Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) took over as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, but the leadership of the subcommittee in charge of the Department of Energy’s annual budget bills has not changed. Shelby replaces Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who retired April 1 due to ailing health. In a press announcement, the senior senator […]

By Marc Selinger Defense Daily The U.S. Navy, which has said for years that it wants to buy 12 Columbia-class, nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines to replace its aging Ohio-class fleet, is leaving open the possibility that it will end up acquiring more than that, a service official said April 11. “That’s a decision that will be made […]

Purdue University on April 6 confirmed it teamed with Bechtel National, of Reston, Va., on a bid to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — a teaming arrangement first reported by Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor in February. The confirmation came Friday from Mitch Daniels, president of the Indiana-based university. Daniels spoke to the […]

By Marc Selinger Defense Daily Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, whose duties include overseeing big-ticket acquisition programs, attended a recent “deep dive” briefing on the Air Force’s B-21 Raider to better familiarize himself with the bomber development effort, a service official said April 9. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson said that he and prime contractor Northrop Grumman [NOC] […]

The U.S. Navy, which has said for years that it wants to buy 12 Columbia-class, nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines to replace its aging Ohio-class fleet, is leaving open the possibility that it will end up acquiring more than that, a service official said April 11. “That’s a decision that will be made and a recommendation made by […]

Senate appropriators on Wednesday did not forbid the Department of Energy from turning Yucca Mountain in Nevada into a permanent nuclear waste repository, but they also did not promise to give the agency funding for the project in fiscal 2019. As it did last year, the department has requested $120 million for paper and preparatory […]

The Department of Energy has removed the fuel, but not the salt, from the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge, Tenn. An article in the April 10 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misstated the situation. Also, an article in April 9 Morning Briefing should have noted that a current procurement at the Y-12 National Security […]

The Australian government on Tuesday issued the outlines of its approach to management of what is expected to be at least 13,500 cubic meters of low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste. The Australian Radioactive Waste Management Framework is intended to “guide the principles, policies and institutional arrangements of radioactive waste management” in the nation, according to […]

John Sarrao will replace Alan Bishop as principal assistant director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Science, Technology and Engineering branch, a lab spokesperson said Monday. In his new role, Sarrao will run the lab’s fundamental science programs, which include research applicable to nuclear weapons, among other things. The directorate’s four sub-branches are: chemistry, life […]

The Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration are seeking bids on a new series of exascale supercomputers, including one at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that would cost up to $600 million and switch on early next decade, according to a request for proposals released Monday. Funding for the proposed Livermore […]

Purdue University on Friday confirmed it teamed with Bechtel National, Reston, Va., on a bid to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — a teaming arrangement first reported by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing’s sister publication in February. The confirmation came Friday from Mitch Daniels, president of Indiana-based Purdue University. Daniels spoke to […]

With an industry pre-proposal site tour set for Tuesday, the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility contract solicitation In Oak Ridge, Tenn., is already drawing a lot of questions from prospective bidders. Fourteen questions and answers were posted on the solicitation website April 6. They cover everything from conflict of interest, to weight limits for dump […]

The House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee will hold a hearing on the Department of Energy’s fiscal-year 2019 budget request on Thursday. The subcommittee is a Department of Energy (DOE) policy overseer and does not write the agency’s annual budget bills. The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern time and will be webcast from […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday rejected a request from several environmental and anti-nuclear groups for a hearing to oppose an application for a license to export up to 10,000 metric tons of radioactively contaminated material from Tennessee to Canada. Massachusetts-based UniTech Services Group in 2016 requested authorization to ship the material back customers […]

Cleanup funding figures reported for the Savannah River Site in the March 30 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor were for the full environmental management mission at the Department of Energy facility, not solely liquid waste management. A comparison of the site’s funding in this fiscal year and the budget proposal for the next year also […]

A former employee’s discrimination federal lawsuit against the management and operations contractor for the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site has been dismissed due to a lack of sufficient evidence. Now, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is trying to recover just over $900 from the former plaintiff to cover costs associated with printing documentation for the […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled four public meetings in late April and early May to receive input on the scope of its environmental impact statement for Holtec International’s application for a license to build an interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility in southeastern New Mexico. “At the meeting, the NRC will receive comments […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday formally opened a new building to house a host of administrative and support functions at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) attended a ribbon-cutting for the John C. Drummond Center, named for the longest-serving manager for the nuclear-weapon […]

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC) should require the Department of Energy to pay South Carolina $200 million in their dispute over plutonium disposal at the federal Savannah River Site, rather than allowing the lawsuit to go to trial, the state said in a March 30 motion. Specifically, the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office […]

The Department of Energy says it should get to keep around $20 million in fees it clawed back from a contractor that failed to build a major nuclear-nonproliferation project in South Carolina on time. The federal agency’s filing in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims last week was the latest turn in one of the two slow-simmering […]

More than a week after the Senate confirmed him for the job, Brent Park was sworn in Tuesday as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top nonproliferation official. Park will be deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation: the roughly $2 billion-a-year stovepipe charged with controlling the spread of weaponizable nuclear material while encourage peaceful atomic programs. […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory contracted out just shy of 60 percent of its total procurement dollars to small businesses in fiscal 2017, handily exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for the nation’s oldest nuclear-weapon lab. In the penultimate year of Los Alamos National Security’s (LANS) management and operations contract, the northern New Mexico weapons […]

The former head of an advocacy group for communities around the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said Tuesday she has repaid $800 in questioned expenses in an effort to resolve a public dispute that marred the end of her tenure. The contract between Andrea Romero Consulting and the Regional Coalition of […]

Days after the Department of Energy (DOE) gave the go-ahead to start building key parts of a $6.5 billion facility to process uranium for U.S. defense programs, a federal judge ordered a venue change in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the plant’s construction. Three environmental groups and four individuals filed suit in July 2017 in […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex had not cast any enriched uranium for national defense programs for about a week as of Friday, after an unspecified quantity of the fissile material leaked into casting machinery at the National Nuclear Security Administration plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Casting furnaces at Y-12’s 9212 building — operated by the […]

The U.S. Energy Department will provide the University of Arkansas with $10 million to complete the environmental remediation of the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR). Two members of the state’s congressional delegation, Sen. John Boozman (R) and Rep. Steve Womack (R), announced the funding this week. The money is included in the fiscal 2018 […]

The newly signed $1.3 trillion federal government omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2018 provides a boost for environmental remediation of the Department of Energy’s nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge, Tenn. About $639 million will go toward cleaning up Oak Ridge’s Manhattan Project and Cold War sites—$141 million over 2017’s enacted levels and $125 million more […]

The former head of an advocacy group for communities around the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said Tuesday she has repaid $800 in questioned expenses in an effort to resolve a public dispute that marred the end of her tenure. The contract between Andrea Romero Consulting and the Regional Coalition of […]

In her first official visit to an Energy Department cleanup site since being sworn in last week, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White toured the Paducah Site in Kentucky on Thursday. She was part of a delegation including Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). After touring […]

The U.S. Energy Department has officially supported keeping millions of documents related to licensing of its planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., in their current home in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s public electronic records database. Other parties, though, said this month more consideration is necessary before a final decision is made. The Licensing […]