Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

Federal employees and on-site contractors without COVID-19 vaccinations will have to mask up at all locations on government property and get COVID-19 tests once a week or more, the Joe Biden administration announced this week amid a surge in 19 cases. “Every federal government employee and onsite contractor will be asked to attest to their […]

Active COVID-19 cases at the National Nuclear Security Administration had spiked to a two-month high in July by Friday after reaching their lowest level of the year earlier in the same month, according to data provided by agency headquarters in Washington. The agency, with its mission-essential nuclear-weapons work, was among the early beneficiaries of COVID-19 […]

The Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition should take over cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory around Jan. 1, 2022, an agency spokesperson said via email Friday. The Jacob-led joint venture, awarded the potential 10-year, $6.4-billion contract in May, received its notice to proceed on July 20. The 90-day changeover from incumbent Fluor Idaho […]

Uncle Sam has long wanted federal workers and contractors to get vaccinated against COVID-19 but now is growing more insistent, with infections on the rise around Department of Energy nuclear installations. President Joe Biden this week reinstated mandatory mask wearing in government buildings and imposed a series of safety measures and restrictions for federal workers […]

The House of Representatives voted 219 to 208 Thursday on a party line to approve a package of seven fiscal 2022 spending bills including one that sets the budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management at $7.76 billion. The bill, which includes DOE along with the other agencies as part of H.R. […]

A federal district court in Ohio has said attorneys involved in a lawsuit over off-site radioactive contamination from the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio should explore potential mediation soon. A notice published Friday by Richard Nagel, the federal clerk for the U.S. District Court in Southern Ohio, listed a case brought by Ursula […]

The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board heard Monday the proposed fiscal 2022 budget proposal for the Department of Energy site in South Carolina includes $9 million toward development of a new emergency operations center. The minibus appropriations package passed by the full House of Representatives Thursday also includes the $9 million for the new […]

Testing done in recent weeks by the Department of Energy at the Hanford Site in Washington state has turned up no signs the foul odor encountered by workers around a tank farm was ammonia from tank vapors, an agency spokesperson said this week. Following last month’s incident three employees were checked out at a Richland, […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries this week officially made Kimberly Lebak the full-time president and general manager of the joint venture in charge of legacy cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Lebak has run the Huntington Ingalls-led Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) since May when she stepped in for […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has made no decision yet on a Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board proposal to allow members to serve beyond their term expiration dates in order to keep the panel near full strength. The Office of Environmental Management (EM) headquarters is reviewing the Savannah River Site (SRS) […]

A roughly $1-trillion infrastructure bill negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators could provide Superfund sites with more than $3 billion for cleanup over the next five years. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would increase federal investment in projects including roads, bridges and broadband —and quicken cleanup of environmental contamination through $3.5 billion […]

The roughly 1% annual increase the Joe Biden administration proposed for civilian nuclear weapons programs is “minimally sufficient” to keep warhead and bomb modernization on track in 2022, but maybe not beyond, a joint Pentagon-Department of Energy nuclear acquisitions group told Congress in a letter dated Friday. The Biden request of roughly $20 billion for […]

Jill Hruby was sworn in Monday as the sixth administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, she wrote in a Twitter post on the official government account for the nuclear-weapons agency’s leader. Today, surrounded by my family, I was sworn in as #NNSA Administrator by @SecGranholm. Leading the dedicated professionals who work tirelessly to advance […]

Some 200 members of the Society of Professionals, Scientists and Engineers were scheduled to begin a three-day strike Tuesday at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to protest what they call unfair labor practices, the union said Monday. “The 200 strikers will spread out across the lab’s gates,” the union wrote in a press […]

John Howanitz will be promoted to president of Bechtel National’s nuclear, security and environmental global business effective Sept. 1, replacing the retiring Barbara Rusinko as the head of the Reston, Va.-based company’s nuclear business with the Department of Energy and other agencies worldwide.  The company announced the impending change Wednesday in a press release. Howanitz […]

