Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

The Department of Energy is asking state regulators for another six months to start operating a plant to treat high-level radioactive sodium-bearing waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. In a Sept. 29 letter, DOE asked the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to extend the formal state milestone to March 31, 2023 to process sodium-bearing waste […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN. — The Department of Energy looks forward to a future with miniature power reactors springing up around cleanup sites, but first it must deal with headaches such as brain drain and rising commodities costs: a few of the recurring themes from a two-day conference here this week. Re-industrialization of Cold War and Manhattan […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned to start work on a competition for a pair of new contracts to manage its main nuclear-weapon sites in 2023 and 2024, the agency said this week. In the meantime, Oct. 1 marked the official start of big-money extensions to Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the Bechtel National-led incumbent at […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration picked up Westinghouse Government Service’s next 10-year option to manufacture tritium producing burnable absorber rods at a South Carolina factory. The rods are the source of tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons. Westinghouse has a sole-source contract to produce tritium producing burnable absorber rods, which the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory designed. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration will take over the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by 2025, and the transition has started, the Department of Energy confirmed Tuesday. The former plutonium production site is currently the responsibility of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the part of the agency responsible for cleaning up shuttered Manhattan […]

Subcontractors could begin building a planned plutonium pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Dec. 31, the site’s prime contractor said Monday in a press release. “Construction is expected to begin before the end of this year,” the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions wrote in the release. “Approximately 2,500 skilled craft […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN – Revitalizing decaying buildings, decoupling future contracts for two nuclear weapons plants and assessing the financial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Uranium Processing Facility are among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s key concerns nowadays, officials said here Wednesday. The pandemic has had a ripple effect across the economy and the Uranium […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN. —The Department of Energy’s planned expansion of plutonium pit production at sites in New Mexico and South Carolina and other missions figure to drive a big jump in demand for glove box facilities in the near future, two speakers told the Energy Technology & Environmental Business Association conference here Thursday. Between 2022 and […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration picked up Westinghouse Government Service’s next 10-year option to manufacture tritium producing burnable absorber rods at a South Carolina factory. The rods are the source of tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons. Westinghouse has a sole-source contract to produce tritium producing burnable absorber rods, which the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory designed. […]

Cavendish Nuclear, an international nuclear player in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, opened a United States office headquarters Sept. 22 in Arlington, Va., a spokesperson confirmed by email Wednesday. The nuclear industries in the United Kingdom and United States “share many similarities in their plant designs, operational histories and in the search […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN – Revitalizing decaying buildings, decoupling future contracts for two nuclear weapons plants and assessing the financial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic had on the Uranium Processing Facility are among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s key concerns nowadays, officials said here Wednesday. The pandemic has had a ripple effect across the economy and the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration will take over the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by 2025, and the transition has started, the Department of Energy confirmed Tuesday. The former plutonium production site is currently the responsibility of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the part of the agency responsible for cleaning up shuttered Manhattan […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned to start work on a competition for a pair of new contracts to manage its main nuclear-weapon sites in 2023 and 2024, the agency said Monday. In the meantime, Oct. 1 marked the official start of big-money extensions to Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the Bechtel National-led incumbent at the […]

Subcontractors could begin building a planned plutonium pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Dec. 31, the site’s prime contractor said Monday in a press release. “Construction is expected to begin before the end of this year,” the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions wrote in the release. “Approximately 2,500 skilled craft […]

The Government Accountability Office wants congress to clarify regulatory authority over a certain type of commercial low-level nuclear waste from shuttered reactors and old medical and industrial equipment, according to a report released Thursday. The Department of Energy has been studying disposal options of what is known as greater-than Class C (GTCC) waste and GTCC-like […]

Tropical Storm Ian was expected to bring wind gusts of up to 45 miles per hour Friday to Aiken County, S.C., and the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, according to the National Weather Service. Wind gusts of up to 36 miles per hour were expected later Friday evening, with up to an inch-and-a-half of […]

ARLINGTON, VA — During a conference dominated by workforce continuity issues, it was noted Friday  Sept. 23 that Department of Energy field office managers for nuclear cleanup, who often head the biggest employers in rural locales, have been in their current posts for less than five years.  Being a major government employer in small-town America […]

The House on Friday passed a stopgap budget that would hold the National Nuclear Security Administration to its fiscal year 2022 budget through Dec. 19 and allow work to continue on pit production plants, the B83 gravity bomb and a nuclear, sea-launched cruise-missile warhead. The continuing resolution will put a crunch on the semiautonomous Department […]

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory, including the portion being cleaned up by the Department of Energy, will have a new congressional representative in January 2023 thanks to redistricting. Following the 2020 Census, the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission redrew the state’s congressional districts, moving the 2,850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif., to […]

The House of Representatives voted 230-201 Friday to approve a stopgap spending bill that keeps the federal government including the Department of Energy open through Dec. 16.  The stopgap measure keeps spending for the DOE Office of Environmental Management at the fiscal 2022 level of about $7.9 billion on a prorated basis. There are no […]

A federal district court judge in Tennessee has told litigants to resume mediation in a case involving a half-dozen employees suing the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory contractor over its COVID-19 vaccination policy. In an order Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Atchley, Jr. said he is not enthused about going forward with […]

Expedited spent fuel removal is underway at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, now that the agency has decided not to recover high-enriched uranium from the L-Basin storage area, a manager told a federal advisory board Tuesday. “We just kept recovering and kept recovering … and we did not have a […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should bring in an outside entity to gauge the effectiveness of the overhauled procurement strategy implemented in 2019 to improve its multi-billion-dollar nuclear cleanup operation, the Government Accountability Office said Wednesday. The head of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) should also develop specific performance goals for […]

Kimberly Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, admitted last week to all hands at the California nuclear-weapons design lab that she had been arrested for driving under the influence and speeding. Budil, the first woman to run Livermore, has been director of the younger of the two U.S. weapon-design labs for about a […]

Organizations within the National Nuclear Security Administration bureaucracy are reviewing a draft cybersecurity directive the agency wrote after a third-party review, the weapons steward told the Government Accountability Office last week. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency planned to issue a final supplemental directive, titled Baseline Cybersecurity Program, by April 30, according to the […]

Due primarily to COVID-19, Los Alamos National  Laboratory believed it could take a year longer than expected for the the lab to casting 10 plutonium pits annually in New Mexico, according to an internal document. A redacted copy of the Los Alamos-authored document, dated September 2021 and released by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm led a large Department of Energy delegation to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) 66th general conference in Vienna, Austria this week. Senior officials from the DOE and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attended. In a speech during the plenary session, Granholm said the U.S. is “working […]

The Maryland couple whose shoddy spycraft got them arrested for trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign power again pleaded guilty for their alleged crimes on Tuesday, deciding not to face a jury after a federal judge threw out their first plea deal. The Washington Post reported that both Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana […]

Dr. Kimberly Budil broke the law and put herself and others in danger by driving under the influence and speeding, but she also did what a leader should do and admitted her mistake to all hands at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Budil, who has been the director at the California lab for about a […]

The Department of Energy is “resurrecting” a proposal to build a 10-megawatt solar power field at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, an infrastructure manager told an advisory board meeting Monday. The DOE Office of Environmental Management studied and dropped solar plans after starting to look at it in 2019, said David Bender, the […]