Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

The National Nuclear Security Administration and the prime contractor for the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn., are working with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to shrink the high-security protected area around Y-12 by almost  half. Ground was broken April 7 on the $160-million West End Protected Area Reduction project, […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup sites will stick with “maximum telework” for the time being, the No. 2 boss at the Office of Environmental Management said Tuesday. “As of right now there is no change in our status that we have been in for several months of maximum telework,” Todd Shrader, DOE’s principal deputy […]

The acting deputy manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nevada field office will take over her role in an official capacity, the agency announced this week. Laura M. Tomlinson will take over as deputy manager of the Nevada Field Office (NFO) after serving as acting deputy since last February, according to a press release […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration and the prime contractor for the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn., are working with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to shrink the high-security protected area around Y-12 by almost  half. Ground was broken April 7 on the $160-million West End Protected Area Reduction project, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has “limited information on the prevalence of sexual harassment” in its nuclear security forces and needs to take steps to comply with federal anti-harassment policies, said a government study published this week. The NNSA currently doesn’t meet the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) guidelines on responding to and preventing […]

The changeover in presidential administrations has slowed appointments to Site Specific Advisory Boards for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, a federal executive said this week. Appointments to the Savannah River Site’s Citizens Advisory Board have “ground to a halt,” Gregg Murray, a member of that panel, told an online meeting of Environmental […]

Across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s sites and Washington headquarters, the trickle of current positive cases remained steady at under 200 this week, while the number of vaccines administered across the nuclear security enterprise continued to climb. Due to revised Department of Energy guidelines, NNSA is only reporting confirmed active cases and any additional deaths, […]

A National Academies panel said Monday that monitoring, detection and verification of nuclear weapons and fissile material should be a higher national security priority and that more government coordination is needed on the issue. That is the crux of an interim report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, published Monday. The report, […]

The U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has awarded Lynchburg, Va.,-based BWX Technologies contracts worth about $2.2 billion for making naval reactor parts and fuel, the company said in a Tuesday morning press release. BWXT Nuclear Operations Group sites in Virginia, Ohio and Indiana will manufacture nuclear reactor components for Columbia and Virginia-class submarines over an […]

President Joe Biden has formally sent Jill Hruby’s nomination to be undersecretary for nuclear security at the Department of Energy to the Senate for consideration, the White House announced Thursday. Also Thursday Biden announced his intent to nominate Frank Rose as the principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Rose is currently […]

A Nevada Democrat sponsoring a bill that would ban funding for a federal nuclear waste repository without stakeholder consent said this week that the Joe Biden administration and the Department of Energy are in the Silver State’s corner. “With President Biden and Secretary Granholm, I believe we have partners who will help advance these ideas […]

Public interest groups are ready to sue the Department of Energy and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration over what they claim is insufficient review of plans for expanded plutonium pit production in South Carolina and New Mexico. The coalition claims the government failed to adequately review plans to “vastly ramp up production” of nuclear […]

People in Nevada don’t want to see the U.S. government resume underground explosive-nuclear weapons testing in their state, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.   “Nevadans do not want to return to a time when there was explosive nuclear testing in our state,” Rosen told Admiral Charles Richard, commander […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has “limited information on the prevalence of sexual harassment” in its nuclear security forces and needs to take steps to comply with federal anti-harassment policies, said a government study published Monday. The NNSA currently doesn’t meet the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) guidelines on responding to and preventing workplace […]

A Nevada Democrat sponsoring a bill that would ban funding for a federal nuclear waste repository without stakeholder consent said Monday the Joe Biden administration and the Department of Energy are in the Silver State’s corner. “With President Biden and Secretary Granholm, I believe we have partners who will help advance these ideas and move […]

The U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has awarded Lynchburg, Va.,-based BWX Technologies contracts worth about $2.2 billion for making naval reactor parts and fuel, the company said in a Tuesday morning press release. BWXT Nuclear Operations Group sites in Virginia, Ohio and Indiana will manufacture nuclear reactor components for Columbia and Virginia-class submarines over an […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration and the prime contractor for the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn., are working with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to shrink the high-security protected area around Y-12 by almost  half. Ground was broken April 7 on the $160-million West End Protected Area Reduction project, […]

It was not quite a year ago when Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) reorganized its Technical Services segment to include three distinct business units.  Nuclear and Environmental Services, the unit in charge of business development at Department of Energy nuclear-weapons sites, got an unambiguously DOE-styled spear tip in Michael Lempke, a former procurement honcho from the […]

It was not quite a year ago when Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) reorganized its Technical Services segment to include three distinct business units.  Nuclear and Environmental Services, the unit in charge business development at Department of Energy nuclear-weapons sites, got an unambiguously DOE-styled spear tip in Michael Lempke, a former procurement honcho from the DOE’s […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration reported only 13 new confirmed, positive COVID-19 cases this week, which was well below the mean average for the last two months and, individually, one of the lowest week-to-week increases since the disease reached the U.S.  Across the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency’s nuclear security enterprise, vaccinations continued at the […]

The chair of the House Armed Services Committee quoted chapter-and-verse from his bible of nuclear weapon policies this week in a chat with the D.C.-based Reagan Institute, during which he advocated for trimming the defense budget by preventing particular crises rather than gearing up to win an all-out war. “I think that we can have […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration appointed Jason Armstrong to lead the Savannah River Field Office, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon steward wrote in a press release on this week. Armstrong was most recently assistant manager for nuclear safety and engineering at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Production Office in Tennessee, where he had […]

President Joe Biden will nominate Jill Hruby, former director of the Sandia National Laboratories, to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration, the White House said this week. Hruby led Sandia for about two years during the Barack Obama administration, from mid-2015 to mid-2017. Since then, she has worked as an independent consultant, logging time on […]

President Biden’s nominees to lead the Nuclear Weapons Council and the Department of Energy’s intergovernmental affairs programs are headed to the Senate, the White House announced this week. The Senate had not scheduled hearings on either nominee at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, nor for Jill Hruby to be administrator of the […]

The Department of Energy, apparently not quite ready to make a decision on an award, is asking bidders for a new $6.4-billion cleanup contract at the Idaho National Laboratory to extend the expiration dates on their proposals, sources said this week. Other than asking teams to extend their bids on the Idaho Cleanup Project, apparently […]

The number of confirmed active cases of COVID-19 among the federal and contractor workforce for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is up from last week, according to figures provided Thursday by a spokesperson. There are currently 116 cases across the Environmental Management (EM) complex, which represents an increase from last week’s total […]

Barring extensions, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has four contracts set to expire within the next 60 days, according to the contract summary page for the $7-billion-plus nuclear cleanup branch. Portsmouth Mission Alliance, a partnership between North Wind Group and Swift & Staley, has the roughly five-year, $190-million infrastructure service contract at […]

Leidos-led Mission Support Alliance, the former landlord services contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, settled a fraud lawsuit, reportedly for $6-million, in a case brought two years ago by the Department of Justice. “I can confirm that this case has been settled,” Bob Miller, a spokesman for the Leidos-Centerra joint […]

The New Mexico Environment Department recently gave its blessing to a Department of Energy’s plan to commence remediation of radioactive contamination along a public road just outside Los Alamos National Laboratory property. The work plan stipulates that DOE will start its field work on Middle DP Road in April and it should last six months, […]

With the conclusion of a 100-day transition on Thursday, Navarro-led Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration has taken over the 222-S Laboratory from two separate contractors, Veolia and Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions, at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The “transition is complete… effective today,” a DOE spokesperson said in a Thursday […]