An auxiliary manufacturing space, known as Kansas City East and Building 23, should be christened in the fall, the president of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main non-nuclear parts maker said this week. The headcount at the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) is “currently around 5,500 with plans growing to 6,000 here before the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned to host discussions soon with teams that bid on the potentially 10-year, $30 billion combined management and operations contract for the Pantex Plant and the Y-12 National Security Complex, sources said this week. It was unclear at deadline whether the agency planned to invite bidders for traditional oral presentations […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management appointed Michael Mikolanis to lead its Los Alamos National Laboratory field office in New Mexico, a DOE advisory board learned Wednesday. The Mikolanis appointment was announced to the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board by Lee Bishop, DOE’s deputy designated federal officer, during a virtual meeting. Mikolanis, […]

John Howanitz will be promoted to president of Bechtel National’s nuclear, security and environmental global business effective Sept. 1, replacing the retiring Barbara Rusinko as the head of the Reston, Va.-based company’s nuclear business with the Department of Energy and other agencies worldwide. The company announced the impending change Wednesday in a press release. Howanitz is […]

The Senate on Thursday confirmed ex-Sandia National Laboratories director Jill Hruby as the sixth administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The vote was 79-16. Hruby’s swearing in at the Department of Energy had not been scheduled at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security and Deterrence Monitor. The semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is the […]

Norbert Doyle, a top acquisition executive at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, is taking a two-year posting as a faculty member at the National Defense University’s National War College in Washington, D.C. Although still an Office of Environmental Management (EM) employee, Doyle will serve as the DOE faculty chair at the National […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted 23-3 to approve the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022, the panel said in a Thursday press release about the legislation that authorizes more than $20 billion in spending for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The committee’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the policy bill that sets […]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee verbally voted Thursday morning to advance Department of Energy nominees for general counsel and two other posts for consideration by the full Senate.  During the business meeting, the committee endorsed the nomination of Samuel Walsh to be DOE’s general counsel, Andrew Light to be assistant secretary for international […]

Arguments in Swift & Staley Contract Case Proceed  Oral arguments were set  yesterday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., as Department of Energy contractor Swift & Staley seeks to hold onto the $160-million Paducah Infrastructure Support Services Contract in Kentucky, which it won in December before the Small Business Administration ruled […]

An internal Department of Energy watchdog gave Consolidated Nuclear Security a public calling-out, but no other penalty, for letting an employee at the Pantex Plant in Texas work in radioactive areas for six months last year after the contractor realized the person had lost their dosimeter, according to a report published this week. The employee […]

John “Devin” Biniaz was appointed deputy associate administrator for defense nuclear security, the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week. In his new role at headquarters, Biniaz wil backstop Jeffrey Johnson, the head of the office responsible for physical and information security at the agency’s labs, plants and sites. Biniaz was most recently assistant manager […]

Wednesday’s deadline for members of the House of Representatives to submit amendments to a six-bill spending package that includes the House Appropriations Committee’s 2022 spending proposal for the Department of Energy, appears to have passed without effortrs to dramatically alter the chamber’s nearly $7.8-billion budget for the Office of Environmental Management. A deadline scan of […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s spending bill would provide the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio with more funds than the White House sought for community and regulatory support, including setting up a liaison to localities around the former gaseous diffusion plant, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said Monday. The fiscal 2022 appropriations package for Energy […]

With the full House set to vote next week on a multi-bill spending package that would keep the civilian nuclear weapons budget about flat at about $20 billion, some Republican lawmakers have offered amendments to up funding for a proposed pair of ocean-going nuclear warheads. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) wants to transfer $19 million to […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that runs the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, this week asked a federal court in New Mexico to dismiss a $500,000 lawsuit filed by an African American security employee who claims he was bypassed for a promotion due to his race. While the Amentum-BWX Technologies partnership acknowledges plaintiff […]