Board on January 23, 2018,” […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has tapped CenturyLink [CTL] and collab9 to secure its enterprise communication networks with their joint cloud communications service. Under the deal, announced Jan. 31, the two companies will deliver their Unified Communications as a Service (UCaas) platform to start DNFSB’s transition to cloud computing platforms. “CenturyLink is excited […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is upping its vigilance against nuclear terrorism at an event some already consider radioactive in a metaphorical sense: Super Bowl 52. The big game this year will be played in Minneapolis between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles: teams whose fervent fan bases occasionally provoke resentment […]

When Congress returns to work next week, lawmakers will once again find themselves barreling toward another fiscal cliff with federal funding set to expire in just a matter of days without some kind of compromise. The federal government is operating on its fourth short-term budget since fiscal 2018 started on Oct. 1 of last year. […]

Sixteen Democratic senators on Monday protested President Donald Trump’s reported plans to direct the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to create a new low-yield nuclear warhead for submarine-launched missiles and expand the scenarios in which such weapons might be employed. “Creating new nuclear capabilities and widening their possible use conditions constitute an increase in […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) criticized the Trump administration’s nearly completed Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Jan. 24, saying its call for more weapons is unaffordable and unnecessary and would fuel an arms race. “This review is a missed opportunity to introduce realism into our nuclear weapons […]

The Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review would add new warhead work to the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) portfolio at a time when the agency’s budget is already stretched to the limit, nuclear-weapons experts — including the NNSA’s recently retired administrator — said this week. The semiautonomous Department of Energy branch, steward of […]

The threat of nuclear war is as great as it has ever been in the atomic age, the nonprofit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said Thursday in its latest Doomsday Clock statement. The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor the group created in 1947, in which midnight represents total annihilation of human beings and their civilization […]

Steven Erhart  has been selected as the acting administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, leapfrogging the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch’s highest-ranking career civil servant at the helm until the Senate confirms the White House’s administrator-designate. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the move Jan. 19 at the bottom of a press release acknowledging the […]

A suspicious package triggered an emergency response at the Pantex nuclear-weapon assembly plant in Amarillo, Texas, on Jan. 16, but the details are on a strictly need-to-know basis, according to an official report from the Department of Energy. “On January 16, 2018, an operational emergency was declared, and the Emergency Response Organization was activated,” reads […]

In his farewell memo last week, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chairman Sean Sullivan suggested he lost the confidence of the 120 staff members of the independent safety watchdog he led for a year and wanted to disband. “Our fine staff deserves to be led by an executive the staff believes in,” Sullivan, a board […]

Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration got an earful at a public meeting Wednesday over a contested power line for Y-12 National Security Complex’s new power substation. The substation will replace the existing, deteriorating power station for the Department of Energy facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. It will provide the power needed for Y-12’s […]

The final version of the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review will arrive in early February, the Pentagon said Thursday. Dana White, the chief Department of Defense spokesperson, firmed up the date for the official release in a Pentagon briefing with the press. The long-awaited review, which leaked out in draft form earlier in January, […]

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) criticized the Trump administration’s nearly completed Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Jan. 24, saying its call for more weapons is unaffordable and unnecessary and would fuel an arms race. “This review is a missed opportunity to introduce realism into our nuclear weapons planning, enhance our security […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration could probably whip up a new low-yield warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles in “a couple years,” but doing so would slow ongoing programs to extend the life of current U.S. warheads, a former National Security Council official said Tuesday. “That’s something that the laboratories probably effectuate in a […]

A suspicious package triggered an emergency response at the Pantex nuclear-weapon assembly plant in Amarillo, Texas, on Jan. 16, but the details are on a strictly need-to-know basis, according to an official report from the Department of Energy. “On January 16, 2018, an operational emergency was declared, and the Emergency Response Organization was activated,” reads […]

Top defense officials were scheduled to brief the Senate Armed Services Committee today in a closed session about the Donald Trump administration’s expansive Nuclear Posture Review, a draft of which leaked to the press in early January. The hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. at the Office of Senate Security in the Capitol Visitor Center. […]

Steven Erhart  has been selected as the acting administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, leapfrogging the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch’s highest-ranking career civil servant at the helm until the Senate confirms the White House’s administrator-designate. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the move Friday at the bottom of a press release acknowledging […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily The U.S. Air Force has launched a two-month review of all of its programs to determine whether some of them are no longer needed, according to a service official. The review, which began Jan. 16 and is scheduled to end March 15, is meant to go beyond the annual budget process, which […]

Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies got praise for its contribution to nuclear warhead life-extension programs in fiscal 2017, along with hand-wringing over the departure of key personnel, in an annual performance report card from the government. That is according to a performance evaluation report published Thursday by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration […]

A third South Carolina jurisdiction has officially called on the Department of Energy to move production of plutonium pits — the fissile hearts of nuclear warheads — to the Savannah River Site from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. On Tuesday, the city of North Augusta, which neighbors the Savannah River Site, passed a […]

A civil-military panel approved designs for an upgrade of the W88 nuclear ballistic missile warhead carried aboard U.S. submarines, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Tuesday in a press release. Panel members, drawn from within and outside of the Department of Energy agency, approved system-level designs for the W88’s upgraded arming, fuzing, and firing (AF&F) […]

The head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration was set to retire Friday, and the Department of Energy has declined to identify his successor. As Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor’s sister publication, Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, first reported last week, longtime government man and retired Air Force general Frank Klotz will retire from federal […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration dinged Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) for delays on a nuclear-bomb life-extension program in fiscal 2017 in a generally positive performance evaluation report published Thursday. Overall, CNS earned about $36 million in fees for managing the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency’s Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex in Tennessee and Pantex Plant in […]