Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

Good news for those who might want a job with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA): although an in-person job fair scheduled for July is officially canceled, the agency will host a virtual event online. “Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we will not be hosting an in-person job fair in July [but] will be hosting […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has started mandatory, random COVID-19 tests for employees, as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) tracked three new cases across its network of weapon facilities this week. At deadline, that brought the total number of active cases across the eight primary NNSA-owned sites, including headquarters, to 23, […]

One more person who works at Department of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C., was confirmed to have COVID-19, but this person had not been in the Forrestal Building since mid-March, the agency said Friday. That brings the cumulative total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at DOE headquarters in the Washington region to at least 13, […]

The first employees who return to Department of Energy headquarters buildings in Washington, D.C., and nearby Maryland, whenever that might be, will get a taste of the new normal their colleagues at nuclear sites have experienced for weeks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, new agency guidance shows. Temperature checks, pre-arrival symptom questionnaires, and continued social distancing […]

Weeks after the Department of Energy authorized operators of nuclear-weapon sites to bill the government for expenses associated with COVID-19 prevention, most of those prime contractors are still working on trickling down relief to subcontractors. One of the primes’ main mechanisms for recouping such expenses is to bill the government in accordance with Section 3610 […]

The first employees who return to Department of Energy headquarters buildings in Washington, D.C., and nearby Maryland, whenever that might be, will get a taste of the new normal their colleagues at nuclear sites have experienced for weeks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, new agency guidance shows. Temperature checks, pre-arrival symptom questionnaires, and continued social distancing […]

It’s a good-news, bad-news week regarding the 225,000 Chinese-made personal respirators the National Nuclear Security Administration ordered to protect employees and contractors from COVID-19. The good news is they’re still coming. The bad news is that they will arrive at a 70% price premium, compared to what the agency thought it would pay. The semiautonomous Department of […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) tracked three new confirmed cases of COVID-19 this week throughout its complex, as a surging outbreak in Texas forced the Pantex Plant to delay the start of its planned ramp-up to normal operations. There were 23 active cases in the nuclear weapons complex this week, a spokesperson for the […]

It’s a good-news, bad-news week regarding the 225,000 Chinese-made personal respirators the National Nuclear Security Administration ordered to protect employees and contractors from COVID-19. The good news is they’re still coming. The bad news is that they will arrive at a 70% price premium, compared to what the agency thought it would pay. The semiautonomous […]

The Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not be published Monday in observance of Memorial Day. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Tuesday, May 26.

The first employees who return to Department of Energy headquarters buildings in Washington, D.C., and nearby Maryland, whenever that might be, will get a taste of the new normal their colleagues at nuclear sites have experienced for weeks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, new agency guidance shows. Temperature checks, pre-arrival symptom questionnaires, and continued social distancing […]

Three weeks after the Department of Energy authorized operators of nuclear-weapon sites to bill the government for expenses associated with COVID-19 prevention, most of those prime contractors are still working on trickling down relief to subcontractors. One of the primes’ main mechanisms for recouping such expenses is to bill the government in accordance with Section […]

An article in the May 14 issue of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misstated the year by which the Energy Department’s Office of Legacy Management is expected to have received 52 additional remediated properties for surveillance and monitoring. The year is 2050.

It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to brief a group representing nuclear-site host communities about the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s (DNFSB) latest safety recommendation to the Department of Energy, according to the board chairman. “[U]sing staff resources, even though marginal in this instance, to educate a public interest group on complex technical […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said it is tracking one new confirmed case of COVID-19 across its national network of sites, bringing the cumulative total for the agency up to 71 even as the number of active cases dropped to 20.  There are no signs that any employee at an NNSA facility has died […]

Jan Carlin has stepped down as managing director of the Waste Management Symposia (WMS), the nonprofit organizer of the annual conference in Phoenix for the nuclear cleanup and waste management industries. Carlin, a nuclear business consultant, started on the job in September 2017 and had only intended to remain for two years, but stayed on […]

It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to brief a group representing nuclear-site host communities about the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s (DNFSB) latest safety recommendation to the Department of Energy, according to the board chairman. “[U]sing staff resources, even though marginal in this instance, to educate a public interest group on complex technical […]

A COVID-19 scare that shut down construction of the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for about two weeks, with work resuming in mid-April, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Tuesday. “On April 6, an SPD [Surplus Plutonium Disposition] construction worker called in sick. In an abundance of […]

It will take a couple more weeks than earlier thought to certify it is time to begin constructing a new calciner in Building 9212 of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee: the U.S. defense-uranium hub that manufactures the secondary stages for nuclear weapons. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “anticipates approval of the Y-12 […]

Federal contractors would get leniency for missing deliverables because of their COVID-19 response plans, and prime contractors would be in line for quicker payments, under a Democratic-authored relief bill slated for a vote Friday in the House of Representatives – and which President Donald Trump has said he would veto. The Senate’s Republican leadership also […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) order of 225,000 Chinese-made personal respirator masks will arrive, at the soonest, weeks later than hoped. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon agency ordered the masks from suburban-Atlanta-area small business American Dream Builders on April 27 and had hoped for delivery by this past Monday, May 11. But on […]

It will take a couple more weeks than earlier thought to certify it is time to begin constructing a new calciner in Building 9212 of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee: the U.S. defense-uranium hub that manufactures the secondary stages for nuclear weapons. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “anticipates approval of the Y-12 […]

Jan Carlin has stepped down as managing director of the Waste Management Symposia (WMS), the nonprofit organizer of the annual conference in Phoenix for the nuclear cleanup and waste management industries. Carlin, a nuclear business consultant, started on the job in September 2017 and had only intended to remain for two years, but stayed on […]

Federal contractors would get leniency for missing deliverables because of their COVID-19 response plans, and prime contractors would be in line for quicker payments, under a Democratic Party-authored relief bill that debuted Tuesday in the House of Representatives – and was flatly rejected by the Senate’s Republican leadership. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency […]

It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to brief a group representing nuclear-site host communities about the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s (DNFSB) latest safety recommendation to the Department of Energy, according to the board chairman. “[U]sing staff resources, even though marginal in this instance, to educate a public interest group on complex technical […]

The COVID-19 scare that shut down construction of the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina lasted about two weeks, with work resuming in mid-April, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Tuesday evening. “On April 6, an SPD [Surplus Plutonium Disposition] construction worker called in sick.  In an abundance […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is set today to begin testing its own employees for COVID-19, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy facility in northern New Mexico confirmed Monday. The local Los Alamos Reporter broke the news Monday. Los Alamos is the second National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear weapons lab to begin testing. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic in April halted construction on the Savannah River Site’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition Project: the replacement for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility that will help the U.S. government dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) called a stop-work on the project in the second week […]

Experiments resumed at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in late April, following a COVID-19 shutdown, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said late Friday. The high-powered laser facility’s MShock series of tests resumed with a shot on April 26, followed by more shots that week, the semiautonomous Department […]

Honeywell, which owns or has a stake in multiple defense-nuclear site-management contractors, did better than it expected in the first quarter of 2020, but sees economic headwinds due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Quarterly net income for the period ended March 30 rose to more than $1.5 million, or $2.21 a share, from around $1.4 […]