Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

WASHINGTON — Replacing an under-construction plutonium disposal plant in South Carolina will be billions of dollars cheaper than finishing it, even after accounting for transportation and storage costs associated with a proposed alternative, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) told lawmakers here Tuesday. The Department of Energy wants to cancel the the […]

The Senate on Thursday unanimously approved Brent Park to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s roughly $2-billion-a-year nuclear nonproliferation branch. It took the Senate a little over a month to confirm Park, a physicist and associate director at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, as deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation. President Donald Trump […]

The fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill President Donald Trump signed this week would give the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) warhead refurbishment programs the 30-percent boost the White House requested, but it would also sustain a major nonproliferation construction project the agency has tried to cancel for three years. Overall, the permanent, government-wide spending bill […]

SNC-Lavalin Group subsidiary Atkins has hired longtime Energy Department procurement chief Ralph Holland as vice president for commercial development in Atkins Nuclear Secured Holdings Corp. Holland will support Atkins senior leaders in areas including strategy, contract management, and contract assurance. The announcement did not specify if he is replacing another manager or filling a newly […]

The fiscal 2018 omnibus spending legislation approved by Congress by Friday morning includes $2.42 billion for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, not including security spending. The bill provides $203 million more for the Washington state cleanup site than requested by the Donald Trump administration for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1., and would […]

The U.S. Department of Energy partially or fully approved 15 of the 20 recommendations submitted by the Savannah River Site’s Citizens Advisory Board (CAB), from January 2016 through December 2017. Of the five other recommendations, three are still pending and the other two were denied in full. The high approval rating signals to board members […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management on Thursday issued its request for proposals for the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and scheduled a pre-proposal site tour for April 10. The announcement had been expected after DOE issued the draft RFP in November and said last month it was preparing to […]

Sen, Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) publicly went on the offensive this week against the National Nuclear Security Administration’s slowly gelling plan to shift production of some nuclear-weapon cores to South Carolina from New Mexico. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is in the final stages of deciding whether to start manufacturing a select number of plutonium […]

WASHINGTON — Replacing an under-construction plutonium disposal plant in South Carolina will be billions of dollars cheaper than finishing it, even after accounting for transportation and storage costs associated with a proposed alternative, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) told lawmakers here Tuesday. The Department of Energy (DOE) wants to cancel the […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry ducked and dodged in the first congressional hearing of the year about the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2019 budget, evading questions from the dais about when the agency would provide a congressionally mandated cost estimate that could allow it to cancel a massive plutonium disposal plant under construction at the Savannah […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry ducked and dodged in the first congressional hearing of the year about the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2019 budget, evading questions from the dais about when the agency would provide a congressionally mandated cost estimate that could allow it to cancel a massive plutonium disposal plant under construction at the Savannah […]

The new head of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, in office less than a month, should direct the agency to produce an overarching plan for the future of “the entire nuclear security enterprise,” a National Academies panel said in a report published Tuesday. “In response to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review and […]

The new head of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, in office less than a month, should direct the agency to produce an overarching plan for the future of “the entire nuclear security enterprise,” a National Academies panel said in a report published Tuesday. “In response to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review and […]

Next year, the Department of Energy wants to start extracting desirable national-security and nonproliferation isotopes from material stored at the Savannah River Site since the early 1970s, according to an environmental filing published Thursday. The agency wants to take 65 Mark-18A targets out of storage at the Aiken, S.C., site’s L-Basin and chemically process them […]

A story in the March 2 issue of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor should have said CB&I AREVA MOX Services filed suit against the National Nuclear Security Administration in 2016.  

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Bechtel National have finished the Site Infrastructure and Services subproject for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The UPF will eventually replace the World War II-era 9212 complex, reshaping uranium enriched elsewhere into forms suitable for use in nuclear […]

Following the advice of a U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC) judge, the state of South Carolina this week dismissed one of its two $100 million lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Energy, and amended the other to reflect a $200 million total demand. Both suits, and a third case in the U.S. District Court […]

The new administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration was set to visit the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., on Friday, sources said this week. A spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Washington declined to provide Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty’s agenda for the trip, citing agency policy against sharing travel plans. Savannah […]

The future of the Savannah River Sites nuclear-weapons mission should become clearer by next month, when the Department of Energy plans to release a draft solicitation for the contract that includes the site’s work for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). To date this year under a series of short-term budgets, the NNSA is spending […]

A federal judge will resume consideration of CB&I AREVA MOX Services’ argument that it should quickly receive a partial award in a $200 million lawsuit it filed against the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration for alleged mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar nuclear nonproliferation contract. In an order filed Thursday, U.S. Court of Federal Claims […]

The new administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration is set to visit the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., on Friday, a pair of sources said Wednesday. A spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Washington did not immediately reply to a request for comment about Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty’s agenda for the […]

Following the advice of a U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC) judge, the state of South Carolina this week dismissed one of its two $100 million lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Energy, and amended the other to reflect a $200 million total demand. Both suits, and a third case in the U.S. District Court […]

The Department of Energy denied late Monday it illegally stalled a lawsuit filed by contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services, which seeks about $200 million in fees and damages for its customer’s alleged mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar nuclear nonproliferation contract. In a court filing last month, MOX Services said DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

In an expected move, CB&I AREVA MOX Services argued Thursday a federal judge should not dismiss a $200 million lawsuit that claims the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration mismanaged the company’s contract to build a massive plutonium-disposal facility in South Carolina. Hitting back against claims in the agency’s motion to dismiss the suit, MOX Services […]

In a letter Tuesday to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, two Democratic senators questioned whether the prime contractor for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California inappropriately billed the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to fight what the lawmakers called “whistleblower-related” cases in court. In particular, Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) questioned whether the […]

The metric ton of plutonium South Carolina took the Department of Energy to court over in 2016 is unlikely to leave the state for years, but the agency is seeking more money from Congress to make a move happen sooner, according to its latest budget proposal. In its detailed 2019 budget request issued last week, […]

It could be another year before the U.S. Department of Energy publishes an official cost estimate for the multibillion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) that Bechtel National is building in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the agency said last week in its detailed fiscal 2019 budget justification. At the same time, significant portions of the UPF at the […]

The U.S. Energy Department said Wednesday it will begin the bidding process for the new Savannah River Site management and operations (M&O) contract by May 1. In an online announcement, DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center said that, within 30 to 60 days, it would issue a draft request for proposals (RFP) to kick off the […]

Although the Department of Energy has nearly finished the first of four ongoing warhead modernization programs, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is “very close to zero-percent modernized,” the general in charge of the Pentagon’s nuclear forces said Wednesday. “We’re starting down that path,” Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said Wednesday in […]

One of the two men who pleaded guilty to stealing from the federal government while working for the MOX project at the U.S. Energy Department’s Savannah River Site is scheduled for sentencing on April 5. Phillip Thompson will be sentenced at 10 a.m. by U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs in Columbia, S.C. He plead guilty […]