Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

The Department of Energy acknowledged late Thursday it will miss the latest state deadline for starting radiological operations of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory but still expects to start treating sodium-bearing waste this fall. The federal agency has requested an extension beyond the current Friday Sept. 30 deadline for using […]

As expected, the Department of Energy has signed a potential five-year, multibillion-dollar extension with the Fluor-led management and operations manager for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the company said late Thursday.  The extension could keep Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) on as the prime contractor through September 2027 and be worth $12 billion […]

As expected, the Department of Energy has signed a potential five-year, multibillion-dollar extension with the Fluor-led management and operations manager for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the company said late Thursday.  The extension could keep Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) on as the prime contractor through September 2027 and be worth $12 billion […]

Attorneys for current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio said last week they want to limit duplication of paperwork from various citizen lawsuits in federal court accusing the companies of allowing dangerous amounts of contamination to escape outside the fence. The lawyers for a group of eight contractors also […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not have a schedule for when it will address a recent request from the state of Nevada aimed at reopening, and eventually ending, the agency’s licensing proceedings for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a spokesperson said Tuesday. Although Nevada’s Sep. 20 request is in front of NRC’s five-member […]

The Senate Tuesday evening advanced a continuing budget resolution that, if made law, would avert an impending government shutdown and keep federal funding at 2022 levels. The stopgap budget, which on Tuesday, by a 72-23 margin, the upper chamber agreed to vote on later this week, would largely keep federal spending at the levels set […]

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 […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has completed deactivation of Building 235-F at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, according to an agency press release Thursday.  Decommissioning should be finished in fiscal 2030, William (Ike) White, the office’s acting head, also said this month in a letter to a federal nuclear safety […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration removed a tranche of weapon useable plutonium from the Nevada National Security Site after a roughly three-year layover, Nevada’s senior U.S. Senator said Friday. The nuclear weapons agency moved the plutonium to the test site in 2018 after the state of South Carolina successfully sued the government for keeping the […]

ARLINGTON, VA — Talks about the contractual future of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, ongoing for years between the Office of Environmental Management and the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, could bear fruit within three months, the head of the cleanup office said here Thursday. William (Ike) White made the remark Thursday during […]

ARLINGTON, VA. —The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup contractor at the West Valley Demonstration Project in upstate New York has started tearing down the Main Plant Process Building this week, executives said here Thursday during the National Cleanup Workshop. John Rendall, president and general manager of Jacobs-led CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley, announced the start […]

ARLINGTON, VA —A Democrat who co-chairs the House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus predicted here Thursday there will be a continuing budget resolution to keep the Department of Energy and the other federal agencies running beyond the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. “We are not going to shut the government down,” Rep. Susie Lee […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management should transfer the Biology Complex, or Mouse House, to the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Oak Ridge Site Y-12 National Security Complex by the end of December, the head of the cleanup team said here Thursday. That was the word from Ken Rueter, […]

ARLINGTON, VA — Talks about the contractual future of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, ongoing for years between the Office of Environmental Management and the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, could bear fruit within three months, the head of the cleanup office said here Thursday. William (Ike) White made the remark Thursday during […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — The Department of Energy should have an interim storage site for nuclear fuel within 10-to-15 years, an Office of Nuclear Energy official told the National Cleanup Workshop here Thursday. “The Department of Energy has a trust problem; I understand that,” said Sam Brinton, deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition,” […]

An Energy Northwest official told a state board Tuesday that an investigation will be completed soon into spiked tritium levels in the groundwater near the Columbia Generating Station reactor north of Richland, Wash. Felicia Najera-Paxton of Energy Northwest gave a brief update to the Washington Energy Facility Evaluation Council — a permitting and watchdog board […]

Senate leadership is planning for the upper chamber to remain in session in October and take up the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday at a press conference A recess had been expected in the early part of October to allow Senators to leave Washington and campaign […]

Dallas-based Jacobs announced Thursday that Steve Demetriou, the CEO of the international engineering, construction and procurement company for seven years, is stepping down from the top job in January but will stay with the company as executive chair of the board. Jacobs current president and chief operating officer Bob Pragada will succeed Demetriou as CEO […]

Nuclear services company Orano Federal Services and environmental services contractor Spectra Tech created a joint-venture company to pursue small business set-aside contracts, the two said in a joint press release. The new joint venture, dubbed Spectrano, will “leverage its history of performance at federal sites across the country,” Orano said in the Wednesday release. The […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management, long-term custodian of 101 previously contaminated sites cleaned up by other federal entities, expects to see its portfolio nearly double over time, a top administrator said last week. The Office of Legacy Management will take charge of 20 more sites over the next five years, Jay Glascock, […]

The West Valley Demonstration Project, a nuclear cleanup site 35 miles south of Buffalo, N.Y., again has a congressional member in the House of Representatives effective Tuesday, albeit a short timer. Republican Joe Sempolinski was sworn in Tuesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to represent the 23rd congressional district of New York.   “It […]

During a federal appeals court hearing Tuesday on mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for most federal employees, the Department of Justice attorney said a federal district judge was wrong to shut down the policy spawned by a September 2021 executive order just as an administrative board was about to start ruling on requests for exemptions.  Charles Scarborough, […]

In a new lawsuit, the anti-nuclear group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Santa Fe, demanded that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) turn over “full and complete Performance Evaluation Reports” for the contractors managing the agency’s nuclear-weapon sites.  The group, which has tried the tactic before, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico. […]

Robert Raines, the former National Nuclear Security Administration procurement boss of 10 years, went to work for Atkins Nuclear Services, the company said this month in a press release. Raines “ joined the organization supporting strategic business development, performance assurance and governance of large programs,” Atkins wrote in a press release dated Sept. 1. Raines […]

Ongoing problems moving goods from one place to another has affected schedules across the Department of Defense and nuclear-weapon programs have been hit especially hard, the nominee to lead U.S. nuclear forces told Senators Thursday. Even in the face of what he called “herculean efforts” by defense contractors, “what we are now finding is the […]

A draft site-wide environmental impact statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory should appear in the summer or fall of 2023, the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week during public scoping meetings about the extensive environmental review of the nuclear weapons lab. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency took public comment on Tuesday […]

The South Carolina factory that serves as one of the pillars of U.S. nuclear weapons maintenance received a 40-year license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency said Monday. The Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility, whose main business is making uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors, was cleared to operate through Sept. 12, 2062. […]