Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not publish on Friday, Dec. 30, 2022 in observance of the New Year’s holiday. Happy holidays to everyone!

Inching forward with plans to dispose of surplus plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans public hearings after New Year’s on its just-released draft environmental review of the project, the agency said recently. The nuclear-weapons agency on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement about its planned Surplus Plutonium […]

The story “Pantex building returning to explosive testing after years of semi-retirement” [Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Vol. 26, No. 48] should have said that a recently reactivated facility at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, will not be used for nuclear weapons production.

Civilian nuclear weapons programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration will almost all get year-over-year raises in excess of what the White House requested under an omnibus 2023 spending proposal released early Tuesday morning. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency would get about $22.2 billion under the bill: some $750 million more than requested […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security is in the early stages of returning a facility at the NNSA’s Pantex Plant in Texas to active explosive testing. In October, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board noted the effort to reclaim the facility after 30 years of inactivity following a contamination event. Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) spokesman Jason Bohne confirmed […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security is in the early stages of returning a facility at the NNSA’s Pantex Plant in Texas to active explosive testing. In October, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board noted the effort to reclaim the facility after 30 years of inactivity following a contamination event. Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) spokesman Jason Bohne confirmed […]

Materials shortages and labor productivity drove a two-year delay to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s next factory for nuclear-weapon secondary stages, the head of agency said Thursday. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulties it created sourcing materials, “construction is just really hard in the United States now,” Jill Hruby, administrator of […]

China will “basically complete modernization” of its military capabilities by 2035, by which time it may have a stockpile of 1,500 nuclear warheads, the Pentagon said in a report released Tuesday. The latest congressionally mandated “China Military Power” report covers developments through the end of 2021. In it, the Pentagon said that China likely accelerated […]

In observance of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not publish this Friday, Nov. 25. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Dec. 2.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has suggestions for avoiding uranium-related fires once the Uranium Processing Facility in Tennessee starts up and wants the Department of Energy to explain what it’s doing to prevent them, according to a letter published this week. “The Board believes that Y-12 can improve the site’s safety posture by ensuring […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority was in the process of securing approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to increase production of tritium for nuclear weapons in one of the company’s reactors by November 2024, according to its latest annual earnings report. That date, disclosed in the authority’s latest 10-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, narrows […]

Alutiiq Logistics & Maintenance Services failed to comply with contractual obligations to provide certain services at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Albuqeruqe complex in New Mexico, the Department of Energy Inspector General said. The Department of Energy’s Inspector General substantiated eight allegations of contractual noncompliance by Alutiiq Logistics & Maintenance Services, the facility and maintenance […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority was in the process of securing approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to increase production of tritium for nuclear weapons in one of the company’s reactors by November 2024, according to its latest annual earnings report. That date, disclosed in the authority’s latest 10-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Boards sent the Department of Energy a reminder about overdue safety reports for several nuclear weapon sites, according to a letter dated Oct. 20. DOE’s delay is “affecting the Board’s safety oversight,” Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) chair Joyce Connery wrote in the letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wants to set aside a cell at Pantex where people can practice arms control verification technology, agency Administrator Jill Hruby said at an arms control conference this week. Formally called a user facility, the converted cell will be an “for those ideas that advance beyond the research phase and […]

Former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, 68, a Rhodes scholar and theoretical physicist who helmed the Pentagon between 2015 and 2017, died of a heart attack Tuesday  at his home in Boston. At the time of his death, Carter was director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy […]

The National Nuclear Security administration will create a new risk management strategy with the Pentagon, mandate more regular infusions of new technology into nuclear-weapons design and manufacture and build new science facilities, according to the Nuclear Posture Review the Joe Biden administration released Thursday. Those are the three pillars of the plan laid out to […]

The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration was scheduled to discuss arms control Thursday at a major nuclear-policy conference in Washington. Agency Administrator Jill Hruby was set to speak alongside Bonnie Jenkins, under secretary for arms control and international security, in an evening session at the biennial Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference. The session, […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend by up to a year a contract with a small business based in Arlington, Va.,for cleanup planning at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York. On Oct. 20 DOE announced its intent to extend its contract with h SC&A through Nov. 17, 2023 if all options are […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Boards sent the Department of Energy a reminder about overdue safety reports for several nuclear weapon sites, according to a letter dated Oct. 20. DOE’s delay is “affecting the Board’s safety oversight,” Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) chair Joyce Connery wrote in the letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer […]

Mark Martinez planned to retire as president of Mission Support and Test Services, the Honeywell-led prime contractor for the Nevada National Security Site, according to people familiar with Martinez’s plans. A spokesperson for Mission Support and Test Services (MSTS) did not reply to a request for comment. Martinez has been president of MSTS since the […]

Two research contractors at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal district court after being accused of filing false bills with the government.   Greenway Energy and Savannah River Consulting both agreed to accept a plea agreement in proceedings before U.S. District Judge Terry Wooten in Columbia, S.C. […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup procurement office last week laid out what type of foreign ownership and control disclosures bidders should be ready to provide when pursuing contracts in the weapons complex. The DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center in a seven-page document detailed the Foreign Ownership Control or Influence review that contractors […]

By Dan Parsons Two contractors were exposed to highly hazardous beryllium, a metal used in nuclear weapons, while performing renovations at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico recently.  On Aug. 30, the subcontractors, working in Building 983 room 122, a conference room, were not wearing proper personal protective equipment, Luke Frank, a spokesman for Sandia […]

The Department of Energy could be prepared to start transferring control of the Savannah River Site to its semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency in bits and pieces starting around 2023, a spokesperson at Washington headquarters said Monday. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), which owns the Aiken, S.C., site now, and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), […]

The U.S. Department of Justice is opening a U.S. Attorney’s Office branch in Richland, Wash., near the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, Vanessa Waldref, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington said Oct. 14 in a press release. Federal prosecutors have handled an average of about 70 cases per year from the Tri-Cities area, […]

The Department of Energy expects it will be early 2023 before an Amentum-led contractor starts pretreating its third batch of low-level radioactive tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. An ongoing planned outage could take a few more months, a DOE spokesperson said by email Wednesday. That is longer than the agency’s characterization […]

After an alarm on a control panel, the Department of Energy has temporarily stopped heating up the first melter for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, an advisory panel was told Thursday. The news was shared with a virtual meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board by Mat Irwin, […]

The Government Accountability Office on Tuesday denied a protest by a women owned small business seeking to overturn a $53-million award at the Y-12 National Security Complex to Sigma Science. Vector Resources — which lists its headquarters and mailing addresses in a pop-up business space in Erie, Pa., and a strip mall in Engelwood, Fla., […]

The Department of Energy and its prime contractor for the two main U.S. civilian nuclear-weapons production sites agreed in early October to end a contractual dispute before it escalated to court, according to a recently published decision. According to a notice dated Oct. 6 and published subsequently, attorneys for the Bechtel National-led Consolidated Nuclear Security […]