Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

PHOENIX – Winning support for a new low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee took a lot of time and friendly arm-twisting, a member of the House Appropriations Committee told the Waste Management Symposia Monday via electronic hookup from Washington, D.C. At various points, “we were stymied by […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. February: 27: Meeting: The technical program for the 2023 Waste Management Symposia kicks off at 10 a.m. Mountain Time at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Ariz. 27: Meeting, Brookings Institution: Russia Suspends its Participation in the […]

Hundreds of employees evacuated the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main factory for nuclear-weapon secondary stages in Tennessee this week after a fire there, a spokesperson said. “There was a fire at approximately 9:15 involving uranium in Building 9212, a production facility onsite,” a spokesperson for the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., wrote […]

Over a year’s time, it is common for Department of Energy weapons complex sites to experience multiple fires that are recorded with the agency’s Occurrence Reporting and Processing System, according to a report from the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. “The number of reportable fires per year [over a seven-year-period] ranged from 4 to 10, […]

SNC-Lavalin Group said this week it selected longtime Bechtel nuclear executive Jim Rugg to replace Tom Jouvanis as president of its Atkins Nuclear Secured Holding affiliate. Rugg, who spent more than 28 years at Bechtel, most recently as operations manager for defense and space, will officially become Atkins president on Feb. 27, according to the […]

Hundreds of employees evacuated the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main factory for nuclear-weapon secondary stages in Tennessee this week after a fire there, a spokesperson said. “There was a fire at approximately 9:15 involving uranium in Building 9212, a production facility onsite,” a spokesperson for the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., wrote […]

Over a year’s time, it is common for Department of Energy weapons complex sites to experience multiple fires that are recorded with the agency’s Occurrence Reporting and Processing System, according to a report from the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. “The number of reportable fires per year [over a seven-year-period] ranged from 4 to 10, […]

Over a year’s time, it is common for Department of Energy weapons complex sites to experience multiple fires that are recorded with the agency’s Occurrence Reporting and Processing System, according to a report from the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. “The number of reportable fires per year [over a seven-year-period] ranged from 4 to 10, […]

Hundreds of employees evacuated the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main factory for nuclear-weapon secondary stages in Tennessee early Wednesday morning after a fire there, a spokesperson said. “There was a fire at approximately 9:15 involving uranium in Building 9212, a production facility onsite,” a spokesperson for the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., […]

21: Earnings call: Fluor will hold its fourth quarter earnings call starting at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Recording will be available. 23: Earnings call: BWX Technologies will hold its regular quarterly earnings call starting at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.  27: Meeting: The technical program for the 2023 Waste Management Symposia kicks off at 10 a.m. […]

Editor’s note The Exchange Monitor this week hosted its annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit. The unclassified gathering draws government officials and industry executives from across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear-weapons enterprise. The three-day summit is a professional conference for people in the nuclear-weapons business, which is a serious business.  Even so, there were a […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will serve as a test-bed for some of the changes the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to make to the big site-management contracts of the future, an agency official said here. At “the Livermore Field Office … we are actually right now executing what’s called a model […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — The National Nuclear Security Administration could solicit bids for a new 10-year management contract for its uranium hub in Tennessee by spring of 2024, the head of the agency said here Tuesday. “The notional schedule is Y-12 is one year behind Pantex,” Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

The Exchange Monitor was set to kick off its 15th annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit this week in Crystal City, Va., where senior leaders in government and industry were scheduled to speak about major nuclear modernization programs. Following an afternoon professional workshop on Monday, Jill Hruby, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), was […]

The U.S. believes Russia violated the New START nuclear-arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow by blocking inspections in August, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing a State Department report to Congress delivered Jan. 24. “Two years ago, the Biden Administration naively agreed to an unconditional five-year extension of the New START Treaty […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration stonewalled some requests for classified information by Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the board said in a congressionally mandated report. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) made a pair of classified-information requests with a Nov. 18 delivery date, but as of Jan. 19, “the board has not yet received […]

Citing “unprecedented danger” arising from Russia’s nearly year-long war against Ukraine, the peace-advocating Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on Tuesday set its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds until midnight. It is the closest the long-running, metaphorical clock — a consensus gut-check among dove-like experts — has ever been to the symbolic midnight hour that marks the […]

Citing “unprecedented danger” arising from Russia’s nearly year-long war against Ukraine, the peace-advocating Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on Tuesday set its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds until midnight. It is the closest the long-running, metaphorical clock — a consensus gut-check among dove-like experts — has ever been to the symbolic midnight hour that marks the […]

In a demonstration of its largest domestic program to reduce stocks of weaponizable nuclear material, the National Nuclear Security Administration in December shipped deweaponized plutonium out of South Carolina for permanent disposal, the agency said recently. It was a proof-of-concept run for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program, which began as a post-Cold-War plowshares effort with […]

Russia has manufactured the nuclear munitions for its Poseidon nuclear torpedo and planned to deliver them soon to a Belgorod-class nuclear submarine, the Russian state news agency TASS reported, media including Reuters reported. Poseidon torpedoes are meant to create radioactive ocean swells that can wash over and contaminate coastal cities and ports, Moscow has said. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration in December removed some surplus, weapon-usable plutonium from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the agency said Friday.  The agency did not say how much of the material it removed from the site near Aiken, S.C. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said the glove boxes and facilities […]

Russian hackers targeted three Department of Energy laboratories, including the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, in a password-stealing scam, Reuters reported last week. The news service said the attempts involved Russian hackers creating fake login pages for each lab and then emailing lab employees with invitations to log in to the fake sites. DOE […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration backdated letters to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and claimed its own safety rules actually permitted safety deficiencies the rules were supposed to prevent, the board said. In a letter late last year to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, the board complained about “the recent practice of the National […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans by Oct. 31 to have permanent leadership for the three new procurement- and infrastructure-focused offices it created last year when it broke up the former Office of Acquisition and Project Management, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Tuesday. The agency “will establish specific outcome-oriented goals and performance […]

Local officials this week voted to express formal concerns about the Department of Energy’s plan to ship weapon-usable plutonium through the Santa Fe, New Mexico area as part of long-planned materials-disposal effort. On Tuesday, all five Santa Fe county commissioners approved comments to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) about the agency’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition […]

Local officials this week voted to express formal concerns about the Department of Energy’s plan to ship weapon-usable plutonium through the Santa Fe, New Mexico area as part of long-planned materials-disposal effort. On Tuesday, all five Santa Fe county commissioners approved comments to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) about the agency’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans by Oct. 31 to have permanent leadership for the three new procurement- and infrastructure-focused offices it created last year when it broke up the former Office of Acquisition and Project Management, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Tuesday. The agency “will establish specific outcome-oriented goals and performance […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration backdated letters to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and claimed its own safety rules actually permitted safety deficiencies the rules were supposed to prevent, the board said. In a letter late last year to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, the board complained about “the recent practice of the National […]

Minority-serving and Tribal Community and Junior colleges have a little more than a month to apply for a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) grant to improve programs that train students in disciplines potentially useful for nuclear weapons work, the nuclear-weapons agency’s Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program wrote in a press release this week. The NNSA […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration begins 2023 in search of a new industry partner at the Pantex Plant in Texas and the competition for that contract will be the first since the agency pledged to overhaul the structure of its major site-management accords. The agency can bake into the new standalone contract to manage the […]